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"slug": "in-a-tech-hub-like-the-bay-area-why-do-bart-announcements-sound-so-ancient",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bart\">Bay Area Rapid Transit\u003c/a> — or BART — was a brand new, cutting-edge transportation system when it opened in 1972. Since then, its reputation has become a bit less high-tech. And while riders hear a variety of voices making announcements throughout the BART system, there are two that sound different — robotic, synthesized voices, one male and one female, that sound like they are from yesteryear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And at least one rider has taken particular note.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never understood what it was saying,” Bay Curious listener Jimmy Tobin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Jimmy, the voices sound rudimentary, like the voice of 1990s Microsoft Sam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m baffled by this thing,” he said. “I just can’t justify why this is so hard to understand and so easy to update.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078618\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078618\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1522\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED-1536x1169.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sept. 11, 1972, BART opens to the public. On the first day alone, 15,000 people rode the new trains, despite the fact that they only ran between Fremont and MacArthur Stations in the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Bay Area Rapid Transit))\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It seems like a blatant contradiction to him that trains running through communities at the heart of the AI boom sound like they’re from the first computers ever made. He wants to know why these robotic announcements have never been updated.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Passengers used to just wait\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before the late 1990s, BART had no live train information or announcements for passengers. There would occasionally be voiced announcements in the case of major disruptions, but on a regular day, riders would consult a paper schedule to see when a train was supposed to arrive. In the case of delays, riders would wait on the platform, without any information on when the train might actually come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in 2000, BART began using a new piece of technology.[aside postID=news_12077572 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00034_TV-KQED.jpg'] The Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) is a data hub that allows BART to calculate and communicate live train locations. For the first time, BART had the ability to share real-time information with riders, like the estimated time of arrival of a train. They initially did this with digital signage on the train platforms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data would later be made publicly available, allowing for other platforms like navigation apps to utilize the live train information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When this technology was rolling out in 2000, BART was also assessing the accessibility of its system for blind and visually impaired riders. BART’s policy became, “Anything that’s been written down, we need to also verbally say,” said Alicia Trost, chief communications officer at BART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to translate the digital signs with real-time updates into verbal announcements, BART acquired a text-to-speech system from Lucent Technologies, a telecommunications company. And those synthesized voices that bug Tobin so much, they have names — George and Gracie. Listen closely, and you’ll hear that George announces trains in one direction and the Gracie announces trains in the opposite direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, this was cutting-edge technology — the system could vocalize thousands of announcements per day with real-time information, all without any human involvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in the past 26 years, George and Gracie have stayed mostly the same, and their limitations have become apparent. For an accessibility tool, they can be hard to understand, and compared to today’s voice synthesizing technology, they don’t sound very human.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Why hasn’t BART updated George and Gracie?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>George and Gracie are proprietary to Lucent Technologies, which went out of business in the mid-2000s. The company is no longer around to provide updates, and BART doesn’t have access to the source code to make its own changes. The only thing that can be updated is the text that George and Gracie read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“BART has really limited funding, and we have to think about the priority,” Trost said. “Things like replacing our trains are more important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12044953\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12044953\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Passengers wait to board BART at Daly City Station in Daly City, on Dec. 4, 2024. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>George and Gracie may be a bit outdated, but the system works, so updating it isn’t a top priority, Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also clear that some Bay Area residents love George and Gracie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the computer game Roblox, users have \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24yglNNGJZ4\">featured their voices\u003c/a> in recreations of the BART system. As players drive or board a virtual BART train, George and Gracie are there announcing: “Now boarding at Embarcadero.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have also been a topic of discussion on Reddit and YouTube. \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Bart/comments/1g130wj/the_voices_of_bart/?solution=4a4ea784b52b90a34a4ea784b52b90a3&js_challenge=1&token=bbbe4bf1c9a2b5160829c4be34da586108bdd3256eb2920042534355492efd5e\">One Reddit user, ‘get-a-mac,’\u003c/a> wrote, “I never want those voices gone. They are the voice of BART!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another with the handle StreetyMcCarface wrote, “Keep George and Gracie, they are iconic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Trost said BART \u003cem>is \u003c/em>looking to replace the announcement system at some point, which will force some tough decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do we introduce new voices or do we actually replicate the old George and Gracie that sound so dated, because people love them?” Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BART is currently facing a $376 million deficit, raising big questions about its future. It’s forcing Bay Area residents to consider a world without BART and its role in the culture of the bay, big and small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Bay Area Rapid Transit. Our dear friend, BART. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For regular riders, your whirs, squeaks and horns are part of the everyday soundtrack of life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">always\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> hear you coming. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whir of a train pulling into the station\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We appreciate those timely warnings… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The doors are closing please stand clear of the doors\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And how you help us not miss our stop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Arriving at 16th street Mission\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every now and then, someone \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">real\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> pops in\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is BART operation control…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jimmy Tobin, our question asker, has been fixated on one particular sound in the BART ecosystem. A set of announcements …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So sometimes it feels like there’s like a lower kind of male voice that’s like, feels like it’s from like war games, like WOPR kind of style. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Wargames Clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This box interprets signals from the computer and turns it into sounds. “Shall we play a game?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And there’s a higher female voice is kind of like 90s Microsoft Sam style.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Microsoft Sam: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello, I am Microsoft Sam. I am the most popular voice of Microsoft.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are a variety of voices riders hear throughout BART, some of which are voiced by actual people. But it’s \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">these\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> robotic and synthesized voices that Jimmy can’t stop hearing … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three car Fremont Train now boarding, platform 2.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jimmy is an audio engineer at Google who actually works on synthesized speech models, and these voices really \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bothered\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> him. One day when he was waiting for a BART train and heard an announcement for a train heading toward the Oakland Airport.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">6-car Blue line train for OAK Airport Dublin in 15 minutes. 6-car Green line train for OAK Airport Barryessa in 19 minutes\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I never understood what it was saying. I always thought it was, like, Oasis? And so I was just like, what is this word? And then I look at the board and it’s like, OAK, and I’m like, why didn’t it say Oakland? Like, and so I’m baffled by this thing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It felt like such a contradiction to him that \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">this \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">was a voice of the transit system going through the home to the AI Boom… where all the newest tech is being developed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And I kept being like, it must be for, like, accessibility or maybe it’s like, it doesn’t have accents or something. And I was just like, I just can’t justify why this is so hard to understand and so easy to update. That’s why I came to you guys.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He wants to know the backstory behind these voices – and where they came from.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has been the decision-making to keep it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price and you’re listening to Bay Curious. Today on the show we answer Jimmy’s questions. Stay with us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sponsor Break\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To tell us more about the voices behind BART, we pass it to KQED’s Ana De Almeida Amaral…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When BART first opened to the public on Sept. 11, 1972, the world looked different.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">1970s music plays\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Richard Nixon was president of the United States. Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” was charting. And Bay Area residents flocked to try out the new Bay Area Rapid Transit system.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time it only ran for 11 stops — from the McArthur Station in Oakland down to Fremont.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>BART Commercial:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The decade of the 1970s, is the decade of the decade of transportation alternatives…but the first large-scale breakthrough in moving great numbers of people rapidly and economically is the SF Bay Area Rapid Transit system, commonly called BART.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When BART first opened, there was no live train information for riders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The only way riders knew when a train was coming was by reading a paper schedule. You might hear an announcement for major occurrences like if a train was completely out of service. But if your train was a little delayed, you’d sit and wait– without any information on when it would actually arrive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then in 2000, everything changed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BART developed a piece of technology called the Advanced Passenger Information System. For the first time, BART knew the live locations of trains throughout the system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riders now got real time information about when their train would arrive..\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alicia Trost is the Chief Communications Officer at BART. She told me more about this era.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We had digital screens on the platform that gave you the, what we call ETAs, estimated time arrivals of the train. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this was a pretty big deal… but at a time where new legislation mandated accessibility for disabled people— BART had to ask some important questions…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But what if you’re low vision and you can’t see or you’re blind? And so there was this big policy decision to say anything that’s been written down, we need to also verbally say.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BART chose a text-to-speech system to voice these announcements. It came from Lucent Technologies– a telecommunications company. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so in 2000, this synthesized voice speaking for BART was born. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s a computer with zero emotion, and it’s… every… word… is… spaced… apart.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voices were tested at different speeds and levels of breathiness. Riders gave input on the versions that were easiest to understand that led to the final version.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The feminine voice of this system was named Gracie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Gracie:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> 6 car richmond train now approaching platform 1 \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the masculine voice was named George.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> 10 car San Francisco-Milbrae train in 8 minutes\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">George and Gracie announce a train’s estimated time of arrival, when a train is actively arriving, and when it is boarding. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2000, this was cutting edge technology– announcements made automatically, without any human involvement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, there were and still also are \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">human voiced\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> announcements when there are big disruptions or delays… but even today, you’ll hear George and Gracie while waiting for a train. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So next time you’re in a bart station, really pay attention. You’ll hear George’s voice for one direction only and Gracie’s voice for the opposite direction.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Beat]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since 2000, George and Gracie have been the voices we hear on BART platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in the past 26 years, there has been very little change. That’s because the actual text-to-speech system is \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">proprietary\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">to Lucent Technologies\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And after the demise of the company in the mid 2000s, they haven’t been around to provide any updates. And the kicker is BART doesn’t have access to the source code so they can’t change it. The only thing they can do is change the text that George and Gracie speak. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I asked Alicia Jimmy’s question: Why hasn’t this been replaced ?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because it works and BART has really limited funding and when we go for capital funds, that’s the type of money we use to replace this system we have to think about the priority and things like replacing our trains is more important.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But she says that BART \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>is\u003c/i>\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">aware of the limitations of this technology– they’ve gotten that feedback and they want to replace it in the future. So, they are looking at piloting a new PA system.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And part of that is introducing what will be new voices. And it makes me nervous to even say that because this is going to cause great fear and debate among riders and the public… Do we introduce new voices or do we actually replicate the old George and Gracie that sounds so dated, but because people love them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And, despite their flaws, it seems like lots of people love these voices.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We frequently get asked about George and Gracie, and people tell us they love it. And we also know that there’s a lot of young people who adore the sound and have actually built in Roblox full-on BART systems.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they include recordings George and Gracie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So as you’re driving or boarding a virtual BART train in the 3D world of roblox, you’ll hear their voices!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sounds of Roblox game\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aside from Roblox, George and Gracie have been a topic of discussion on Reddit and Youtube. And while there are the usual criticisms and suggestions to change it, it’s interesting to see what these voices represent for some people who love them: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One person on reddit with the username ‘Get-a-Mac’ says:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice Over:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “I never want those voices gone. They are the voice of BART!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another user, COD Gamer 19, says:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice Over: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gracie and George are a part of BART’s history, it wouldn’t feel the same without them, they’re a part of the bay as a whole.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I just know that it’s a popular topic because of how much I see it like in the culture of the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, there are questions about the future of BART, especially as \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They face a 376 million dollar budget deficit.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s forcing us to consider the ways BART impacts our lives and culture. And frankly, what it might be like to live without it.These questions go far beyond George and Gracie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But still, this little piece of technology, stuck in time, reminds us of how quickly things have changed. And maybe, it brings you a little joy –or frustration –iin the monotony of your commute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Gracie:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> George, it’s time to get back to work.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You are right as usual, Gracie. Goodbye and thanks for visiting.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was KQED’s Ana De Almeida Amaral. Jimmy Tobin thank you for asking the question. There is no question too big or small for Bay Curious – if you’ve got one that’s been itching in your mind, send it our way over at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> or shoot us an email. We’re at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bart\">Bay Area Rapid Transit\u003c/a> — or BART — was a brand new, cutting-edge transportation system when it opened in 1972. Since then, its reputation has become a bit less high-tech. And while riders hear a variety of voices making announcements throughout the BART system, there are two that sound different — robotic, synthesized voices, one male and one female, that sound like they are from yesteryear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And at least one rider has taken particular note.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never understood what it was saying,” Bay Curious listener Jimmy Tobin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Jimmy, the voices sound rudimentary, like the voice of 1990s Microsoft Sam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m baffled by this thing,” he said. “I just can’t justify why this is so hard to understand and so easy to update.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078618\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078618\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1522\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/250403-BART-VOICES-01-KQED-1536x1169.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sept. 11, 1972, BART opens to the public. On the first day alone, 15,000 people rode the new trains, despite the fact that they only ran between Fremont and MacArthur Stations in the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Bay Area Rapid Transit))\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It seems like a blatant contradiction to him that trains running through communities at the heart of the AI boom sound like they’re from the first computers ever made. He wants to know why these robotic announcements have never been updated.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Passengers used to just wait\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before the late 1990s, BART had no live train information or announcements for passengers. There would occasionally be voiced announcements in the case of major disruptions, but on a regular day, riders would consult a paper schedule to see when a train was supposed to arrive. In the case of delays, riders would wait on the platform, without any information on when the train might actually come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in 2000, BART began using a new piece of technology.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> The Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) is a data hub that allows BART to calculate and communicate live train locations. For the first time, BART had the ability to share real-time information with riders, like the estimated time of arrival of a train. They initially did this with digital signage on the train platforms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data would later be made publicly available, allowing for other platforms like navigation apps to utilize the live train information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When this technology was rolling out in 2000, BART was also assessing the accessibility of its system for blind and visually impaired riders. BART’s policy became, “Anything that’s been written down, we need to also verbally say,” said Alicia Trost, chief communications officer at BART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to translate the digital signs with real-time updates into verbal announcements, BART acquired a text-to-speech system from Lucent Technologies, a telecommunications company. And those synthesized voices that bug Tobin so much, they have names — George and Gracie. Listen closely, and you’ll hear that George announces trains in one direction and the Gracie announces trains in the opposite direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, this was cutting-edge technology — the system could vocalize thousands of announcements per day with real-time information, all without any human involvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in the past 26 years, George and Gracie have stayed mostly the same, and their limitations have become apparent. For an accessibility tool, they can be hard to understand, and compared to today’s voice synthesizing technology, they don’t sound very human.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Why hasn’t BART updated George and Gracie?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>George and Gracie are proprietary to Lucent Technologies, which went out of business in the mid-2000s. The company is no longer around to provide updates, and BART doesn’t have access to the source code to make its own changes. The only thing that can be updated is the text that George and Gracie read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“BART has really limited funding, and we have to think about the priority,” Trost said. “Things like replacing our trains are more important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12044953\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12044953\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/20241204-BART-JY-009_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Passengers wait to board BART at Daly City Station in Daly City, on Dec. 4, 2024. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>George and Gracie may be a bit outdated, but the system works, so updating it isn’t a top priority, Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also clear that some Bay Area residents love George and Gracie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the computer game Roblox, users have \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24yglNNGJZ4\">featured their voices\u003c/a> in recreations of the BART system. As players drive or board a virtual BART train, George and Gracie are there announcing: “Now boarding at Embarcadero.