page_title: Steamboat Point
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Steamboat Point / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A rare coastal chart of San Francisco by the U. S. Coast Survey, 1853. Depicts the immediate city of San Francisco and surrounding areas as far as the Mission de Dolores or the Mission de San Francisco. Issued shortly following the gold rush, this early map depicts the city extending only about 8 city blocks from the waterfront. Labels piers, wharfs, parks and roads as well as indicating important individual buildings such as the City Hall, the Post Office, hospitals, and churches. The ocean areas have detailed depth soundings. Text on public buildings, reservoirs, sailing notes, shoals, and tidal notations are included on the top left and lower right hand corners of the map. This map is the second state of the 1853 edition. The first edition, in 1862 lacked depth soundings. Varies from the first 1853 state in the additional of tidal information in the upper left and corrections in the naming of the wharves and piers. Rumsey suggests that the actual city plan was taken from an earlier map produced Cook and Le Count. The interior topography comes from the Eddy map. Varies from the first state in the additional of tidal information in the upper right and corrections in the naming of the wharves and piers. The original trigonometrical survey for this map was prepared by R. D. Cutts. The topography was accomplished by A. F. Rodgers and the hydrography by James Alden. All work was produced under the supervision of A. D. Bache, one of the most influential superintendents in the history of the U.S. Coast Survey.
context_page_description: Steamboat Point a headland marking the northeastern limit of Mission Bay, on San Francisco Bay. It was named for the shipyards that built and repaired steamboats there during the 1850s to the mid 1860s.
context_section_description: The first reference to Steamboat Point appeared on the 1852 U.S. Coast Survey Map of San Francisco, southeast of Third and Townsend Streets. H.B. Tichenor's marine railway at his shipyard for repairing ships, (the first on the Pacific coast), was shown at Second and Townsend, jutting into the bay. On the stretch of South Beach between Tichenor's railway and into the marsh just west of the point were located the boatyards of famed steamboat builders John G. North, Domingo Marcucci, Patrick H. Tiernan and others who constructed and repaired many and most of the best of the fleet of sternwheel and sidewheel steamboats and ferries that plied the bays and rivers of California, Oregon and Washington Territory. It was also the city's prime shipbuilding location until the mid-1860s, when the shipyards gradually moved south across the Mission Bay to Point San Quentin (or Potrero Point). Subsequently, the shore line along the bay was rapidly filled in leaving only a ship channel for Mission Creek and Steamboat Point a small hill inland from San Francisco Bay.
caption: The Shoreline of San Francisco in 1853.
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