It is 8:14 a.m. but these photos were taken earlier this morning. It is now 55˚ and expected to rise to 64˚. Details for the next ten days here.
Today’s block: 17th to 18th, Dearborn to Guerrero.
Having been burned out of my apartment at 16th and Guerrero (another story), I moved to this block shortly before the Loma-Prieta earthquake. In the weeks following, a series of anonymous leaflets appeared on neighborhood telephone polls announcing the “Spirit” or the “Goddess” of “Lake Dolores” a “vanished eye,” had been released by the quake.
Afterwards I learned 18th street had been a fresh water creek coming out of Twin Peaks and emptying into the wetlands east of Guerrero. The “lake,” sometimes referred to as a “lagoon,” and in the Spanish of the soldiers who camped out here, a Laguna de Manatial, or an Ojo de Agua was not precisely fixed until 1912. According to that map, the community garden on the corner of Dearborn and Bird would have been on the water’s edge. The 1912 map, even the existence of Lake Dolores, has been challenged, though the laguna still shows up, a few blocks east, on contemporary maps.
Where and whether a lake existed, no one doubts we live on wetlands, a swampy brew of fresh and salt water which once provided vibrant conditions for vegetation and wildlife, now buried under sand from Rincon Hill and paved over. After a good rain or ten, when the sinkholes open up, you get to see the creeks running underneath the streets.
And if you’re looking to buy a house east of Mission Street, caveat emptor.
For more, see Unraveling the Mystery of Lake Dolores, Mission Creek Watershed, and Google’s San Francisco Seismic Hazard Zones: Liquefaction map.
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You can see a map of all of the blocks here. The blocks in grey are being saved for others who have signed up. Let us save a block for you as well.
Nice Photos.
On the controversial question of where is the laguna or lake once was, I go with the theory that water runs downhill, so the natural place is the bottom of the bowl, so to speak. And by Capp Street, an incline has begun, but other places I roll easily when on a bike.