Dredging up the Past with the Essefficist

Anyways, CBS, about that 403-acre pancake hanging off the middle of the Bay Bridge: Treasure Island was built between February of 1936 and January of 1939 by the WPA as the site of the 1939-1940 World's Fair, known as the Golden Gate International Exposition, which celebrated not just the construction of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, but also the "the ascendancy of California and San Francisco as an economic, political and cultural force in the increasingly important Pacific region." The man-made island, built on marsh land once known as Yerba Buena Shoal, is connected by a narrow road to Yerba Buena Island, the naturally formed outcropping of rock midway between San Francisco and Oakland -- home of the mid-bridge tunnel -- and is composed of 259 thousand tons of rock which form a seawall around its perimeter and 29 million cubic yards of sand and gravel which were dredged from the Bay and the Sacramento River delta and used to form the body of the island.

With the onset of World War II, the Navy gradually took over Treasure Island, which was leased from the City and used largely for troop training and dispatch purposes throughout the war. The Navy continued operations on the island until 1993, when control of the base and its facilities was ceded back to the City and the Treasure Island Development Authority, which now oversees Yerba Buena and Treasure Islands.

So what's going on out there now? There's all kinds of mixed income housing. (You can call the Treasure Island Villages rental office at (415) 834-0211 for info.) There's an organization called the Treasure Island Homeless Development Initiative that provides transitional housing for the homeless. There's a 39-acre career education facility called the San Francisco Treasure Island Job Corps Center. If you get hungry out there, there's a cafe operated by Delancey Street, a fine dining restaurant run by the Job Corps that's cheap but only open three hours a week, and a mini-market. There are all kinds of facilities that can be rented for special events. And filmmaking facilities which have been used for time-tested TV shows like Nash Bridges and Battlebots and films including such Robin Williams classics as Patch Adams and Flubber. There's a little marina tucked in between the TI and YB with a non-profit sailing school and a yacht club. And a school and a Boys and Girls Club too. And the SFFD's Treasure Island Fire Training Academy. And maybe some other stuff.

And why's it called "Treasure Island?" We found a couple of possible answers, the most reasonable of which, found on the City's website and elsewhere, being that the name "refers to the gold-laden fill dirt that washed down from the Sierras into the Bay... which was dredged to create the island." Elsewhere, there's some talk of buried treasure and shipwrecks and prospecting parties, but this is associated not with Treasure Island itself but rather with Yerba Buena Island during the Gold Rush era of the nineteenth century, long before the muck that would later become TI was dragged up from the bottom of the Bay. We also found some claptrap about how "the name is both real and symbolic. It was inspired in part by Robert Louis Stevenson's book of the same title and by the purpose for its being--to display treasures of the world, specifically the Pacific Rim." So it seems like no, CBS, it wasn't (quite) "one of those 'there's-nothing-but-ice-here-but-if-we-call-it-Greenland-maybe-suckers-will-move-here' real estate naming scams," although there was an element of that going on. As well as the "literary pretensions" thing.

In related news, e-mail your questions about San Francisco or your own exciting life to the Essefficist for even more info on the everyday things going on around you all the time (or just post 'em in the comments). And remember, the third week of February equals Spring Training in Arizona. (And thank God, cause it feels like we've been waiting for, like, four months.)