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have also been a topic of discussion on Reddit and YouTube. \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Bart/comments/1g130wj/the_voices_of_bart/?solution=4a4ea784b52b90a34a4ea784b52b90a3&js_challenge=1&token=bbbe4bf1c9a2b5160829c4be34da586108bdd3256eb2920042534355492efd5e\">One Reddit user, ‘get-a-mac,’\u003c/a> wrote, “I never want those voices gone. They are the voice of BART!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another with the handle StreetyMcCarface wrote, “Keep George and Gracie, they are iconic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Trost said BART \u003cem>is \u003c/em>looking to replace the announcement system at some point, which will force some tough decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do we introduce new voices or do we actually replicate the old George and Gracie that sound so dated, because people love them?” Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BART is currently facing a $376 million deficit, raising big questions about its future. It’s forcing Bay Area residents to consider a world without BART and its role in the culture of the bay, big and small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Bay Area Rapid Transit. Our dear friend, BART. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For regular riders, your whirs, squeaks and horns are part of the everyday soundtrack of life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">always\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> hear you coming. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whir of a train pulling into the station\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We appreciate those timely warnings… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The doors are closing please stand clear of the doors\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And how you help us not miss our stop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Arriving at 16th street Mission\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every now and then, someone \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">real\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> pops in\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is BART operation control…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jimmy Tobin, our question asker, has been fixated on one particular sound in the BART ecosystem. A set of announcements …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So sometimes it feels like there’s like a lower kind of male voice that’s like, feels like it’s from like war games, like WOPR kind of style. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Wargames Clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This box interprets signals from the computer and turns it into sounds. “Shall we play a game?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And there’s a higher female voice is kind of like 90s Microsoft Sam style.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Microsoft Sam: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello, I am Microsoft Sam. I am the most popular voice of Microsoft.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are a variety of voices riders hear throughout BART, some of which are voiced by actual people. But it’s \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">these\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> robotic and synthesized voices that Jimmy can’t stop hearing … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three car Fremont Train now boarding, platform 2.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jimmy is an audio engineer at Google who actually works on synthesized speech models, and these voices really \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bothered\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> him. One day when he was waiting for a BART train and heard an announcement for a train heading toward the Oakland Airport.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">6-car Blue line train for OAK Airport Dublin in 15 minutes. 6-car Green line train for OAK Airport Barryessa in 19 minutes\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I never understood what it was saying. I always thought it was, like, Oasis? And so I was just like, what is this word? And then I look at the board and it’s like, OAK, and I’m like, why didn’t it say Oakland? Like, and so I’m baffled by this thing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It felt like such a contradiction to him that \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">this \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">was a voice of the transit system going through the home to the AI Boom… where all the newest tech is being developed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And I kept being like, it must be for, like, accessibility or maybe it’s like, it doesn’t have accents or something. And I was just like, I just can’t justify why this is so hard to understand and so easy to update. That’s why I came to you guys.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He wants to know the backstory behind these voices – and where they came from.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jimmy Tobin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has been the decision-making to keep it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price and you’re listening to Bay Curious. Today on the show we answer Jimmy’s questions. Stay with us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sponsor Break\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To tell us more about the voices behind BART, we pass it to KQED’s Ana De Almeida Amaral…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When BART first opened to the public on Sept. 11, 1972, the world looked different.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">1970s music plays\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Richard Nixon was president of the United States. Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” was charting. And Bay Area residents flocked to try out the new Bay Area Rapid Transit system.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time it only ran for 11 stops — from the McArthur Station in Oakland down to Fremont.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>BART Commercial:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The decade of the 1970s, is the decade of the decade of transportation alternatives…but the first large-scale breakthrough in moving great numbers of people rapidly and economically is the SF Bay Area Rapid Transit system, commonly called BART.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When BART first opened, there was no live train information for riders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The only way riders knew when a train was coming was by reading a paper schedule. You might hear an announcement for major occurrences like if a train was completely out of service. But if your train was a little delayed, you’d sit and wait– without any information on when it would actually arrive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then in 2000, everything changed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BART developed a piece of technology called the Advanced Passenger Information System. For the first time, BART knew the live locations of trains throughout the system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riders now got real time information about when their train would arrive..\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alicia Trost is the Chief Communications Officer at BART. She told me more about this era.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We had digital screens on the platform that gave you the, what we call ETAs, estimated time arrivals of the train. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this was a pretty big deal… but at a time where new legislation mandated accessibility for disabled people— BART had to ask some important questions…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But what if you’re low vision and you can’t see or you’re blind? And so there was this big policy decision to say anything that’s been written down, we need to also verbally say.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BART chose a text-to-speech system to voice these announcements. It came from Lucent Technologies– a telecommunications company. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so in 2000, this synthesized voice speaking for BART was born. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s a computer with zero emotion, and it’s… every… word… is… spaced… apart.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voices were tested at different speeds and levels of breathiness. Riders gave input on the versions that were easiest to understand that led to the final version.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The feminine voice of this system was named Gracie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Gracie:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> 6 car richmond train now approaching platform 1 \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the masculine voice was named George.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> 10 car San Francisco-Milbrae train in 8 minutes\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">George and Gracie announce a train’s estimated time of arrival, when a train is actively arriving, and when it is boarding. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2000, this was cutting edge technology– announcements made automatically, without any human involvement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, there were and still also are \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">human voiced\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> announcements when there are big disruptions or delays… but even today, you’ll hear George and Gracie while waiting for a train. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So next time you’re in a bart station, really pay attention. You’ll hear George’s voice for one direction only and Gracie’s voice for the opposite direction.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Beat]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since 2000, George and Gracie have been the voices we hear on BART platforms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in the past 26 years, there has been very little change. That’s because the actual text-to-speech system is \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">proprietary\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">to Lucent Technologies\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And after the demise of the company in the mid 2000s, they haven’t been around to provide any updates. And the kicker is BART doesn’t have access to the source code so they can’t change it. The only thing they can do is change the text that George and Gracie speak. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I asked Alicia Jimmy’s question: Why hasn’t this been replaced ?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because it works and BART has really limited funding and when we go for capital funds, that’s the type of money we use to replace this system we have to think about the priority and things like replacing our trains is more important.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But she says that BART \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>is\u003c/i>\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">aware of the limitations of this technology– they’ve gotten that feedback and they want to replace it in the future. So, they are looking at piloting a new PA system.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And part of that is introducing what will be new voices. And it makes me nervous to even say that because this is going to cause great fear and debate among riders and the public… Do we introduce new voices or do we actually replicate the old George and Gracie that sounds so dated, but because people love them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And, despite their flaws, it seems like lots of people love these voices.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We frequently get asked about George and Gracie, and people tell us they love it. And we also know that there’s a lot of young people who adore the sound and have actually built in Roblox full-on BART systems.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they include recordings George and Gracie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So as you’re driving or boarding a virtual BART train in the 3D world of roblox, you’ll hear their voices!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sounds of Roblox game\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aside from Roblox, George and Gracie have been a topic of discussion on Reddit and Youtube. And while there are the usual criticisms and suggestions to change it, it’s interesting to see what these voices represent for some people who love them: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One person on reddit with the username ‘Get-a-Mac’ says:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice Over:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “I never want those voices gone. They are the voice of BART!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another user, COD Gamer 19, says:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice Over: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gracie and George are a part of BART’s history, it wouldn’t feel the same without them, they’re a part of the bay as a whole.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia Trost:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I just know that it’s a popular topic because of how much I see it like in the culture of the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, there are questions about the future of BART, especially as \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“They face a 376 million dollar budget deficit.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s forcing us to consider the ways BART impacts our lives and culture. And frankly, what it might be like to live without it.These questions go far beyond George and Gracie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But still, this little piece of technology, stuck in time, reminds us of how quickly things have changed. And maybe, it brings you a little joy –or frustration –iin the monotony of your commute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Gracie:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> George, it’s time to get back to work.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>George:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You are right as usual, Gracie. Goodbye and thanks for visiting.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was KQED’s Ana De Almeida Amaral. Jimmy Tobin thank you for asking the question. There is no question too big or small for Bay Curious – if you’ve got one that’s been itching in your mind, send it our way over at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> or shoot us an email. We’re at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Bay Area's Famous Redwood Trees Are Struggling",
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"headTitle": "The Bay Area’s Famous Redwood Trees Are Struggling | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article originally published in June of 2023. It has been lightly updated for republication.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were many things Bay Curious listener Julie Menter loved about her Oakland home when she first moved there in 2017. Chief among them were the three towering redwood trees in her backyard, which Menter estimated had been there longer than the house itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, one of the trees started to look sick. It had lost almost all of its leaves and, despite Menter watering it, it wasn’t bouncing back. So Menter and her husband decided it had to come down. [baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was so sad,” she said. “And I think it’s sad both for the tree because they’re such beautiful trees, they’re so old and majestic. But also scary to be like, ‘Whoa, this tree is not doing well, the one next to it isn’t, the ones in my neighborhood don’t seem to be doing well.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s noticed, not just in her backyard but all around Oakland, redwood trees are looking dry and scraggly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So I’m wondering, is something happening to the redwood trees in the Bay Area? And if so, what is it and is there anything we can do about it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Magical trees\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To answer Menter’s question, we first have to understand why redwood trees are unique to the Bay Area. Coast redwoods — which we’re focusing on for this story — stretch up and down the Northern California coast and grow no more than 50 miles from the coastline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think I fully appreciated the redwoods until I went away to school and then came back as an adult,” said Deborah Zierten, an educator with \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/\">Save the Redwoods League\u003c/a>. “This was the place that I would hike to clear my head. So it is a very special place for me here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quiet, cool, almost prehistoric feel of these redwood forests have provided solace to humans for millennia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The earliest redwood trees existed more than 200 million years ago alongside dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. Their natural range has shrunk a lot in that time, however. Now they live primarily along the coast between Big Sur and the California-Oregon border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11953536\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11953536\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-800x610.jpg\" alt=\"Black and white archival photo shows loggers standing around and laying in a notch cut into a massive redwood tree as the prepare to fell it. The tree may be around 20 feet in diameter and of unknown height, though it could be as tall as 300 feet.\" width=\"800\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-800x610.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-1020x778.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging.jpg 1160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the early 20th century, redwoods endured a period of intense logging activity. Most of the redwoods you see today have grown since that period, and pale in comparison to the massive size of the trees that once stood along the California coast. \u003ccite>(Ericson Collection/Humboldt State University Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Their range used to extend more broadly, until they endured a period of \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/about-us/mission-history/redwoods-timeline/\">severe logging in the late 19th century\u003c/a>. After the Gold Rush, San Francisco was booming and timber was in high demand. Millions of trees were logged and used to build homes and other structures around the Bay Area. Most of the trees here now have grown since then. Even by conservative estimates we’ve lost about 90 percent of what once was. Now, California is down to about 100,000 acres of old growth redwood forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps their most identifiable feature — besides their reddish-brown bark — is their height. They can grow up to 300 feet tall, a feat that requires some teamwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things that makes redwoods so unique is that they actually hold hands with their roots underneath the ground, and that’s how they’re able to grow to be so tall and not fall down, is that they help each other,” said Zierten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their shallow but wide root systems allow them to grow to be the tallest trees on the planet. And the intertwining of their roots helps them exchange nutrients with one another. Their trunks can grow to be immense, up to nearly 30 feet in diameter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redwoods can live a very long time, too. In fact, some of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/shirley/sec11.htm\">oldest coastal redwoods\u003c/a> today were alive during the Roman Empire. Those stands of \u003ca href=\"https://sempervirens.org/news/old-growth-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters/#:~:text=What%20Is%20The,redwood%E2%80%99s%20highest%20reaches.\">old-growth redwoods\u003c/a>, which now account for only 5% of all redwood trees, can \u003ca href=\"https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=26107#\">store more carbon\u003c/a> than any other forest on the planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have unique ways of reproducing. They produce seeds, like any other tree, but they can also sprout new trees from their roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So, often you will find them in circles that we call fairy rings. Because if a parent tree gets hurt or injured, it will send out these baby sprouts into these circles. And it’s kind of like a little family growing,” said Zierten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11953639\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11953639\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-800x845.jpg\" alt=\"A child dressing in a redwood tree costumes stands next to a woman in a bright blue sweater. In the background, a redwood forest is visible.\" width=\"800\" height=\"845\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-800x845.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1020x1077.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-160x169.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1455x1536.jpg 1455w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1940x2048.jpg 1940w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1920x2027.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deborah Zierten teaches a group of fifth graders about redwood trees in Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Dana Cronin/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Redwoods prefer cool, moist climates, which is why they’re now primarily found in Northern California. In the summer months, when there’s a lack of rainfall, redwood trees rely on another iconic California phenomenon: coastal fog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s almost like a sponge sucking in that water,” Zierten said. “Then when their needles get full, also like a sponge, any of that excess water will drip to the ground. And it’s almost as if they’re creating their own rain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’ve adapted to other characteristics of this region, including wildfires. Take the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fires, for example, which burned through most of Big Basin Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz. Three years later, that forest is green again and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11835124/some-good-news-many-of-big-basins-ancient-redwoods-appear-to-have-survived\">the old-growth redwood trees there are still standing strong\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now many redwood forests — including 80% of the surviving old-growth trees — are protected either by state and local governments or nonprofits, like Zierten’s Save the Redwoods League.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>New challenges\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s not just Menter’s imagination: Redwood trees are indeed struggling across the Bay Area.[emailsignup newslettername=\"baycurious\" align=\"right\"]“If you look up now, in most urban areas, I think everybody can pretty much see that there’s some tops that are dying back. There’s a lot of brown foliage in the crowns of these trees,” said \u003ca href=\"https://ib.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/dawsont\">Todd Dawson\u003c/a>, an environmental scientist at UC Berkeley who has been studying redwoods for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason for that suffering is urbanization and the subsequent proliferation of concrete and pollution. Roadways and sidewalks, in particular, are impinging on redwoods’ root systems, essentially suffocating them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Concrete has] a very, very negative impact on the ability of that tree to get the water it needs, get the nutrients it needs,” said Dawson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to urbanization, climate change is wreaking havoc on redwood trees’ ideal growing conditions. Coastal fog, for example, upon which redwood trees rely for water, is on the decline. In fact, since the 1950s, Dawson said, fog has declined about 30% during the summertime, when redwoods really need it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11953610\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11953610\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"Tall, bright green redwood trees and ferns surround a hiking path. The air is misty and grey.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A foggy day in Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland hills. In the summertime, redwoods ‘drink’ the coastal fog. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That decline, coupled with periods of severe drought in California, is putting a lot of stress on the trees — especially giant sequoias, another type of redwood that lives mostly in the Sierra Nevada. Thousands of trees there have died due to a lack of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The water deficit itself didn’t really kill all those trees,” Dawson said. “It weakened them in a way where other pests and pathogens got in there and basically wiped them out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to a lack of water, more intense fires are also affecting redwoods. Though they have adapted to fire over the centuries, they can’t handle the extreme fires we’re seeing now caused by climate change and inadequate forest management.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, Dawson said redwood forests are struggling along their perimeters. As the wildland-urban interface stretches farther and farther into the wild, redwood trees are increasingly exposed to human impacts. They’re losing their buffer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re going to see a patchier world,” Dawson said. “And that’s really disappointing and concerning for me because we sit at the heart of that. Humans are really the ones that are in control and are having the negative impacts that we now see.