Gallery: New Exhibit Shows San Francisco's Dramatic Growth With Maps
011878
*The City of San Francisco: Birds Eye View from the Bay Looking South-West (1878)* This birds-eye view depicts several of the city's landmarks, as well as smoke rising from smokestacks -- an indication of the area's vital industry.
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*Official Map of San Francisco (1849)* After the discovery of gold, San Francisco's population exploded: from less than 1,000 in January 1848 to more than 25,000 by December 1849. Surveyor William Eddy was commissioned to make this map to help standardize the process of buying and selling land in the city.
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*Official Map of San Francisco (1849)* The bottom half of William Eddy's 1849 map of San Francisco (see previous image).
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*Entrance to San Francisco Bay (1859)* This nautical chart includes three views at the bottom: two views of the Golden Gate, and one view of the entrance to San Pablo Bay. In pre-GPS days mariners needed all the help they could get navigating the foggy bay.
051861
*City and County of San Francisco (1861)* This topographic map by San Mateo County surveyor Vitus Wackenreuder shows the many ranchos granted by the Mexican government in the 1830s and 40s before California became a state. Tension between landowners and squatters was growing as the city's burgeoning population expanded westward.
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*San Francisco, from Russian Hill (1862)* This five-sheet panorama once hung in a bar. This perspective, from Russian Hill, looks out across the bay to Alcatraz and Angel Island.
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*Salt Marsh, Tide and Submerged Lands In and Adjacent to the Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo (1874)* This map shows the state of wetlands in and around San Francisco in 1874. North is to the left on this map, and the city itself is at the bottom, roughly opposite the map title.
081905
*Report of D. H. Burnham on the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco: San Francisco Plan (1905)* By the turn of the 20th century, San Francisco's population had reached 350,000 and city leaders were looking for ways to make the city a more agreeable place to live. A commission headed by the mayor solicited this plan from Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham, who was well-known at the time for his recent work in Washington DC. For San Francisco, Burnham proposed a similar (and no doubt similarly infuriating) network of broad diagonal boulevards. But it was not to be.
091906
*Atlas of Maps and Seismograms Accompanying the Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission: Map of the City of San Francisco Showing the Streets and the Burnt Area (1906)* On April 18, 1906 disaster struck in the form of an earthquake that leveled buildings across the city. In the aftermath, fires destroyed a large swath of downtown, indicated here by the dark brown region.
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*San Francisco intensity of earthquake (1908)* This map from the State Earthquake Investigation Commission shows the apparent intensity of shaking in the 1906 earthquake that nearly destroyed the city.
111915
*The “Chevalier” Commercial, Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco (1915)* This pictorial map by August Chevalier was intended to show the world that San Francisco had bounced back from the earthquake and was once again open for business.
121940
*Golden Gate International Exposition insurance map (1940)* San Francisco hosted a "Pageant of the Pacific" in 1939 and 1940 to celebrate the recent completion of its two new bridges -- the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The site for this World Fair-like event was Treasure Island, a sandy shoal filled in with mud and silt dredged from the bay. This Sanborn fire insurance map shows some of the attractions.
131948
*Airview of City Showing Trafficways (1948)* This planning map illustrates a bold plan for six freeways crisscrossing the city. Although the Bayshore Freeway exists today as Route 101, other plans never came to fruition. Plans for an Embarcadero Freeway, for example, were scaled down in response to local opposition, and what was left of the doubledecker freeway along the waterfront was torn down after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
