Jim and Marti Schein have owned and operated Schein & Schein Antique Maps and Prints since 2003. Recently, Jim wrote the book Gold Mountain, Big City: Ken Cathcart's 1947 Illustrated Map of San Francisco's Chinatown, which is available on the Schein & Schein website and other places where you can buy books online. 

Hi, I'm Jim Schein! I've been invited to show you Eight Interesting Aspects about a map that I've chosen to show you how to orient yourself in a lost landscape.

As a federal document, this map is incredibly explanatory in regards to what it does, when, and why. It's a U.S. Coast Survey under A.D. Bache, Superintendent, and it's the map of the "City of San Francisco and Its Vicinity" in California.

This map is obviously of a maritime city--it was made by people from the U.S. Navy--and so within it, we have a legend that explains some of its purpose.

Public buildings are enumerated. Reservoirs are shown. Tides are indicated with the corrected establishment of Rincon Point.

There are explanatory notes that explain the water markings and the function of this map. We go from feet to fathoms at 18 feet, and there are a series of dot icons that explain features as we see them.

Continuing to scour around the perimeter of the map, we find more legend information. We're filled with names and information of who made it, when, and why, and what kind of accountability we have here. We also have explanations of topography, shore line, water depths, and hazards within an area that is defined within a longitude and latitude.

The area surrounding this DOT shows us that all of Mission Bay is (today) landfill. This area was filled with rubble from the 1906 earthquake and all kinds of industrial uses for about a hundred years, but it today is acres and acres of the city of San Francisco.

This is the south end of Yerba Buena Cove. This is the cove that would have been filled with ships at the time of the Gold Rush, and it ultimately created San Francisco's first landfill. We see that north of Market St, the landfill already exists. If we look at the darkest area, the most densely populated regions, we see that this is almost entirely all landfill. 

To the southeast of the DOT, we see the tide gauge at Rincon Point. This is the federally controlled tide gauge which tells us all of the elevation information in relation to mean, high, and low water. 

Here, we stand at the intersection of 3rd and Mission Streets. Standing in the middle of the intersection and looking up in any direction, we find that we will be surrounded by sand dunes 60-80 ft high. 

The commerce from this point would be arduous and, in many cases, impossible. Walking on sand dunes is not very fun. We see that there is development up to this point, but it really ends at 4th St. 

We find, at 4th and Mission St, the Mission Plank Road, the first toll road in the city of San Francisco. It's the way to get down to the southern neighborhoods of the Mission District. 

One of the reasons for the Plank Road was that these dune fields continued all the way across the town from this point. 

San Francisco is an undulating dune field, and high points of 40-60 ft are seen on our road going south. 

We find this icon in a peat bog. Peat is an anaerobic substance--essentially organic matter that has collected without the benefit of oxygen and, as such, has not decomposed. 

It is a floating mat, about 8 ft thick, on top of anywhere from 10-40 ft of water. We see some trails going across, but we find that there is no construction upon the peat bog at this time, no is there the capacity to do so. 

Due west of this icon, we find the first bridge built in San Francisco. It was a folly--it took a year and a half to build--but the Mission Plank Road (which crossed the bridge) was successful in getting people down to an important and bucolic agricultural neighborhood we call the Mission.

At the top of this view, we see the Mission Plank Road coming in and Mission St crossing with what we call 16th St today. 16th goes through the middle of the Mission, the large structure on the left-hand side, here. It's a quad with a center courtyard.

Across the street is a circle. That circle is a bull ring because the lands surrounding this area are still agricultural lands and will be, in many cases, for at least 50 more years. The map is "San Francisco and Its Vicinity." This is the "and Its Vicinity" part--we are in fact outside of the original purview of the original town. We now find that this is in the middle of town.

This is a changed landscape that offers a very different perspective from the one today. 

We've seen a lot of changes over 175 years, but it's a city that's still recognizable, with names and landmarks and identities that still reflect where we live today. The map has great iconography, and this is just a superficial touch upon the amount of detail in this incredible federal document.

You can find Jim's book, Gold Mountain, Big City, at https://www.scheinandschein.com/. 

Created and narrated by Jim Schein.

Edited and transcribed by Andrew Gu, 2024 Pixeum Summer Intern.