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What can we do?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As Menter asked, is there anything we can do to save the redwoods?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for backyard redwood trees, Dawson said irrigation might work, but it’s more of a Band-Aid solution because “the trees require so much water. They also require pretty special microclimates, meaning that they like it cooler, they like these moist, foggy summers,” he said, “and I think you can’t really recreate those conditions as a person.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problems redwood trees are facing now are much more systemic, said Dawson, and that’s how we should approach solutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to help protect redwood forests is by getting them in the hands of governments and nonprofits, which Dawson said is critical to ensuring the trees’ survival here in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The forests are just so special, these big cathedrals with these amazing, gigantic trees. There’s just nothing like that. And I think anybody who’s ever walked through a forest for the first time just is in awe of what a special place and what a special feel it has. So I’m really concerned about them and I’d love to see those forests protected in perpetuity,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This is Bay Curious. I’m Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Have you ever paused a moment, to fully take in a redwood tree? Stared up at its towering trunk. Cupping around a single ridge of its massive bark. Inhaling that warm, woody, slightly sweet scent…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious listener Christy Dundon has.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christy Dundon:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Back when I was in high school, just a long time ago, I worked for the Alameda Recreation and Park Department and we had a day camp and we would take kids up to the Redwood Regional Park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The redwoods in the park now are mostly younger, second-growth redwoods – but there are signs left of the old growth redwoods that once stood.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christy Dundon:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I remember showing them the stumps that were there, which were pretty big with usually trees in a circle around them … sometimes I’d have them lie down and it was, you know, its diameter was wider than they are tall. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seeing these stumps got Christy wondering about when these trees were cut down and why. And also how many redwood forests once stood in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christy Dundon:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I would love to know how extensive it was, what, I mean, did they just somebody got the idea this is where we’re going to get our lumber, and then how much was actually cut down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> For this story on old growth redwoods, we called up an old friend, Daniel Potter. Hi, Daniel!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Olivia, hi!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Daniel has done a few stories for us on natural history and trees… And he even wrote a bit on redwoods for the Bay Curious book. (which, ahem, is still available wherever books are sold.) So Daniel, redwoods. They come in a few varieties.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Right. They’re a phenomenon almost exclusive to California. By that I mean there are three species—a somewhat shorter one from central China—and then the two familiar to Californians. Inland, we have the massive Sierra redwoods, also known as giant sequoias, and the kind we’ll be focusing on today, which is actually even taller.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s the coast redwood, or the one a lot of folks just call… redwoods.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The scientific name is Sequoia sempervirens. These trees can grow taller than the Statue of Liberty, including the pedestal and torch. Taller than a football field is long. And they can live around 2,000 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And true to their name, you tend to find them along the coast, in the fog belt, from Monterey County up to around the Oregon border.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One of my favorite Bay Area spots for wow’ing out-of-towners with them has always been Muir Woods, in Marin County. That’s one of the few places in the region where people left old redwoods standing in the last few centuries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So there were once more? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So many more! Logging of the redwoods started long before the Gold Rush, in the time of Spanish settlers and Russian traders… but the Gold Rush really kicked it into high gear. For 19th-century people building a city like San Francisco in a hurry, old redwood was ideal. In his book Trees in Paradise, historian Jared Farmer writes “it was easy to work with, hard to wreck. No other lumber matched its combination of lightness, evenness, and durability.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In addition to the stumps Christy saw, you also see little hints of this logging history around. ..Like down on the Peninsula, where you’ll find ‘Redwood City.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes! Sawyers would cut down redwoods on the east side of the Santa Cruz mountains, and use the port there to float that wood up toward a growing San Francisco. In his book, Farmer writes “by the mid 1850s, San Francisco had exhausted the easy-to-reach redwood, including pocket stands in the Berkeley Hills.” Loggers then worked their way north up the coast. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay, let’s fast forward to after the 1906 earthquake and fire. The city is devastated, people need to rebuild, concrete and steel aren’t yet ubiquitous for construction. What happens? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> People cut down even more trees. They constructed tens of thousands of buildings in the decade after the quake, almost all of them with wood frames. Redwood was the rule—literally. Officials believed using redwood had kept the fire from being even worse, so afterward, builders had to get a permit to use anything else. The demand was epic, on the order of hundreds of millions of square feet, an inch thick.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So our question-asker wanted some sense of what was lost here. And it sounds like… a lot.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, exactly how much depends a little on whether you’re just counting the heavy stands of redwoods, like the awesome cathedral stands up toward the North Coast, or also the spots where they’re more mixed in with other trees. But ballpark, before the Gold Rush, there were 1 or 2 million acres of old growth redwood forests, whereas now we’re down to less than 100 thousand acres. So even by a conservative estimate, we’ve lost about 90% of what once was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 90%! And most of it now makes up the skeleton of San Francisco?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it’s a weird way to think about it, isn’t it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Well… on the bright side, at least there’s still some standing for us to visit.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah! My wife and I did the iconic California road trip for our honeymoon a few years ago, and visiting the redwoods up along the Avenue of the Giants was sublime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm! Daniel Potter… Longtime friend of the show, now making a podcast called Bug Note about the wiggly, wild, weird world of bugs. Find it on YouTube. Daniel – thank you as always.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Olivia, a pleasure as always.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When we return a deep dive on what makes Coast Redwoods so special, and how they’re fairing in the age of climate change. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor Message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We have received a bevy of listener questions about redwoods over the years. One came from Julie Menter. She and her husband moved into a house in Oakland in 2017. There were lots of things they loved about their new home, but especially the three big redwood trees in the backyard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julie Menter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It feels like it’s a really big part of the identity to me of the city of Oakland. Like if you look at the hills and the trees…being able to go in nature while being in a city feels really important to me for my mental health and balance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Last year, Julie started to worry about the trees. One of them had lost almost all of its leaves and, despite watering it, it wasn’t bouncing back. It had to come down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julie Menter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s so sad. And I think it’s sad both for the tree because, you know, they’re such beautiful trees, they’re so old and majestic. But also scary to be like, “Whoa, this tree is not doing well, the one next to it isn’t, the ones in my neighborhood don’t seem to be doing well.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Julie’s noticed not just in her backyard, but all around Oakland, redwood trees don’t look so good. Around her neighborhood… off highways… really all over the East Bay, Julie has noticed the trees looking dry and scraggly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julie Menter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So I’m wondering, is something happening to the redwood trees in the Bay Area? And if so, what is it and is there anything we can do about it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For this next story, we’re spending more time with California’s state tree: the coast redwood. We’ll dig into why it’s unique to this area, what makes it so special and also how it’s adapting to challenges like climate change and urbanization. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KQED’s Dana Cronin takes it from here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of walking through a forest \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s a really special feeling I get every time I walk through a redwood forest. My mind goes quiet, the only audible sound coming from the crunch of my footsteps. The temperature is always perfect; even on the hottest day, it’s still cool among the trees. And the smell.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin (in scene)\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: It smells so good. There’s just no, like, even just stepping outside of my car in the parking lot, I was like (breathes in, breathes out) It’s just so good.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m in the middle of the Roberts Redwood Recreational forest in the Oakland hills… hiking with Deborah Ziertan, who works for Save the Redwoods League. She’s gonna help me teach you all about redwood trees and why they’re unique to our region. Then, later on, we’ll get to the heart of Julie’s question … what’s happening to them? And just a note – for this episode we’ll mostly focus on coastal redwoods, which grow no more than 50 miles from the coastline. Now, Deborah grew up here in Oakland and visited these redwoods frequently as a kid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I don’t think I fully appreciated the redwoods until I went away to school and then came back as an adult. And this was the place that I would hike to clear my head. And these were the forests that I came to. And so it is a very special place for me here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah has now dedicated her life to these trees. She’s an educator with Save the Redwoods League. Her job is to teach school-aged kids about them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of children in a forest\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Good morning students!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Students:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Good morning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tagged along recently with Deborah, as she guided about thirty fifth graders from a local elementary school through the Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. The students are spread out across three wooden picnic tables, fidgeting in their seats. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can I have everyone’s eyes up here? Ok. Will everyone look up and take a look? We are in a little redwood grove. So these are all redwood trees. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After setting a few ground rules… no touching plants… be quiet while others are talking… Miss Deborah — as they call her — launches into the lesson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Do you know anything about redwood trees at all? Raise your hand if you know anything about redwoods. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A student’s hand shoots up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes. They are really tall. They are. Redwoods are the tallest tree in the whole entire world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwood trees can grow more than 300 feet tall. That’s taller than a 30-story skyscraper. And not only are they the tallest tree in the world, they’re also among the biggest. Their trucks can grow nearly 30 feet wide. So, how are they able to get so big?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So everyone do this with your arms. It’s okay if you kind of lightly touch your neighbors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah holds her arms out straight to the sides, like a scarecrow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the things that makes redwoods so unique is that they actually hold hands with their roots underneath the ground, and that’s how they’re able to grow to be so tall and not fall down is that they help each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwood roots are shallow and extend outward instead of down. Their roots extend out almost as far as the tree is tall … and they essentially hold each other up. In addition to being really big… redwoods can also live a very long time… like more than 2,000 years. That means some coastal redwoods today were alive during the Roman Empire. Those old-growth redwoods, which now only account for 5 percent of all redwood trees, can store more carbon than any other forest on the planet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So we are pretty lucky to have redwood trees here in Oakland. And people travel from all over the world to come and see redwood trees.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magical sounding music\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwood trees also have unique ways of reproducing. They produce seeds, like any other tree, but they can also sprout new trees from their roots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So often redwood trees, you will find them in circles that we call fairy rings. Because if a parent tree gets hurt or injured, it will send out these baby sprouts into these circles. And it’s kind of like a little family growing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’re basically clones of their parents. That’s why you rarely see redwood trees standing alone, and more often see them together in a circle formation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah tells the students we can learn a lot from redwood trees. They exist in communities and rely on each other for support. They have hard exteriors that protect them from things like wildfires, but they’re soft on the inside. Deborah says… they’re not so different from us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music ends\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The earliest redwood trees existed more than 200 million years ago… alongside dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. Their natural range has shrunk a lot in that time… now they mostly stretch up and down the northern California coast… as far north as the Oregon border and down to about Big Sur. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their distribution tracks with another iconic California phenomenon… coastal fog. So, in the summer months, when there’s a lack of rainfall, redwood trees essentially drink the fog.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s almost like a sponge sucking in that water. And then when their needles get full, also like a sponge, any of that excess water will drip to the ground. And it’s almost as if they’re creating their own rain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And they’ve adapted to this region in other ways, too. They’re highly adapted to fire. Take the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire, for example, which burned through most of Big Basin Redwoods near Santa Cruz. Three years later, that forest is green again… and the old-growth redwood trees there are still standing strong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwoods also survived a period of severe logging in the late 18-hundreds when, after the Gold Rush, San Francisco was booming and timber was in high demand. Many trees didn’t survive, though. In fact, most of the trees now living in the Oakland hills are ones that have grown since that period of logging… young, by redwoods standards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Luckily, a movement was underway to protect redwood forests. Save the Redwoods League… where Deborah works… was founded in 1918… and helped to accelerate the preservation of redwood trees across Northern California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> People started to see the value in recreation and see the value in these trees not as lumber, but for health and wellness and for preservation purposes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music in \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But now they’re facing new challenges. As our question-asker Julie noticed… Redwood trees in the Bay Area are struggling.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> If you walk and you look up now, in most urban areas, I think everybody can pretty much see that, you know, there’s some tops that are dying back. There’s a lot of, you know, brown foliage in the crowns of these trees.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Todd Dawson. He’s an environmental scientist and professor at UC Berkeley and has been studying redwood trees for decades. We met up on a foggy morning at the UC Berkeley campus… home to many unhealthy-looking redwood trees.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> See the thinning crowns of the one right out there in the distance? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There you go. And you just see that over and over and over, repeated in so many places. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Todd says trees are suffering all over the Bay Area… even up through Santa Rosa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, there are two main reasons for that suffering. Let’s take them one at a time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music ends\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first reason is urbanization. The Bay Area has gone through a drastic transformation over the last century…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And with all the concrete and all the pollution that’s associated with urban sprawl, the trees are suffering. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s mostly because sidewalks and roadways are impinging on redwoods’ root systems. Remember how their roots extend out really wide?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Here we are standing ten feet away from a redwood tree on a concrete sidewalk. And we’ve set concrete on top of a big part of the root system. And so it’s really going to have a very, very negative impact on the ability of that tree to get the water it needs, get the nutrients it needs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re basically suffocating them. And on top of that, we have reason number two… climate change… which is impacting redwood trees in different ways. That fog that redwoods drink in, well, it turns out it’s on the decline. In fact, since the 1950’s it’s declined about 30% during the summertime… when redwoods really need it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That decline, coupled with periods of severe drought in California, is putting a lot of stress on the trees. Especially Giant Sequoias… another type of redwood that mostly lives in the Sierra Nevada. Thousands of trees there have died due to a lack of water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The water deficit itself didn’t really kill all those trees. It weakened them in a way where other pests and pathogens got in there and basically wiped them out like beetles, fungi, other things like that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to a lack of water… more intense fires are also impacting those trees. Although they have adapted to fire over the centuries… they can’t handle the extreme fires we’re seeing now caused by climate change and bad forest management. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All in all, Todd says redwood forests are struggling along their perimeters. As the wildland-urban interface stretches further and further into the wild… redwood trees are increasingly exposed to human impacts. They’re losing their buffer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think that’s the future, is we’re going to see a patchier world. And that’s really disappointing and concerning for me because, you know, we sit at the heart of that. Humans are really the ones that are in control and are having the negative impacts that we now see. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, I think we’ve answered most of Julie’s questions… except for one. What can we do about it? Todd has a couple thoughts on that. First, Julie, regarding your backyard redwood trees… Todd says you can try watering them…. But…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The trees require so much water. They also require pretty special microclimates, meaning that they like it cooler. They like these moist, foggy summers like we’re seeing today. You know, And I think you can’t really recreate those conditions as a person. Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unfortunately, he says, irrigation is a band-aid solution at best. Because the problems redwood trees are facing now are much more systemic. And that’s how we need to think about solutions, Todd says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of those solutions is to protect redwood forests by getting them in the hands of governments and nonprofits… like Deborah’s Save the Redwoods League. Todd says that work is critical to ensuring the trees’ survival here in Northern California. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whimsical music begins\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The forests are just so special, these big cathedrals with these amazing and gigantic trees that there’s just nothing like that. And I think anybody who’s ever walked through a forest for the first time just is in awe of what a special place and what a special feel it has. And so I’m really concerned about them and I want to keep working with them and I’d love to see those forests protected, you know, in perpetuity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Protecting them now means securing their existence for our kids, grandkids… and maybe even humans two THOUSAND years from now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That was KQED’s Dana Cronin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. We are a member-supported public media station and we really need your help. Give today at KQED.org/donate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a fantastic week. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article originally published in June of 2023. It has been lightly updated for republication.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were many things Bay Curious listener Julie Menter loved about her Oakland home when she first moved there in 2017. Chief among them were the three towering redwood trees in her backyard, which Menter estimated had been there longer than the house itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, one of the trees started to look sick. It had lost almost all of its leaves and, despite Menter watering it, it wasn’t bouncing back. So Menter and her husband decided it had to come down. \u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was so sad,” she said. “And I think it’s sad both for the tree because they’re such beautiful trees, they’re so old and majestic. But also scary to be like, ‘Whoa, this tree is not doing well, the one next to it isn’t, the ones in my neighborhood don’t seem to be doing well.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s noticed, not just in her backyard but all around Oakland, redwood trees are looking dry and scraggly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So I’m wondering, is something happening to the redwood trees in the Bay Area? And if so, what is it and is there anything we can do about it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Magical trees\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To answer Menter’s question, we first have to understand why redwood trees are unique to the Bay Area. Coast redwoods — which we’re focusing on for this story — stretch up and down the Northern California coast and grow no more than 50 miles from the coastline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think I fully appreciated the redwoods until I went away to school and then came back as an adult,” said Deborah Zierten, an educator with \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/\">Save the Redwoods League\u003c/a>. “This was the place that I would hike to clear my head. So it is a very special place for me here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quiet, cool, almost prehistoric feel of these redwood forests have provided solace to humans for millennia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The earliest redwood trees existed more than 200 million years ago alongside dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. Their natural range has shrunk a lot in that time, however. Now they live primarily along the coast between Big Sur and the California-Oregon border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11953536\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11953536\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-800x610.jpg\" alt=\"Black and white archival photo shows loggers standing around and laying in a notch cut into a massive redwood tree as the prepare to fell it. The tree may be around 20 feet in diameter and of unknown height, though it could be as tall as 300 feet.\" width=\"800\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-800x610.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-1020x778.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/redwood-logging.jpg 1160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the early 20th century, redwoods endured a period of intense logging activity. Most of the redwoods you see today have grown since that period, and pale in comparison to the massive size of the trees that once stood along the California coast. \u003ccite>(Ericson Collection/Humboldt State University Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Their range used to extend more broadly, until they endured a period of \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/about-us/mission-history/redwoods-timeline/\">severe logging in the late 19th century\u003c/a>. After the Gold Rush, San Francisco was booming and timber was in high demand. Millions of trees were logged and used to build homes and other structures around the Bay Area. Most of the trees here now have grown since then. Even by conservative estimates we’ve lost about 90 percent of what once was. Now, California is down to about 100,000 acres of old growth redwood forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps their most identifiable feature — besides their reddish-brown bark — is their height. They can grow up to 300 feet tall, a feat that requires some teamwork.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things that makes redwoods so unique is that they actually hold hands with their roots underneath the ground, and that’s how they’re able to grow to be so tall and not fall down, is that they help each other,” said Zierten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their shallow but wide root systems allow them to grow to be the tallest trees on the planet. And the intertwining of their roots helps them exchange nutrients with one another. Their trunks can grow to be immense, up to nearly 30 feet in diameter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redwoods can live a very long time, too. In fact, some of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/shirley/sec11.htm\">oldest coastal redwoods\u003c/a> today were alive during the Roman Empire. Those stands of \u003ca href=\"https://sempervirens.org/news/old-growth-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters/#:~:text=What%20Is%20The,redwood%E2%80%99s%20highest%20reaches.\">old-growth redwoods\u003c/a>, which now account for only 5% of all redwood trees, can \u003ca href=\"https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=26107#\">store more carbon\u003c/a> than any other forest on the planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have unique ways of reproducing. They produce seeds, like any other tree, but they can also sprout new trees from their roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So, often you will find them in circles that we call fairy rings. Because if a parent tree gets hurt or injured, it will send out these baby sprouts into these circles. And it’s kind of like a little family growing,” said Zierten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11953639\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11953639\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-800x845.jpg\" alt=\"A child dressing in a redwood tree costumes stands next to a woman in a bright blue sweater. In the background, a redwood forest is visible.\" width=\"800\" height=\"845\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-800x845.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1020x1077.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-160x169.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1455x1536.jpg 1455w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1940x2048.jpg 1940w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/Deborah-without-kids-1920x2027.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deborah Zierten teaches a group of fifth graders about redwood trees in Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Dana Cronin/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Redwoods prefer cool, moist climates, which is why they’re now primarily found in Northern California. In the summer months, when there’s a lack of rainfall, redwood trees rely on another iconic California phenomenon: coastal fog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s almost like a sponge sucking in that water,” Zierten said. “Then when their needles get full, also like a sponge, any of that excess water will drip to the ground. And it’s almost as if they’re creating their own rain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’ve adapted to other characteristics of this region, including wildfires. Take the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fires, for example, which burned through most of Big Basin Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz. Three years later, that forest is green again and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11835124/some-good-news-many-of-big-basins-ancient-redwoods-appear-to-have-survived\">the old-growth redwood trees there are still standing strong\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now many redwood forests — including 80% of the surviving old-growth trees — are protected either by state and local governments or nonprofits, like Zierten’s Save the Redwoods League.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>New challenges\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s not just Menter’s imagination: Redwood trees are indeed struggling across the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“If you look up now, in most urban areas, I think everybody can pretty much see that there’s some tops that are dying back. There’s a lot of brown foliage in the crowns of these trees,” said \u003ca href=\"https://ib.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/dawsont\">Todd Dawson\u003c/a>, an environmental scientist at UC Berkeley who has been studying redwoods for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason for that suffering is urbanization and the subsequent proliferation of concrete and pollution. Roadways and sidewalks, in particular, are impinging on redwoods’ root systems, essentially suffocating them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Concrete has] a very, very negative impact on the ability of that tree to get the water it needs, get the nutrients it needs,” said Dawson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to urbanization, climate change is wreaking havoc on redwood trees’ ideal growing conditions. Coastal fog, for example, upon which redwood trees rely for water, is on the decline. In fact, since the 1950s, Dawson said, fog has declined about 30% during the summertime, when redwoods really need it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11953610\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11953610\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"Tall, bright green redwood trees and ferns surround a hiking path. The air is misty and grey.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/IMG_5107-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A foggy day in Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland hills. In the summertime, redwoods ‘drink’ the coastal fog. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That decline, coupled with periods of severe drought in California, is putting a lot of stress on the trees — especially giant sequoias, another type of redwood that lives mostly in the Sierra Nevada. Thousands of trees there have died due to a lack of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The water deficit itself didn’t really kill all those trees,” Dawson said. “It weakened them in a way where other pests and pathogens got in there and basically wiped them out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to a lack of water, more intense fires are also affecting redwoods. Though they have adapted to fire over the centuries, they can’t handle the extreme fires we’re seeing now caused by climate change and inadequate forest management.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, Dawson said redwood forests are struggling along their perimeters. As the wildland-urban interface stretches farther and farther into the wild, redwood trees are increasingly exposed to human impacts. They’re losing their buffer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re going to see a patchier world,” Dawson said. “And that’s really disappointing and concerning for me because we sit at the heart of that. Humans are really the ones that are in control and are having the negative impacts that we now see.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What can we do?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As Menter asked, is there anything we can do to save the redwoods?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for backyard redwood trees, Dawson said irrigation might work, but it’s more of a Band-Aid solution because “the trees require so much water. They also require pretty special microclimates, meaning that they like it cooler, they like these moist, foggy summers,” he said, “and I think you can’t really recreate those conditions as a person.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problems redwood trees are facing now are much more systemic, said Dawson, and that’s how we should approach solutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to help protect redwood forests is by getting them in the hands of governments and nonprofits, which Dawson said is critical to ensuring the trees’ survival here in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The forests are just so special, these big cathedrals with these amazing, gigantic trees. There’s just nothing like that. And I think anybody who’s ever walked through a forest for the first time just is in awe of what a special place and what a special feel it has. So I’m really concerned about them and I’d love to see those forests protected in perpetuity,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This is Bay Curious. I’m Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Have you ever paused a moment, to fully take in a redwood tree? Stared up at its towering trunk. Cupping around a single ridge of its massive bark. Inhaling that warm, woody, slightly sweet scent…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious listener Christy Dundon has.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christy Dundon:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Back when I was in high school, just a long time ago, I worked for the Alameda Recreation and Park Department and we had a day camp and we would take kids up to the Redwood Regional Park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The redwoods in the park now are mostly younger, second-growth redwoods – but there are signs left of the old growth redwoods that once stood.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christy Dundon:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I remember showing them the stumps that were there, which were pretty big with usually trees in a circle around them … sometimes I’d have them lie down and it was, you know, its diameter was wider than they are tall. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seeing these stumps got Christy wondering about when these trees were cut down and why. And also how many redwood forests once stood in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christy Dundon:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I would love to know how extensive it was, what, I mean, did they just somebody got the idea this is where we’re going to get our lumber, and then how much was actually cut down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> For this story on old growth redwoods, we called up an old friend, Daniel Potter. Hi, Daniel!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Olivia, hi!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Daniel has done a few stories for us on natural history and trees… And he even wrote a bit on redwoods for the Bay Curious book. (which, ahem, is still available wherever books are sold.) So Daniel, redwoods. They come in a few varieties.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Right. They’re a phenomenon almost exclusive to California. By that I mean there are three species—a somewhat shorter one from central China—and then the two familiar to Californians. Inland, we have the massive Sierra redwoods, also known as giant sequoias, and the kind we’ll be focusing on today, which is actually even taller.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s the coast redwood, or the one a lot of folks just call… redwoods.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The scientific name is Sequoia sempervirens. These trees can grow taller than the Statue of Liberty, including the pedestal and torch. Taller than a football field is long. And they can live around 2,000 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And true to their name, you tend to find them along the coast, in the fog belt, from Monterey County up to around the Oregon border.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One of my favorite Bay Area spots for wow’ing out-of-towners with them has always been Muir Woods, in Marin County. That’s one of the few places in the region where people left old redwoods standing in the last few centuries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So there were once more? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So many more! Logging of the redwoods started long before the Gold Rush, in the time of Spanish settlers and Russian traders… but the Gold Rush really kicked it into high gear. For 19th-century people building a city like San Francisco in a hurry, old redwood was ideal. In his book Trees in Paradise, historian Jared Farmer writes “it was easy to work with, hard to wreck. No other lumber matched its combination of lightness, evenness, and durability.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In addition to the stumps Christy saw, you also see little hints of this logging history around. ..Like down on the Peninsula, where you’ll find ‘Redwood City.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes! Sawyers would cut down redwoods on the east side of the Santa Cruz mountains, and use the port there to float that wood up toward a growing San Francisco. In his book, Farmer writes “by the mid 1850s, San Francisco had exhausted the easy-to-reach redwood, including pocket stands in the Berkeley Hills.” Loggers then worked their way north up the coast. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay, let’s fast forward to after the 1906 earthquake and fire. The city is devastated, people need to rebuild, concrete and steel aren’t yet ubiquitous for construction. What happens? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> People cut down even more trees. They constructed tens of thousands of buildings in the decade after the quake, almost all of them with wood frames. Redwood was the rule—literally. Officials believed using redwood had kept the fire from being even worse, so afterward, builders had to get a permit to use anything else. The demand was epic, on the order of hundreds of millions of square feet, an inch thick.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So our question-asker wanted some sense of what was lost here. And it sounds like… a lot.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, exactly how much depends a little on whether you’re just counting the heavy stands of redwoods, like the awesome cathedral stands up toward the North Coast, or also the spots where they’re more mixed in with other trees. But ballpark, before the Gold Rush, there were 1 or 2 million acres of old growth redwood forests, whereas now we’re down to less than 100 thousand acres. So even by a conservative estimate, we’ve lost about 90% of what once was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 90%! And most of it now makes up the skeleton of San Francisco?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it’s a weird way to think about it, isn’t it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Well… on the bright side, at least there’s still some standing for us to visit.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah! My wife and I did the iconic California road trip for our honeymoon a few years ago, and visiting the redwoods up along the Avenue of the Giants was sublime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mm! Daniel Potter… Longtime friend of the show, now making a podcast called Bug Note about the wiggly, wild, weird world of bugs. Find it on YouTube. Daniel – thank you as always.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Daniel Potter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Olivia, a pleasure as always.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When we return a deep dive on what makes Coast Redwoods so special, and how they’re fairing in the age of climate change. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor Message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We have received a bevy of listener questions about redwoods over the years. One came from Julie Menter. She and her husband moved into a house in Oakland in 2017. There were lots of things they loved about their new home, but especially the three big redwood trees in the backyard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julie Menter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It feels like it’s a really big part of the identity to me of the city of Oakland. Like if you look at the hills and the trees…being able to go in nature while being in a city feels really important to me for my mental health and balance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Last year, Julie started to worry about the trees. One of them had lost almost all of its leaves and, despite watering it, it wasn’t bouncing back. It had to come down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julie Menter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s so sad. And I think it’s sad both for the tree because, you know, they’re such beautiful trees, they’re so old and majestic. But also scary to be like, “Whoa, this tree is not doing well, the one next to it isn’t, the ones in my neighborhood don’t seem to be doing well.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Julie’s noticed not just in her backyard, but all around Oakland, redwood trees don’t look so good. Around her neighborhood… off highways… really all over the East Bay, Julie has noticed the trees looking dry and scraggly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julie Menter:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So I’m wondering, is something happening to the redwood trees in the Bay Area? And if so, what is it and is there anything we can do about it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For this next story, we’re spending more time with California’s state tree: the coast redwood. We’ll dig into why it’s unique to this area, what makes it so special and also how it’s adapting to challenges like climate change and urbanization. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KQED’s Dana Cronin takes it from here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of walking through a forest \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s a really special feeling I get every time I walk through a redwood forest. My mind goes quiet, the only audible sound coming from the crunch of my footsteps. The temperature is always perfect; even on the hottest day, it’s still cool among the trees. And the smell.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin (in scene)\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: It smells so good. There’s just no, like, even just stepping outside of my car in the parking lot, I was like (breathes in, breathes out) It’s just so good.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m in the middle of the Roberts Redwood Recreational forest in the Oakland hills… hiking with Deborah Ziertan, who works for Save the Redwoods League. She’s gonna help me teach you all about redwood trees and why they’re unique to our region. Then, later on, we’ll get to the heart of Julie’s question … what’s happening to them? And just a note – for this episode we’ll mostly focus on coastal redwoods, which grow no more than 50 miles from the coastline. Now, Deborah grew up here in Oakland and visited these redwoods frequently as a kid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I don’t think I fully appreciated the redwoods until I went away to school and then came back as an adult. And this was the place that I would hike to clear my head. And these were the forests that I came to. And so it is a very special place for me here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah has now dedicated her life to these trees. She’s an educator with Save the Redwoods League. Her job is to teach school-aged kids about them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of children in a forest\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Good morning students!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Students:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Good morning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tagged along recently with Deborah, as she guided about thirty fifth graders from a local elementary school through the Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. The students are spread out across three wooden picnic tables, fidgeting in their seats. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can I have everyone’s eyes up here? Ok. Will everyone look up and take a look? We are in a little redwood grove. So these are all redwood trees. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After setting a few ground rules… no touching plants… be quiet while others are talking… Miss Deborah — as they call her — launches into the lesson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Do you know anything about redwood trees at all? Raise your hand if you know anything about redwoods. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A student’s hand shoots up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yes. They are really tall. They are. Redwoods are the tallest tree in the whole entire world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwood trees can grow more than 300 feet tall. That’s taller than a 30-story skyscraper. And not only are they the tallest tree in the world, they’re also among the biggest. Their trucks can grow nearly 30 feet wide. So, how are they able to get so big?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So everyone do this with your arms. It’s okay if you kind of lightly touch your neighbors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah holds her arms out straight to the sides, like a scarecrow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the things that makes redwoods so unique is that they actually hold hands with their roots underneath the ground, and that’s how they’re able to grow to be so tall and not fall down is that they help each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwood roots are shallow and extend outward instead of down. Their roots extend out almost as far as the tree is tall … and they essentially hold each other up. In addition to being really big… redwoods can also live a very long time… like more than 2,000 years. That means some coastal redwoods today were alive during the Roman Empire. Those old-growth redwoods, which now only account for 5 percent of all redwood trees, can store more carbon than any other forest on the planet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So we are pretty lucky to have redwood trees here in Oakland. And people travel from all over the world to come and see redwood trees.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magical sounding music\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwood trees also have unique ways of reproducing. They produce seeds, like any other tree, but they can also sprout new trees from their roots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So often redwood trees, you will find them in circles that we call fairy rings. Because if a parent tree gets hurt or injured, it will send out these baby sprouts into these circles. And it’s kind of like a little family growing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’re basically clones of their parents. That’s why you rarely see redwood trees standing alone, and more often see them together in a circle formation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah tells the students we can learn a lot from redwood trees. They exist in communities and rely on each other for support. They have hard exteriors that protect them from things like wildfires, but they’re soft on the inside. Deborah says… they’re not so different from us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music ends\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The earliest redwood trees existed more than 200 million years ago… alongside dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. Their natural range has shrunk a lot in that time… now they mostly stretch up and down the northern California coast… as far north as the Oregon border and down to about Big Sur. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their distribution tracks with another iconic California phenomenon… coastal fog. So, in the summer months, when there’s a lack of rainfall, redwood trees essentially drink the fog.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s almost like a sponge sucking in that water. And then when their needles get full, also like a sponge, any of that excess water will drip to the ground. And it’s almost as if they’re creating their own rain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And they’ve adapted to this region in other ways, too. They’re highly adapted to fire. Take the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire, for example, which burned through most of Big Basin Redwoods near Santa Cruz. Three years later, that forest is green again… and the old-growth redwood trees there are still standing strong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redwoods also survived a period of severe logging in the late 18-hundreds when, after the Gold Rush, San Francisco was booming and timber was in high demand. Many trees didn’t survive, though. In fact, most of the trees now living in the Oakland hills are ones that have grown since that period of logging… young, by redwoods standards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Luckily, a movement was underway to protect redwood forests. Save the Redwoods League… where Deborah works… was founded in 1918… and helped to accelerate the preservation of redwood trees across Northern California. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deborah Ziertan:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> People started to see the value in recreation and see the value in these trees not as lumber, but for health and wellness and for preservation purposes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music in \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But now they’re facing new challenges. As our question-asker Julie noticed… Redwood trees in the Bay Area are struggling.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> If you walk and you look up now, in most urban areas, I think everybody can pretty much see that, you know, there’s some tops that are dying back. There’s a lot of, you know, brown foliage in the crowns of these trees.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Todd Dawson. He’s an environmental scientist and professor at UC Berkeley and has been studying redwood trees for decades. We met up on a foggy morning at the UC Berkeley campus… home to many unhealthy-looking redwood trees.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> See the thinning crowns of the one right out there in the distance? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There you go. And you just see that over and over and over, repeated in so many places. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Todd says trees are suffering all over the Bay Area… even up through Santa Rosa. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, there are two main reasons for that suffering. Let’s take them one at a time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music ends\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first reason is urbanization. The Bay Area has gone through a drastic transformation over the last century…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And with all the concrete and all the pollution that’s associated with urban sprawl, the trees are suffering. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s mostly because sidewalks and roadways are impinging on redwoods’ root systems. Remember how their roots extend out really wide?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Here we are standing ten feet away from a redwood tree on a concrete sidewalk. And we’ve set concrete on top of a big part of the root system. And so it’s really going to have a very, very negative impact on the ability of that tree to get the water it needs, get the nutrients it needs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re basically suffocating them. And on top of that, we have reason number two… climate change… which is impacting redwood trees in different ways. That fog that redwoods drink in, well, it turns out it’s on the decline. In fact, since the 1950’s it’s declined about 30% during the summertime… when redwoods really need it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That decline, coupled with periods of severe drought in California, is putting a lot of stress on the trees. Especially Giant Sequoias… another type of redwood that mostly lives in the Sierra Nevada. Thousands of trees there have died due to a lack of water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The water deficit itself didn’t really kill all those trees. It weakened them in a way where other pests and pathogens got in there and basically wiped them out like beetles, fungi, other things like that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to a lack of water… more intense fires are also impacting those trees. Although they have adapted to fire over the centuries… they can’t handle the extreme fires we’re seeing now caused by climate change and bad forest management. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All in all, Todd says redwood forests are struggling along their perimeters. As the wildland-urban interface stretches further and further into the wild… redwood trees are increasingly exposed to human impacts. They’re losing their buffer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think that’s the future, is we’re going to see a patchier world. And that’s really disappointing and concerning for me because, you know, we sit at the heart of that. Humans are really the ones that are in control and are having the negative impacts that we now see. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, I think we’ve answered most of Julie’s questions… except for one. What can we do about it? Todd has a couple thoughts on that. First, Julie, regarding your backyard redwood trees… Todd says you can try watering them…. But…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The trees require so much water. They also require pretty special microclimates, meaning that they like it cooler. They like these moist, foggy summers like we’re seeing today. You know, And I think you can’t really recreate those conditions as a person. Right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unfortunately, he says, irrigation is a band-aid solution at best. Because the problems redwood trees are facing now are much more systemic. And that’s how we need to think about solutions, Todd says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of those solutions is to protect redwood forests by getting them in the hands of governments and nonprofits… like Deborah’s Save the Redwoods League. Todd says that work is critical to ensuring the trees’ survival here in Northern California. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whimsical music begins\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Todd Dawson:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The forests are just so special, these big cathedrals with these amazing and gigantic trees that there’s just nothing like that. And I think anybody who’s ever walked through a forest for the first time just is in awe of what a special place and what a special feel it has. And so I’m really concerned about them and I want to keep working with them and I’d love to see those forests protected, you know, in perpetuity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Cronin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Protecting them now means securing their existence for our kids, grandkids… and maybe even humans two THOUSAND years from now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That was KQED’s Dana Cronin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. We are a member-supported public media station and we really need your help. Give today at KQED.org/donate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a fantastic week. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "why-theres-a-cross-on-san-franciscos-highest-peak",
"title": "Why There's a Cross on San Francisco's Highest Peak",
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"headTitle": "Why There’s a Cross on San Francisco’s Highest Peak | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\"> the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article first published April 1, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tucked away on a wooded hillside in the middle of San Francisco sits a big concrete cross. When it was built, it could be seen from miles around. Now, a thick grove of trees partially shields it from view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousbug]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Bay Curious has gotten several questions about the cross. Even lifelong San Franciscans, like Julia Thollaug and Phil Montalvo, have wondered about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up in and around S.F. I’ve always noticed the cross and just wondered why it was there and where it came from?” says Thollaug.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Growing up in the Outer Mission/Crocker Amazon, the cross was always in view. I never understood when it was constructed, or even as of today, why it’s still up on Mount Davidson,” adds Montalvo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither of them has ever visited Mount Davidson Park, where the cross is located. And after living here for decades, I hadn’t either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mount Davidson Park rises above a quiet residential neighborhood just west of Twin Peaks. It’s not well known or well marked. But once you start walking the park’s trails, you’re surrounded by eucalyptus trees and it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of a major city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867150\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11867150 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Looking to the east from the top of Mt. Davidson (Suzie Racho/KQED) \u003ccite>(Suzie Racho)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you get to the top, you see two things: a view that stretches all the way to the East Bay and one very big cross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9780738546605\">Author\u003c/a> and Mount Davidson \u003ca href=\"https://mtdavidson.org/jacqueline-proctor/\">historian\u003c/a> Jacquie Proctor says the cross’s origin story goes back to 1923. To a time when the area was a forest. \u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A guy named James Decatur, who is an employee of the Western Union Telegraph Company and involved with the YMCA, hikes through that forest and comes to the top, ” Proctor says. “And he sees this incredible view of downtown. And he is just overwhelmed. He is inspired then to build a cross to crown the highest point of the city.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An imposing sight, the concrete cross stands 103 feet tall and measures 10 feet wide at the base. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur thought it would be a perfect place to hold an Easter sunrise service. Holding religious ceremonies in natural settings was a trend at the time. Proctor says people were pushing back against the materialism of the Roaring ’20s by reconnecting to the natural and to the spiritual. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So it wasn’t hard for Decatur to find support for his idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867161\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 281px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11867161\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut-800x1209.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"425\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut-800x1209.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut.jpg 940w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An article from the San Francisco Examiner, January 1923.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several of Mount Davidson’s trails had already been established by its landowner, a developer named A.S. Baldwin. Baldwin was already starting to build houses in the surrounding area. These would become neighborhoods like Westwood Highlands, Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Baldwin saw the service as a way to introduce more people to new neighborhoods west of Twin Peaks. So he not only gives Decatur permission to hold the event, but donates $2,000 to get a 40-foot tall wooden cross constructed for the service. That’s nearly $31,000 in today’s dollars.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/b>The event also received enthusiastic backing from city officials, religious leaders and community groups. Boy Scout troops camped out the night before and acted as ushers for attendees. The dean of Grace Cathedral led the service. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That Easter morning was a rainy one, but Proctor says that didn’t stop 5,000 worshipers from showing up. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“James Decatur thinks, ‘This is great. Had no idea 5,000 people would come, so let’s do it again!’ ” Proctor says.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur raises money for a bigger wooden cross for the service the following year. But it wouldn’t be the last service or the last cross. There were five in all. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each temporary cross was replaced as t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he now annual service got more and more popular, drawing tens of thousands of people, Proctor says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867160\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 358px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11867160\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48209_AAB-9499-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"358\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48209_AAB-9499-qut.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48209_AAB-9499-qut-160x205.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“People are dressed up,” Proctor says. “They’re wearing fancy shoes and their fur coats. It was this incredible civic event. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it was still being held on \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">private\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> land, land that was beginning to fill with new houses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The encroaching development alarmed nature lover \u003ca href=\"https://sfpucnewsroom.com/spotlight/a-look-back-in-history-a-courageous-woman-organized-to-preserve-mt-davidson-as-a-public-park/\">Madie Brown\u003c/a>. In 1926, she led a campaign to urge the city to buy 25 acres on Mount Davidson to create a public park. Bolstered by women’s groups across the city, the three-year campaign was a success. She even won the support of Baldwin’s widow, Emma, who donated the six acres at the peak. T\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he cross would now be sitting on public land. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867378\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11867378\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48271_AAA-9478-2-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"671\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48271_AAA-9478-2-qut.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48271_AAA-9478-2-qut-160x134.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thousands of worshippers climbed to the top of Mount Davidson for the sunrise service in 1930. (Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library) \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After years of temporary crosses, construction began on the monument in 1932. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took two years and $20,000 to build the enormous concrete cross — almost $400,000 in today’s dollars. By the time it was completed, the country was in The Great Depression. But the people still wanted a grand celebration.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As part of the ceremony, a dozen 1,000-watt flood lights were installed on poles surrounding the cross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Madie Brown envisioned a dramatic moment when the lights would be switched on for the first time. She wrote to an envoy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking him to do the honors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“It seems most appropriate that the President, who has brought light into many a darkened American home and who through his New Deal has instilled the principles of the Golden Rule into American business, should take part in this cross lighting ceremony,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western Union donates their time and their telegraph lines to set up a coast-to-coast hookup between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. And on the evening of March 24, 1934, President Roosevelt pressed a gold \u003ca href=\"https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/history/morse-code-telegraph/morse-key-development.php\">telegraph key\u003c/a> that sent electricity across the country to light the Mount Davidson cross. Once lit, the cross was visible from 50 miles away. That Easter, 50,000 people journeyed to the monument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867162\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11867162\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48210_AAA-9440-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"352\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48210_AAA-9440-sfi.jpg 286w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48210_AAA-9440-sfi-160x201.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Mount Davidson cross nears completion in 1934. (Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library) \u003ccite>(Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San FrancicoPublic Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The cross became a San Francisco landmark. But other than an appearance in the Clint Eastwood movie, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Dirty Harry”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1971, it had largely stayed out of the news until the early 1990s, when the issue of a cross on public land ends up in \u003ca href=\"https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/803/337/2132956/\">court.\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After several years of litigation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> city ownership of the cross violates the California Constitution’s separation of church and state laws. San Francisco has to find someone to buy the cross or tear it down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The city decides they’re going to sell the land around the cross and the cross and they have to sell it with no conditions,” says Proctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12077572 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00034_TV-KQED.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1997, San Francisco settles on a plan to auction off the cross and the little over a third of an acre it sits on. The sale requires any bidder to keep the site open to the public and places restrictions on how many days it can be illuminated.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Three groups come forward in hopes of preserving the cross as a landmark: The Friends of Mount Davidson Conservancy (of which Jacquie Proctor was a member), the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Museum of the City of San Francisco\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Council of \u003ca href=\"https://www.mountdavidsoncross.org/council\">Armenian American Organizations of Northern California\u003c/a>. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Armenian group thought that the cross could become a memorial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most Armenian Americans, including those in the San Francisco Bay Area, are descendants of the few survivors of the Armenian genocide, which was carried out by the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire in 1915,” says \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roxanne Makasdjian, a member of Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Makasdjian says that descendants often built two things in the places where they settled: churches and genocide memorials. The Armenian Council thought a visible symbol like the cross on Mount Davidson could educate the public about this history. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the support of the neighborhood group, who share the goals of preserving the cross and the park, Makasdjian’s group wins the rights to buy the site and the cross for $26,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867479\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11867479\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A plaque at the base of the Mount Davidson Cross marks Armenian Genocide Commemoration Day. (Photo Courtesy: Council of Armenian Americans of Northern California) \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Council of Armenian Americans of Northern California)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, the cross is lit two nights a year, April 24 to commemorate the Armenian genocide and the night before Easter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The annual \u003ca href=\"https://mtdavidson.org/easter-sunrise-service/\">sunrise service\u003c/a> still exists. Now it’s non-denominational, and a few hundred people usually show up. Not quite the same scene as the thousands who appeared in their finery in the 1920s and 1930s.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Proctor is thankful for the sunrise service. Without it, she says, Mount Davidson would look very different today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we didn’t have the sunrise service, we wouldn’t have a park there now. And it would have been covered with houses and buildings, like most of the other hills of San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic canceled the Easter service for the first time since 1923.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco may not be thought of as one of America’s most religious cities these days, but the place is named for St. Francis of Assisi. He’s the patron saint of animals, the environment and the country of Italy, which if you think about the city’s history has turned out to be a pretty apt name. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco has a long tradition of diverse religious practice. One place that hints at this history is on San Francisco’s highest peak, Mount Davidson. Look up and you’ll find a massive concrete cross at the top, one that some of you have been wondering about.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Thollaug: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi, Bay Curious. I’m Julia Thollaug. I grew up in and around San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Montalvo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My name is Phil Montalvo. I’m a native San Franciscan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Thollaug: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’ve always noticed the cross and just wondered why it was there, where it came from.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Montalvo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Growing up in the Outer Mission, Crocker Amazon, the cross was always in view. I never understood when it was constructed or even why it’s still up on Mount Davidson.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Thollaug and Phil Montalvo together: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What’s the deal with the giant cross on the top of Mount Davidson?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today on Bay Curious, we tell the story of how San Francisco ended up with a cross at its highest point. This story first aired in 2021, and we’re sharing it again because, well, there’s an event coming up that makes it sort of noteworthy at this point in time. You’ll see. You’ll see.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price, you’re listening to Be Curious. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the deal with that Mount Davidson cross? We sent KQED producer Suzie Racho to find out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just west of Twin Peaks, rising above a quiet residential neighborhood is Mount Davidson Park. It’s not well-known or well-marked, but once you start walking one of the park’s trails, you’re surrounded by eucalyptus trees, and you start to forget that you’re in the middle of a major city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho in scene:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I’m coming up the trail. I’m a little out of breath, but wow, what an amazing view. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you get to the top, you see two things: a view that stretches all the way to the East Bay and one very big cross. The cross is an imposing sight. It stands at 103 feet tall and 10 feet wide at the base. Made of concrete, it stands in stark contrast to blue sky and the eucalyptus grove that surrounds it. To learn more about how it got here, I went to Mount Davidson’s resident historian.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi, I’m Jackie Proctor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jackie says the cross’s origin story goes back almost 100 years to 1923, to a time when the area was a forest.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A guy named James Decatur, who is an employee of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and followed with the YMCA, hikes through that forest and comes to the top and he sees this incredible view of downtown. And he is just overwhelmed and inspired and he writes this long essay about the experience.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice over for James Decatur: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peace and quiet were so profound that it seemed almost unbelievable that the noise and roar of a great city was only a few minutes behind them. The solitude of the forest conveyed a sense of vastness quite as real as one would experience among the age-old monarchs of the High Sierras.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is inspired then to build a cross to crown the highest point of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur thought it would be a perfect place to hold an Easter sunrise service. Holding religious ceremonies in natural settings was a trend at the time. Jackie says that people were pushing back against the materialism of the Roaring Twenties, reconnecting with the natural and spiritual worlds. So it wasn’t hard to find support for his idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several of Mount Davidson’s trails had already been established by its landowner, a local developer named A.S. Baldwin. Baldwin was already starting to build houses in the surrounding area. He saw the Easter service as a way to introduce more people to the new neighborhoods west of Twin Peaks. So Baldwin not only gives Decatur permission to hold the event, but donates $2,000 to get a 40-foot-tall wooden cross constructed. That’s nearly $31,000 today — a hefty contribution.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">5,000 people hike up that hill in 1923.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The service received enthusiastic backing from city officials, religious leaders and community groups. Boy Scouts camped out the night before and acted as ushers for attendees. The Dean of Grace Cathedral led the service.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">James Decatur thinks, great, this is great. I had no idea 5,000 people would come, so let’s do it again.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur raises money for a bigger wooden cross for the service the following year, but it wouldn’t be the last service or the last cross.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first one was just torn down and replaced, and then the second one was burned down, and then, the third one was burnt down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local newspapers report the fires as accidental or vandalism by bored teenagers. Each temporary cross was replaced as the now annual service got more and more popular, drawing tens of thousands of people.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People are dressed up. They’re wearing their fancy shoes and their fur coats and everything. It was like, you know, this incredible civic event.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it was still being held on private land, land that was beginning to fill with newly constructed houses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The encroaching development alarmed nature lover Maddie Brown. In 1926, she led a campaign to urge the city to buy 25 acres on Mount Davidson to create a public park. Bolstered by women’s groups across the city, the three-year campaign was a success. She even won the support of Baldwin’s widow, Emma. Who donated the six acres at the peak. In 1929, Mount Davidson became a city park. That put the cross on public land. Supporters eagerly began planning for a more permanent cross, one that couldn’t be blown or burned down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor reading: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And before 32,000 people at the 1932 Sunrise event, Governor Roth dedicated the cornerstone of the new 103-foot-high concrete cross.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took two years and $20,000 to build the enormous concrete cross. That’s almost $400,000 today. And by the time it was done, the country was in the Great Depression. But the people still wanted a grand celebration. 12 huge floodlights were installed on poles surrounding the cross. Maddy Brown envisioned a dramatic moment when the lights would be switched on for the first time. She wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, asking him to do the honors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice Over: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It seems most appropriate that the President, who has brought light into many a darkened American home, and who through his new deal has instilled the principles of the Golden Rule into American business, should take part in this cross-lighting ceremony.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western Union donates their time and their telegraph lines, providing a coast-to-coast hookup between Washington, D.C. And San Francisco. And on the evening of March 24, 1934, President Roosevelt pressed the button that sent electricity across the country to light the Mount Davidson Cross. That Easter, 50,000 people journeyed to the monument. The cross became a San Francisco landmark. It made an appearance in the Clint Eastwood movie Dirty Harry in 1971. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dirty Harry clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Now turn, face the cross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But had largely stayed out of the news until the early 90s. That’s when the issue of a cross on public land becomes a lawsuit. Groups concerned about the separation of church and state, including the ACLU, sue the city. After several years, the courts rule that city ownership of the cross violates the California Constitution’s separation of church and state. San Francisco has to find someone to buy the cross or tear it down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So then the city decides they’re going to sell the land around the cross, and the cross. And they have to sell it with no conditions. So whoever buys it can tear the cross down, or they can…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our historian Jackie, a longtime Mount Davidson resident, remembers the controversy vividly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Concerned about that. I’m not a religious person. I sort of just saw the cross as like a relic of the depression, another public works project.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1997, San Francisco settles on a plan to auction off the cross and the little over a third of an acre that it sits on. They require any bidder to keep the site open to the public. The city sets the opening bid at $20,000. Three groups are interested in buying and preserving the cross, the Friends of Mount Davidson Conservancy, of which Jackie was a member, the Museum of the City of San Francisco, and the Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roxanne Makassian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most Armenian Americans, including those in the San Francisco Bay Area, are descendants of the few survivors of the Armenian Genocide, which was carried out by the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roxanne Makassian is a member of the Armenian Council. She says that descendants often build two things in the places where they settled, churches and a genocide memorial.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roxanne Makassian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Armenians said, you know, this would make a great monument for us to remember the Armenian genocide and maybe to educate locals about it.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the auction, the museum doesn’t go past their opening bid of $20,000. The neighborhood group bids $25,000, but supports the Armenian group after agreeing they both want the same things for the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We thought, well, they seem like they really care about maintaining the area for public access. That was our goal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today the cross is lit two nights a year, April 24th to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, and the night before Easter. The annual sunrise service still exists, today it’s non-denominational, and a few hundred people usually show up. Not quite the same scene as the thousands who appeared in their finery in the 1920s and 30s. But Jackie says, without the sunrise service Mount Davidson would look very different today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, if we didn’t have the sunrise service, we wouldn’t have a park there now. And it would have been covered with houses and buildings or everything like most of the other hills of San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year’s sunrise service takes place at 6.30 a.m on April 5th. Find details at mtdavidson.org. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Have you signed up for the Bay Curious newsletter yet? It’s full of Bay Area trivia, more answers to your questions, and usually some cool photos. Sign up at baycurious.org slash newsletter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode was produced by Suzie Racho, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Bay Curious is a production of member-supported KQED in San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is pledge season, and that means we need your support. Give any amount that works for your budget at kqed.org slash donate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Brice, have a great day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\"> the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article first published April 1, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tucked away on a wooded hillside in the middle of San Francisco sits a big concrete cross. When it was built, it could be seen from miles around. Now, a thick grove of trees partially shields it from view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Bay Curious has gotten several questions about the cross. Even lifelong San Franciscans, like Julia Thollaug and Phil Montalvo, have wondered about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up in and around S.F. I’ve always noticed the cross and just wondered why it was there and where it came from?” says Thollaug.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Growing up in the Outer Mission/Crocker Amazon, the cross was always in view. I never understood when it was constructed, or even as of today, why it’s still up on Mount Davidson,” adds Montalvo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither of them has ever visited Mount Davidson Park, where the cross is located. And after living here for decades, I hadn’t either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mount Davidson Park rises above a quiet residential neighborhood just west of Twin Peaks. It’s not well known or well marked. But once you start walking the park’s trails, you’re surrounded by eucalyptus trees and it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of a major city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867150\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11867150 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48183_IMG_6367-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Looking to the east from the top of Mt. Davidson (Suzie Racho/KQED) \u003ccite>(Suzie Racho)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you get to the top, you see two things: a view that stretches all the way to the East Bay and one very big cross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9780738546605\">Author\u003c/a> and Mount Davidson \u003ca href=\"https://mtdavidson.org/jacqueline-proctor/\">historian\u003c/a> Jacquie Proctor says the cross’s origin story goes back to 1923. To a time when the area was a forest. \u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A guy named James Decatur, who is an employee of the Western Union Telegraph Company and involved with the YMCA, hikes through that forest and comes to the top, ” Proctor says. “And he sees this incredible view of downtown. And he is just overwhelmed. He is inspired then to build a cross to crown the highest point of the city.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An imposing sight, the concrete cross stands 103 feet tall and measures 10 feet wide at the base. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur thought it would be a perfect place to hold an Easter sunrise service. Holding religious ceremonies in natural settings was a trend at the time. Proctor says people were pushing back against the materialism of the Roaring ’20s by reconnecting to the natural and to the spiritual. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So it wasn’t hard for Decatur to find support for his idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867161\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 281px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11867161\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut-800x1209.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"425\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut-800x1209.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48208_1923-SF-Examiner-qut.jpg 940w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An article from the San Francisco Examiner, January 1923.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several of Mount Davidson’s trails had already been established by its landowner, a developer named A.S. Baldwin. Baldwin was already starting to build houses in the surrounding area. These would become neighborhoods like Westwood Highlands, Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Baldwin saw the service as a way to introduce more people to new neighborhoods west of Twin Peaks. So he not only gives Decatur permission to hold the event, but donates $2,000 to get a 40-foot tall wooden cross constructed for the service. That’s nearly $31,000 in today’s dollars.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/b>The event also received enthusiastic backing from city officials, religious leaders and community groups. Boy Scout troops camped out the night before and acted as ushers for attendees. The dean of Grace Cathedral led the service. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That Easter morning was a rainy one, but Proctor says that didn’t stop 5,000 worshipers from showing up. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“James Decatur thinks, ‘This is great. Had no idea 5,000 people would come, so let’s do it again!’ ” Proctor says.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur raises money for a bigger wooden cross for the service the following year. But it wouldn’t be the last service or the last cross. There were five in all. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each temporary cross was replaced as t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he now annual service got more and more popular, drawing tens of thousands of people, Proctor says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867160\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 358px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11867160\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48209_AAB-9499-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"358\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48209_AAB-9499-qut.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48209_AAB-9499-qut-160x205.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“People are dressed up,” Proctor says. “They’re wearing fancy shoes and their fur coats. It was this incredible civic event. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it was still being held on \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">private\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> land, land that was beginning to fill with new houses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The encroaching development alarmed nature lover \u003ca href=\"https://sfpucnewsroom.com/spotlight/a-look-back-in-history-a-courageous-woman-organized-to-preserve-mt-davidson-as-a-public-park/\">Madie Brown\u003c/a>. In 1926, she led a campaign to urge the city to buy 25 acres on Mount Davidson to create a public park. Bolstered by women’s groups across the city, the three-year campaign was a success. She even won the support of Baldwin’s widow, Emma, who donated the six acres at the peak. T\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he cross would now be sitting on public land. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867378\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11867378\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48271_AAA-9478-2-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"671\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48271_AAA-9478-2-qut.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48271_AAA-9478-2-qut-160x134.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thousands of worshippers climbed to the top of Mount Davidson for the sunrise service in 1930. (Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library) \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After years of temporary crosses, construction began on the monument in 1932. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took two years and $20,000 to build the enormous concrete cross — almost $400,000 in today’s dollars. By the time it was completed, the country was in The Great Depression. But the people still wanted a grand celebration.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As part of the ceremony, a dozen 1,000-watt flood lights were installed on poles surrounding the cross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Madie Brown envisioned a dramatic moment when the lights would be switched on for the first time. She wrote to an envoy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking him to do the honors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“It seems most appropriate that the President, who has brought light into many a darkened American home and who through his New Deal has instilled the principles of the Golden Rule into American business, should take part in this cross lighting ceremony,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western Union donates their time and their telegraph lines to set up a coast-to-coast hookup between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. And on the evening of March 24, 1934, President Roosevelt pressed a gold \u003ca href=\"https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/history/morse-code-telegraph/morse-key-development.php\">telegraph key\u003c/a> that sent electricity across the country to light the Mount Davidson cross. Once lit, the cross was visible from 50 miles away. That Easter, 50,000 people journeyed to the monument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867162\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11867162\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48210_AAA-9440-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"352\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48210_AAA-9440-sfi.jpg 286w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48210_AAA-9440-sfi-160x201.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Mount Davidson cross nears completion in 1934. (Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library) \u003ccite>(Photo Courtesy: San Francisco History Center, San FrancicoPublic Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The cross became a San Francisco landmark. But other than an appearance in the Clint Eastwood movie, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Dirty Harry”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1971, it had largely stayed out of the news until the early 1990s, when the issue of a cross on public land ends up in \u003ca href=\"https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/803/337/2132956/\">court.\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After several years of litigation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> city ownership of the cross violates the California Constitution’s separation of church and state laws. San Francisco has to find someone to buy the cross or tear it down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The city decides they’re going to sell the land around the cross and the cross and they have to sell it with no conditions,” says Proctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1997, San Francisco settles on a plan to auction off the cross and the little over a third of an acre it sits on. The sale requires any bidder to keep the site open to the public and places restrictions on how many days it can be illuminated.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Three groups come forward in hopes of preserving the cross as a landmark: The Friends of Mount Davidson Conservancy (of which Jacquie Proctor was a member), the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Museum of the City of San Francisco\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Council of \u003ca href=\"https://www.mountdavidsoncross.org/council\">Armenian American Organizations of Northern California\u003c/a>. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Armenian group thought that the cross could become a memorial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most Armenian Americans, including those in the San Francisco Bay Area, are descendants of the few survivors of the Armenian genocide, which was carried out by the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire in 1915,” says \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roxanne Makasdjian, a member of Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Makasdjian says that descendants often built two things in the places where they settled: churches and genocide memorials. The Armenian Council thought a visible symbol like the cross on Mount Davidson could educate the public about this history. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the support of the neighborhood group, who share the goals of preserving the cross and the park, Makasdjian’s group wins the rights to buy the site and the cross for $26,000. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11867479\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11867479\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/RS48320_Armenian-Genocide-Plaque-Closeup-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A plaque at the base of the Mount Davidson Cross marks Armenian Genocide Commemoration Day. (Photo Courtesy: Council of Armenian Americans of Northern California) \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Council of Armenian Americans of Northern California)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, the cross is lit two nights a year, April 24 to commemorate the Armenian genocide and the night before Easter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The annual \u003ca href=\"https://mtdavidson.org/easter-sunrise-service/\">sunrise service\u003c/a> still exists. Now it’s non-denominational, and a few hundred people usually show up. Not quite the same scene as the thousands who appeared in their finery in the 1920s and 1930s.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Proctor is thankful for the sunrise service. Without it, she says, Mount Davidson would look very different today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we didn’t have the sunrise service, we wouldn’t have a park there now. And it would have been covered with houses and buildings, like most of the other hills of San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic canceled the Easter service for the first time since 1923.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco may not be thought of as one of America’s most religious cities these days, but the place is named for St. Francis of Assisi. He’s the patron saint of animals, the environment and the country of Italy, which if you think about the city’s history has turned out to be a pretty apt name. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco has a long tradition of diverse religious practice. One place that hints at this history is on San Francisco’s highest peak, Mount Davidson. Look up and you’ll find a massive concrete cross at the top, one that some of you have been wondering about.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Thollaug: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi, Bay Curious. I’m Julia Thollaug. I grew up in and around San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Montalvo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My name is Phil Montalvo. I’m a native San Franciscan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Thollaug: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’ve always noticed the cross and just wondered why it was there, where it came from.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Montalvo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Growing up in the Outer Mission, Crocker Amazon, the cross was always in view. I never understood when it was constructed or even why it’s still up on Mount Davidson.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Thollaug and Phil Montalvo together: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What’s the deal with the giant cross on the top of Mount Davidson?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today on Bay Curious, we tell the story of how San Francisco ended up with a cross at its highest point. This story first aired in 2021, and we’re sharing it again because, well, there’s an event coming up that makes it sort of noteworthy at this point in time. You’ll see. You’ll see.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price, you’re listening to Be Curious. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the deal with that Mount Davidson cross? We sent KQED producer Suzie Racho to find out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just west of Twin Peaks, rising above a quiet residential neighborhood is Mount Davidson Park. It’s not well-known or well-marked, but once you start walking one of the park’s trails, you’re surrounded by eucalyptus trees, and you start to forget that you’re in the middle of a major city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho in scene:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I’m coming up the trail. I’m a little out of breath, but wow, what an amazing view. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you get to the top, you see two things: a view that stretches all the way to the East Bay and one very big cross. The cross is an imposing sight. It stands at 103 feet tall and 10 feet wide at the base. Made of concrete, it stands in stark contrast to blue sky and the eucalyptus grove that surrounds it. To learn more about how it got here, I went to Mount Davidson’s resident historian.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi, I’m Jackie Proctor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jackie says the cross’s origin story goes back almost 100 years to 1923, to a time when the area was a forest.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A guy named James Decatur, who is an employee of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and followed with the YMCA, hikes through that forest and comes to the top and he sees this incredible view of downtown. And he is just overwhelmed and inspired and he writes this long essay about the experience.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice over for James Decatur: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peace and quiet were so profound that it seemed almost unbelievable that the noise and roar of a great city was only a few minutes behind them. The solitude of the forest conveyed a sense of vastness quite as real as one would experience among the age-old monarchs of the High Sierras.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is inspired then to build a cross to crown the highest point of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur thought it would be a perfect place to hold an Easter sunrise service. Holding religious ceremonies in natural settings was a trend at the time. Jackie says that people were pushing back against the materialism of the Roaring Twenties, reconnecting with the natural and spiritual worlds. So it wasn’t hard to find support for his idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several of Mount Davidson’s trails had already been established by its landowner, a local developer named A.S. Baldwin. Baldwin was already starting to build houses in the surrounding area. He saw the Easter service as a way to introduce more people to the new neighborhoods west of Twin Peaks. So Baldwin not only gives Decatur permission to hold the event, but donates $2,000 to get a 40-foot-tall wooden cross constructed. That’s nearly $31,000 today — a hefty contribution.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">5,000 people hike up that hill in 1923.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The service received enthusiastic backing from city officials, religious leaders and community groups. Boy Scouts camped out the night before and acted as ushers for attendees. The Dean of Grace Cathedral led the service.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">James Decatur thinks, great, this is great. I had no idea 5,000 people would come, so let’s do it again.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decatur raises money for a bigger wooden cross for the service the following year, but it wouldn’t be the last service or the last cross.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first one was just torn down and replaced, and then the second one was burned down, and then, the third one was burnt down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local newspapers report the fires as accidental or vandalism by bored teenagers. Each temporary cross was replaced as the now annual service got more and more popular, drawing tens of thousands of people.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People are dressed up. They’re wearing their fancy shoes and their fur coats and everything. It was like, you know, this incredible civic event.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it was still being held on private land, land that was beginning to fill with newly constructed houses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The encroaching development alarmed nature lover Maddie Brown. In 1926, she led a campaign to urge the city to buy 25 acres on Mount Davidson to create a public park. Bolstered by women’s groups across the city, the three-year campaign was a success. She even won the support of Baldwin’s widow, Emma. Who donated the six acres at the peak. In 1929, Mount Davidson became a city park. That put the cross on public land. Supporters eagerly began planning for a more permanent cross, one that couldn’t be blown or burned down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor reading: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And before 32,000 people at the 1932 Sunrise event, Governor Roth dedicated the cornerstone of the new 103-foot-high concrete cross.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took two years and $20,000 to build the enormous concrete cross. That’s almost $400,000 today. And by the time it was done, the country was in the Great Depression. But the people still wanted a grand celebration. 12 huge floodlights were installed on poles surrounding the cross. Maddy Brown envisioned a dramatic moment when the lights would be switched on for the first time. She wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, asking him to do the honors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice Over: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It seems most appropriate that the President, who has brought light into many a darkened American home, and who through his new deal has instilled the principles of the Golden Rule into American business, should take part in this cross-lighting ceremony.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western Union donates their time and their telegraph lines, providing a coast-to-coast hookup between Washington, D.C. And San Francisco. And on the evening of March 24, 1934, President Roosevelt pressed the button that sent electricity across the country to light the Mount Davidson Cross. That Easter, 50,000 people journeyed to the monument. The cross became a San Francisco landmark. It made an appearance in the Clint Eastwood movie Dirty Harry in 1971. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dirty Harry clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Now turn, face the cross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But had largely stayed out of the news until the early 90s. That’s when the issue of a cross on public land becomes a lawsuit. Groups concerned about the separation of church and state, including the ACLU, sue the city. After several years, the courts rule that city ownership of the cross violates the California Constitution’s separation of church and state. San Francisco has to find someone to buy the cross or tear it down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So then the city decides they’re going to sell the land around the cross, and the cross. And they have to sell it with no conditions. So whoever buys it can tear the cross down, or they can…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our historian Jackie, a longtime Mount Davidson resident, remembers the controversy vividly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Concerned about that. I’m not a religious person. I sort of just saw the cross as like a relic of the depression, another public works project.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1997, San Francisco settles on a plan to auction off the cross and the little over a third of an acre that it sits on. They require any bidder to keep the site open to the public. The city sets the opening bid at $20,000. Three groups are interested in buying and preserving the cross, the Friends of Mount Davidson Conservancy, of which Jackie was a member, the Museum of the City of San Francisco, and the Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roxanne Makassian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most Armenian Americans, including those in the San Francisco Bay Area, are descendants of the few survivors of the Armenian Genocide, which was carried out by the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roxanne Makassian is a member of the Armenian Council. She says that descendants often build two things in the places where they settled, churches and a genocide memorial.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roxanne Makassian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Armenians said, you know, this would make a great monument for us to remember the Armenian genocide and maybe to educate locals about it.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the auction, the museum doesn’t go past their opening bid of $20,000. The neighborhood group bids $25,000, but supports the Armenian group after agreeing they both want the same things for the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We thought, well, they seem like they really care about maintaining the area for public access. That was our goal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Suzie Racho: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today the cross is lit two nights a year, April 24th to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, and the night before Easter. The annual sunrise service still exists, today it’s non-denominational, and a few hundred people usually show up. Not quite the same scene as the thousands who appeared in their finery in the 1920s and 30s. But Jackie says, without the sunrise service Mount Davidson would look very different today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jackie Proctor: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, if we didn’t have the sunrise service, we wouldn’t have a park there now. And it would have been covered with houses and buildings or everything like most of the other hills of San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year’s sunrise service takes place at 6.30 a.m on April 5th. Find details at mtdavidson.org. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Have you signed up for the Bay Curious newsletter yet? It’s full of Bay Area trivia, more answers to your questions, and usually some cool photos. Sign up at baycurious.org slash newsletter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode was produced by Suzie Racho, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Bay Curious is a production of member-supported KQED in San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is pledge season, and that means we need your support. Give any amount that works for your budget at kqed.org slash donate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Brice, have a great day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "new-almaden-the-mercury-mine-that-built-a-boomtown-south-of-san-jose",
"title": "New Almaden: The Mercury Mine That Built a Boomtown South of San José",
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"headTitle": "New Almaden: The Mercury Mine That Built a Boomtown South of San José | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\"> the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visitors to the Almaden Quicksilver County Park may well wonder what the heck accounts for the name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who or what was Almaden? What is quicksilver? Why is there a 27-room Classical Revival mansion nestled in more than 4,000 acres in the hills south of San José? So many questions!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It beggars belief today, given how bucolic the park is, but New Almaden once hummed with a busy mining operation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its heyday, 1,800 miners and their families lived here, primarily in a couple of self-contained villages. Imagine churches, saloons, a school, a post office, and more. Now there are just a few moldering cemeteries and the old mine supervisor’s mansion, which has been turned into a \u003ca href=\"https://parks.santaclaracounty.gov/learn/visit-historic-sites/almaden-quicksilver-mining-museum\">museum\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How quicksilver is used to extract gold\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before we get to our audience questions sent in about Almaden Quicksilver Park, let’s get a handle on why this place was once so valuable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The South Bay is full of cinnabar, a bright red rock the color of a stop sign. It formed 10 million to 12 million years ago during a time of intense volcanic and hydrothermal activity. Chemically speaking, cinnabar is mercury bonded to sulfur, and mercury is the more proper name for the silver-colored quicksilver. To get mercury out of cinnabar, you heat the rocks up and the mercury essentially sweats out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Exhibits at The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum, south of San José, on Oct. 27, 2025, paint a picture of the dangerous but lucrative craft of mining quicksilver from cinnabar. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mercury was super important during the Gold Rush, because in its liquid form, gold and silver miners used the quicksilver to extract precious metals from the crushed rocks they were trapped in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The mercury kind of grabs on to any precious metal,” said Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation. “All the sand and other waste rock is left alone and left behind. And then you have a kinda of silver putty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miners call that an amalgam. You heat that amalgam to 1,076 degrees Fahrenheit, the mercury vapor goes off into the air, leaving you with your precious metal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It usually looks like spun sugar,” Will said. “It has all these holes where the mercury had been. So then you can take that spun gold, as we call it, and so you can make nuggets or even bars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How a Mexican cavalry officer discovered the cinnabar deposit in 1845\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Just a few years prior to the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento in 1848, California was a Mexican territory. The Mexican government sent a cavalry officer named Andrés Castillero to catalogue strategic assets, and as was the practice at that time, officers and citizens could claim mines they discovered for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castillero was traveling in the South Bay when he noticed a fiery red-orange paint local Indigenous people were using on the walls of nearby missions. Castillero knew exactly what he was looking at. He knew that red paint had to have come from cinnabar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062440\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062440\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum features different kinds of ore in a display on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the time, the world’s main source of mercury was in Almadén, Spain. Spain controlled the supply, which meant they could charge what they wanted. Castillero, just from reading the newspapers, would have understood he was looking at a potential fortune in the hills south of San José.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As you can imagine, it wasn’t long after Castillero discovered the cinnabar that other people wanted to take the mine from him, especially after the Gold Rush kicked off in 1848 and sent demand for quicksilver soaring. Multiple parties, including private investors and mining companies, tried to claim the land, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1859, the Supreme Court recognized Castillero’s claim, but the mine’s ownership remained split among several parties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then in 1861, the U.S. Civil War started. During the Civil War, the federal government briefly attempted to seize the New Almaden mine because mercury was essential for extracting gold used to finance the Union war effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is where we get to Bay Curious listener Kiera O’Hara’s question:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>What was the Civil War history behind the Almaden mercury mine in San José? I remember hearing Abraham Lincoln was involved?! \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At the museum, parks program coordinator Will told of an aide to President Lincoln who thought, “There’s enough questionability about who owns this land, so maybe it’s owned by the U.S. government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, the quicksilver mine is an obvious money maker, and war is expensive. California gold was vital to the Union’s war effort, providing more than $170 million (roughly $7 billion today), in gold mostly, that stabilized the federal currency and paid for roughly 10% of things like weapons and supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062439\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062439\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum features photos of village life for quicksilver miners and their families during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This aide was thinking something along the lines of, “Why not claim the New Almaden mine and its profits for the Union side of the Civil War?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so he came down with a marshal and even a cavalry behind him to say, ‘Lincoln’s going to take over this mine. And, you know, you’re supposed to just surrender it to me.’” Will said. The mine manager at the time, John Young, rallied the miners working for him by saying something akin to “If they take over the mines, you’re going to be out of a job. So come down with, you know, your best rifles and your guns and, you know, help me defend this,” Will said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young also fired off urgent telegraphs, not only to other mine operators across California, but to a former New Almaden manager who happened to be working inside Lincoln’s administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young warned the well-placed friend that the federal government was about to set off a destructive chain reaction across the West, at a moment when the Union depended on the support of California’s gold miners. There were people in the state who sympathized with the South during the Civil War. So it would be really, really dumb to piss off Union supporters and drive them into the waiting arms of the Confederacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Will thinks it’s possible Lincoln didn’t even know this whole fight was going on, given how distracted he was with the Civil War. Whatever the case, John Young’s quick thinking stopped a bright idea from a government man that could have thrown California and the rest of the Western U.S. to the Confederate side.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Has the mercury in San José caused environmental problems?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You don’t have to be a geologist to know mercury is a neurotoxin and an environmental hazard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the mercury dug up at New Almaden \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/quest/17411/mercury-in-the-bay-part-1\">made its way downstream\u003c/a>, into the San Francisco Bay. Mining continued into the 1970s, and in 2002, scientists identified this mine as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/tracking-a-toxic-trail-long-closed-mine-2709557.php\">single largest source\u003c/a> of mercury in the Bay, making the fish unsafe to eat for humans and birds alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062445\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062445\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A statue of a miner is featured at The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum south of San Joséon Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When we acquired the land in the mid-1970s, there was quite a bit of mercury contamination of the land,” Will said. “Under the furnace yards were pools of mercury. They had paved roads with cinnabar waste rock, which we call calcines. They had just dumped it over the sides of the hills. They had dumped it into the creeks. And so we have been remediating it ever since.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local governments, including Santa Clara County, purchased part of the mine property for parkland, found themselves partially on the hook for a multimillion-dollar \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/dtsc-oversees-environmental-cleanup-of-mercury-contaminated-park/\">cleanup effort\u003c/a> to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. They did get help from the state and federal agencies. Additional work and monitoring continue, but authorities say it’s safe to picnic, hike, ride horses and otherwise recreate.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Is it safe to eat fish from the San Francisco Bay?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As recently as 10 years ago, two years into the big effort to clean up the Bay, \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/cpwQ5OFIZRQ?si=SP5B4deyax67I7iR&t=356\">KQED explored this question\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/cpwQ5OFIZRQ?si=SP5B4deyax67I7iR&t=356 \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because mercury converts into methylmercury, which bioaccumulates up the food chain, fish, especially large fish, can carry high levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Bay is slowly cleaning itself, washing 3,100 pounds a year out to sea, but because so much has built up over time, it needs a helping hand,” the story said. “At a minimum, three generations will be impacted by the potent and long-lasting poison still lingering in the Bay mud. It may take more than 100 years for the Bay to recover.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2023, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment recommended that children and women of childbearing age steer clear of fish like \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/downloads/advisories/fishadvisorysfbayreport2023.pdf\">sharks and striped bass\u003c/a>. Ocean-going fish like Chinook salmon would be the safer bet.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Has Cornish culture survived in the region?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Our final listener question comes from Andrew Long, who lives all the way over in Cornwall, on the far southwest tip of England. He came to the Bay Area some time ago to visit a relative and had some questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m Cornish from the U.K. I know of the Cornish Camp at the Alamaden Quicksilver Mine. It would be great to know if Cornish culture survived, and is growing, like it is here with our language,” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062446\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062446\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum features a Cinnabar display south of San Joséon Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Long filled me in on the long, rich history of mining tin and copper in Cornwall, which extends all the way back to the early Bronze Age, circa 2200 B.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of you may be thinking about the British TV series “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A0U6kQNCN0\">Poldark,\u003c/a>” and you’d be in the right territory. There were more than 300 active mines in Cornwall in the 1860s. But by the late 19th century, the industry had largely collapsed, and Cornish miners left in droves, traveling across the world to places like New Almaden in search of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a saying, ‘If you go to the bottom of a mine, a hole in the ground, at the bottom of it you’ll find a Cornishman,’” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They took a bit of Cornwall with them and left cultural evidence everywhere they went. In central Mexico, they introduced the Cornish pasty, which became, in Spanish, the paste. Over in \u003ca href=\"https://califcornishcousins.org/\">Grass Valley\u003c/a>, home to a lot of gold mining back in the day, there’s an annual Cornish Christmas Celebration. But in the South Bay, the history’s more subtle, almost hiding in plain sight. Like cinnabar.[aside postID=news_12076973 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-07-KQED.jpg']“I just did a very cursory search of your phone book in San José, and I saw a scattering of Cornish surnames,” Long said. Also on his trip to San José not too long ago, he spotted the \u003ca href=\"https://www.vta.org/go/stations/ohlone-chynoweth\">Ohlone-Chynoweth\u003c/a> station sign for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chynoweth in Cornish means ‘new house.’ So that got me thinking, well, there’s got to be a reason you have a Cornish name for a Cornish railway station in South San José,” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two most prominent settlements at New Almaden were Spanish Town and English Camp, but that was really Cornish Camp, if you ask him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 1960 documentary collaboration entitled \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/casjhsj_000081\">Quicksilver!\u003c/a> noted that, even then, in the mid-20th century, the mine was fading into the mists of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The international flavor of the old mining camp is shown by the names that survive. Manyales. Danielson. Castro. At one time, 26 nationalities were represented in New Almaden, and they helped fill two other cemeteries up on Mine Hill, which have long since been swept bare by souvenir hunters and the ravages of time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cornish culture has largely faded into the rearview mirror in the South Bay, but Long has an idea related to his membership in a Cornish chorus. The Cornish are big singers. Here’s Barrett’s Privateers singing \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/60i1cJcq1fCNgolbUc67Xn\">The Miners’ Anthem\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long wants to take the band on tour to the South Bay, to reintroduce locals to our Cornish connections and light a fire under our interest in the history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe to link up with a museum and do some promotional singing in shopping malls and that sort of stuff, to give people an idea that where they’re living has a history that is maybe something they never knew about,” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>This story starts with three things that don’t seem like they belong together: Cornish miners, mercury poisoning, and Abraham Lincoln. They are, however, all connected to a mine in the foothills south of San José. We’re talking about the Almaden Quicksilver mine. Its glory days are long gone, and so Bay Curious gets a lot of questions about it. KQED’s Rachael Myrow knows all sorts of things South Bay, so we called her up to answer some of your questions. Hey, Rachael!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Hey, Olivia!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So the Almaden Quicksilver mine sits in what is today Almaden Quicksilver County Park. I visited some years ago, and I remember a sprawling park with rolling hills. I think I went in the summertime, so it was very, very, very hot and quite dry. But I can’t say I remember the mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> That could be because there’s not a lot of the mining apparatus left. But in its heyday, in the 19th century, 1,800 miners and their families populated these hills, primarily in a couple of self-contained villages. Imagine churches, saloons, a school, and much, much more. Now there’s just a few moldering cemeteries …and the old mine supervisor’s mansion, which has been turned into a museum, with really restricted hours. I’m going to guess it was closed when you hiked or drove past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Hmmm, yeah. Must have been. Now, over the years on Bay Curious, we have done quite a few stories that touch on the California Gold Rush, less about the Silver Rushes that followed, but really nothing about quicksilver. To be honest, I don’t even really know what quicksilver is …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>To be honest, Olivia, neither did I before reporting this story out. But mining it was a lucrative hustle during the Gold Rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>OK, well, before we dive in, then, could we do a little quicksilver 101?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Of course! The South Bay is full of \u003cem>cinnabar\u003c/em>, a bright red rock the color of a stop sign. It formed 10-12 million years ago during a time of intense volcanic and hydrothermal activity. Chemically speaking, cinnabar is mercury bonded to sulfur. Mercury being a more proper name for quicksilver, by the way …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>This is really taking me back to high school chemistry class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> As it should! And what do you remember about mercury, Olivia?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> OK, well, it’s a liquid at room temperature, and that’s unusual for a metal. And it’s a silvery color…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> You’ve got it! To get mercury out of cinnabar, you heat the rocks up and the mercury essentially sweats out. Now, mercury was super important during the Gold Rush because it was used by gold and silver miners to extract the precious metals from the crushed rocks they were trapped in. Here’s Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation, to explain further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>So you pour your mercury over that sand. The mercury kind of grabs onto any precious metal. All the sand and other waste rock is left alone and left behind. And then you have — uh — looks kinda of like a silver putty. So it’s called an amalgam, and then you heat that amalgam to 1,076 degrees, the mercury vapor goes off into the air, and then you are left with your precious metal, which could be gold or silver. It usually looks like spun sugar, almost. It has all these holes where the mercury had been. So then you can take that spun gold, as we call it, and so you can make nuggets or even bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> All right, I get it. And this stuff must have been in high demand after the Gold Rush kicked off in 1848. I imagine?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Exactly. In 1845, California is still a Mexican territory. A Mexican cavalry officer named Andrés Castillero was riding through these foothills when he noticed something unusual — a fiery red-orange paint that local Indigenous people were using on the walls of nearby missions. Castillero knew exactly what he was looking at. He knew that red paint had to have come from cinnabar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> But how did he know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> At the time Castillero made his discovery, the world’s main source of mercury was in Almadén, Spain. So Spain controlled the supply. Which meant they could charge what they wanted. Castillero, just from reading the newspapers, would have understood mercury’s importance in economic terms. So when Castillero saw that cinnabar in 1845, he understood he was looking at a potential fortune.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What was Castillero doing in San José anyway?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>He was sent by the Mexican government to catalogue strategic assets. Now, under Mexican law, officers and citizens could claim mines they discovered for themselves. So when Castillero saw the cinnabar, his life changed forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And this brings us to one of our Almaden Quicksilver listener questions! It comes from Kiera O’Hara of Santa Clara, who joined you, Rachael, on her \u003cem>second\u003c/em> tour of the Almaden Quicksilver Museum. Second, because she first visited when she was seven or eight years old. The museum is a regular pit stop for South Bay school children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kiera O’Hara:\u003c/strong> What was the Civil War history behind the Almaden mercury mine in San José? I remember hearing Abraham Lincoln was involved?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The museum sits in the Casa Grande, or big house, a 27-room Classical Revival mansion the mine’s superintendents used to live in. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long after Castillero discovered the cinnabar that other people wanted to take the mine from him, especially after the Gold Rush sent demand for quicksilver soaring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So multiple parties, including private investors and mining companies, tried to claim the land, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1859, SCOTUS recognized Castillero’s claim, but the mine’s ownership remained split among several parties. And then in 1861, the U.S. Civil War started. And this is where we get to Kiera’s question, about whether Abraham Lincoln was involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>There was an aide to President Lincoln who went, “Oh, there’s enough questionability about who owns this land, so maybe it’s owned by the U.S. government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Again, the quicksilver mine is an obvious money maker, and war is expensive. California gold was vital to the Union’s war effort, providing more than $170 million dollars in gold mostly that stabilized the federal currency and paid for roughly 10% of things like weapons and supplies. For those of you wondering, $170 million dollars in the 1860s would be worth roughly $7 billion dollars today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So this aide is thinking, ‘Why not claim the New Almaden mine and its profits for the Union side of the U.S. civil war?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>And so he came down with a marshal and even a cavalry behind him to say, “Lincoln’s going to take over this mine. And, you know, you’re supposed to just surrender it to me, the aide.” Then, mine manager, John Young, said ‘no!’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>So, just put yourself in John Young’s shoes. Who the heck is this aide showing up all of a sudden with troops behind him and a half-baked plan to take over the mine, because says who?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>He got the miners and said, “If they take over the mines, you’re going to be out of a job. So come down with, you know, your best rifles and your guns and, you know, help me defend this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>First, Young rallies his workers. And he fires off urgent telegraphs, not only to other mine operators across California, but to a former Almaden manager who now sits inside Lincoln’s administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>And said, “This is what’s happening out here. If he takes this mine, there’s the potential that he could take over every mine in California and the western United States.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Young was essentially saying, if the federal government seizes this mine, it could set off a chain reaction across the West, and at a moment when the Union depends on the support of California’s gold miners. There \u003cem>were\u003c/em> people in the state who sympathized with the South during the Civil War. So it would be really, really dumb to piss off Union supporters and drive them into the waiting arms of the Confederacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kiera, our question asker, asked if Abraham Lincoln was involved. Lynda told us it’s possible Lincoln didn’t even know this whole fight was going on, given how distracted he was with the Civil War. Whatever the case, John Young’s quick thinking — his calculated warning framed as patriotism — stopped a bright idea from a government man that could have thrown California and the rest of the Western U.S. to the Confederate side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>When we return, we dig in on the environmental impacts of this mine. Plus a listener question about the miners who once worked there. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Sponsor Message\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So we’ve learned that mercury comes from cinnabar. It was super valuable during the Gold Rush because it helps separate gold from ore. And there was a big kerfuffle over the ownership of the Almaden mine that could have changed California’s posture during the Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, I want to touch on the environment … because you don’t have to be a geologist to know mercury is a neurotoxin, and a huge environmental hazard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Yes. Unfortunately, some of that mercury made its way downstream, into the San Francisco Bay. In 2002 — not that long ago — scientists identified \u003cem>this\u003c/em> mine as the single largest source of mercury in the Bay, making the fish unsafe to eat for humans and birds alike. I asked Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation, about this very question …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>I can tell you a little bit about it. Yeah. When we acquired the land in the mid-70s, 1970s, there was quite a bit of mercury contamination of the land. Under the furnace yards was, you know, pools of mercury. They had paved roads with cinnabar waste rock, which we call calcines. They had just dumped it over the sides of the hills. They had dumped it into the creeks. And so we have been remediating it ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Local governments, including Santa Clara County, which purchased part of the mine property for parkland, found themselves partially on the hook for a multimillion-dollar cleanup effort to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. They did, I should mention, get help from the state and the feds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Is it safe for us to be in this park?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Additional work and monitoring continues, but authorities say it’s safe to picnic, hike, ride horses, et cetera.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And what about the fish in the Bay, can we eat them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Errr, that’s a different story, more complicated. As recently as 10 years ago, 2 years then into the big effort to clean up the Bay, KQED explored this very question. Let’s just say, they were still describing it as problematic, not just because of the direct legacy from mining days, but from stormwater runoff and air pollution. Because mercury converts into methylmercury, which bioaccumulates up the food chain, fish … especially large fish … can carry high levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip from documentary: \u003c/strong>The Bay is slowly cleaning itself, washing 3,100 pounds a year out to sea, but because so much has built up over time, it needs a helping hand. … At a minimum, three generations will be impacted by the potent and long-lasting poison still lingering in the Bay mud.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So that old adage, “Don’t fish off the pier,” sounds like it remains true today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Well, the longer-lived, big fish, especially. In 2023, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA, recommended children and women of childbearing age steer clear of fish like sharks and striped bass. Ocean-going fish like Chinook salmon would be the safer bet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Alright, so that’s two questions dispatched. Let’s move on to question number three. It comes from Andrew Long, who lives all the way over in Cornwall — the county at the far south west tip of England. He came to the Bay Area some time ago to visit a relative and had some questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>I’m Cornish from the U.K. I know of the Cornish Camp at the Alamaden Quicksilver Mine. It would be great to know if Cornish culture survived, and is growing, like it is here with our language.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Andrew filled me in on the long, rich history of mining tin and copper in Cornwall, which extends all the way back to the early Bronze Age, circa 2200 BC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of you may be thinking about the British TV series “Poldark,” and you’d be in the right territory. There were more than 300 active mines in Cornwall in the 1860s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the late 19th century, the industry had largely collapsed … and Cornish miners left in droves, traveling across the world to places like New Almaden in search of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>So there is a saying, if you go to the bottom of a mine, a hole in the ground, at the bottom of it you’ll find a Cornishman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>They took a bit of Cornwall with them and left cultural evidence everywhere they went. In central Mexico, they introduced the Cornish \u003cem>pasty\u003c/em>, which became, in Spanish, the \u003cem>paste. \u003c/em>Over in Grass Valley, home to a lot of gold mining back in the day, there’s an annual Cornish Christmas Celebration. But in the South Bay, the history’s more subtle, almost hiding in plain sight. Like cinnabar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>I just did a very cursory search of your — the phone book in San José — and I saw a scattering of Cornish surnames.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Cornish surnames like “Hicks” and even “Cornish.” Also, on his trip to San José, not too long ago, and he spotted a curious station sign for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>There’s a station called Ohlone-Chy-NO-weth. Or CHIN-oh-weth, as you call it. Well, Chynoweth in Cornish means “new house.” So that got me thinking, well, there’s got to be a reason you have a Cornish name for a Cornish railway station in South San José.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The two most prominent settlements at New Almaden were Spanish Town and English Camp, but that was really Cornish Camp, if you ask Andrew. Today, little remains of the area’s once-bustling village life. Aside from the large mansion that now houses the museum, the only hints are the nonnative cypress and poplar trees, and the spreading vinca ground cover … green survivors of gardens long since forgotten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a bit from a 1960 documentary collaboration I dug up between the Museum and Channel 11 News.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip from documentary: \u003c/strong>The international flavor of the old mining camp is shown by the names that survive. Manyales. Danielson. Castro. At one time, 26 nationalities were represented in New Almaden, and they helped fill two other cemeteries up on Mine Hill, that have long since been swept bare by souvenir hunters and the ravages of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Cornish culture has largely faded into the rearview mirror in the South Bay, but Andrew has an idea, related to his membership in a Cornish chorus called Barrett’s Privateers. The Cornish are big singers. Here’s Barrett’s Privateers singing The Miners’ Anthem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip of The Miners Anthem\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Andrew wants to take the band on tour to the South Bay, to reintroduce locals to our Cornish connections and light a fire under our interest in the history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>Maybe to link up with the museum and do some promotional singing in shopping malls and that sort of stuff, to give people an idea that where they’re living has a history that is maybe something they never knew about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Thanks to Andrew, Kiera and to you, Rachael.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> My pleasure, as always!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It’s the start of a month, and that means a new voting round is up at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>. Let’s hear your choices …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voice 1: Why is there a taco truck on every corner in San Francisco and San Mateo? They seem to have sprung up in the last year or two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voice 2: Why are there huge fans over the tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voice 3: What’s the story with the abandoned cop car in front of the airport off 101? Everyone knows no actual cop is in it, so what’s the scoop with leaving it there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Tally a vote for your favorite of those questions at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve still got space in our upcoming Bay Curious Trivia game. Snag some tickets for you and your friends at KQED.org/live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. With extra support from Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Thanks for listening!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "New Almaden: The Mercury Mine That Built a Boomtown South of San José | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\"> the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visitors to the Almaden Quicksilver County Park may well wonder what the heck accounts for the name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who or what was Almaden? What is quicksilver? Why is there a 27-room Classical Revival mansion nestled in more than 4,000 acres in the hills south of San José? So many questions!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It beggars belief today, given how bucolic the park is, but New Almaden once hummed with a busy mining operation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its heyday, 1,800 miners and their families lived here, primarily in a couple of self-contained villages. Imagine churches, saloons, a school, a post office, and more. Now there are just a few moldering cemeteries and the old mine supervisor’s mansion, which has been turned into a \u003ca href=\"https://parks.santaclaracounty.gov/learn/visit-historic-sites/almaden-quicksilver-mining-museum\">museum\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How quicksilver is used to extract gold\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before we get to our audience questions sent in about Almaden Quicksilver Park, let’s get a handle on why this place was once so valuable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The South Bay is full of cinnabar, a bright red rock the color of a stop sign. It formed 10 million to 12 million years ago during a time of intense volcanic and hydrothermal activity. Chemically speaking, cinnabar is mercury bonded to sulfur, and mercury is the more proper name for the silver-colored quicksilver. To get mercury out of cinnabar, you heat the rocks up and the mercury essentially sweats out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00307_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Exhibits at The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum, south of San José, on Oct. 27, 2025, paint a picture of the dangerous but lucrative craft of mining quicksilver from cinnabar. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mercury was super important during the Gold Rush, because in its liquid form, gold and silver miners used the quicksilver to extract precious metals from the crushed rocks they were trapped in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The mercury kind of grabs on to any precious metal,” said Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation. “All the sand and other waste rock is left alone and left behind. And then you have a kinda of silver putty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miners call that an amalgam. You heat that amalgam to 1,076 degrees Fahrenheit, the mercury vapor goes off into the air, leaving you with your precious metal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It usually looks like spun sugar,” Will said. “It has all these holes where the mercury had been. So then you can take that spun gold, as we call it, and so you can make nuggets or even bars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How a Mexican cavalry officer discovered the cinnabar deposit in 1845\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Just a few years prior to the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento in 1848, California was a Mexican territory. The Mexican government sent a cavalry officer named Andrés Castillero to catalogue strategic assets, and as was the practice at that time, officers and citizens could claim mines they discovered for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castillero was traveling in the South Bay when he noticed a fiery red-orange paint local Indigenous people were using on the walls of nearby missions. Castillero knew exactly what he was looking at. He knew that red paint had to have come from cinnabar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062440\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062440\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00156_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum features different kinds of ore in a display on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the time, the world’s main source of mercury was in Almadén, Spain. Spain controlled the supply, which meant they could charge what they wanted. Castillero, just from reading the newspapers, would have understood he was looking at a potential fortune in the hills south of San José.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As you can imagine, it wasn’t long after Castillero discovered the cinnabar that other people wanted to take the mine from him, especially after the Gold Rush kicked off in 1848 and sent demand for quicksilver soaring. Multiple parties, including private investors and mining companies, tried to claim the land, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1859, the Supreme Court recognized Castillero’s claim, but the mine’s ownership remained split among several parties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then in 1861, the U.S. Civil War started. During the Civil War, the federal government briefly attempted to seize the New Almaden mine because mercury was essential for extracting gold used to finance the Union war effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is where we get to Bay Curious listener Kiera O’Hara’s question:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>What was the Civil War history behind the Almaden mercury mine in San José? I remember hearing Abraham Lincoln was involved?! \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At the museum, parks program coordinator Will told of an aide to President Lincoln who thought, “There’s enough questionability about who owns this land, so maybe it’s owned by the U.S. government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, the quicksilver mine is an obvious money maker, and war is expensive. California gold was vital to the Union’s war effort, providing more than $170 million (roughly $7 billion today), in gold mostly, that stabilized the federal currency and paid for roughly 10% of things like weapons and supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062439\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062439\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00110_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum features photos of village life for quicksilver miners and their families during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This aide was thinking something along the lines of, “Why not claim the New Almaden mine and its profits for the Union side of the Civil War?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so he came down with a marshal and even a cavalry behind him to say, ‘Lincoln’s going to take over this mine. And, you know, you’re supposed to just surrender it to me.’” Will said. The mine manager at the time, John Young, rallied the miners working for him by saying something akin to “If they take over the mines, you’re going to be out of a job. So come down with, you know, your best rifles and your guns and, you know, help me defend this,” Will said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young also fired off urgent telegraphs, not only to other mine operators across California, but to a former New Almaden manager who happened to be working inside Lincoln’s administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young warned the well-placed friend that the federal government was about to set off a destructive chain reaction across the West, at a moment when the Union depended on the support of California’s gold miners. There were people in the state who sympathized with the South during the Civil War. So it would be really, really dumb to piss off Union supporters and drive them into the waiting arms of the Confederacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Will thinks it’s possible Lincoln didn’t even know this whole fight was going on, given how distracted he was with the Civil War. Whatever the case, John Young’s quick thinking stopped a bright idea from a government man that could have thrown California and the rest of the Western U.S. to the Confederate side.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Has the mercury in San José caused environmental problems?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You don’t have to be a geologist to know mercury is a neurotoxin and an environmental hazard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the mercury dug up at New Almaden \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/quest/17411/mercury-in-the-bay-part-1\">made its way downstream\u003c/a>, into the San Francisco Bay. Mining continued into the 1970s, and in 2002, scientists identified this mine as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/tracking-a-toxic-trail-long-closed-mine-2709557.php\">single largest source\u003c/a> of mercury in the Bay, making the fish unsafe to eat for humans and birds alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062445\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062445\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00255_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A statue of a miner is featured at The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum south of San Joséon Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When we acquired the land in the mid-1970s, there was quite a bit of mercury contamination of the land,” Will said. “Under the furnace yards were pools of mercury. They had paved roads with cinnabar waste rock, which we call calcines. They had just dumped it over the sides of the hills. They had dumped it into the creeks. And so we have been remediating it ever since.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local governments, including Santa Clara County, purchased part of the mine property for parkland, found themselves partially on the hook for a multimillion-dollar \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/dtsc-oversees-environmental-cleanup-of-mercury-contaminated-park/\">cleanup effort\u003c/a> to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. They did get help from the state and federal agencies. Additional work and monitoring continue, but authorities say it’s safe to picnic, hike, ride horses and otherwise recreate.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Is it safe to eat fish from the San Francisco Bay?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As recently as 10 years ago, two years into the big effort to clean up the Bay, \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/cpwQ5OFIZRQ?si=SP5B4deyax67I7iR&t=356\">KQED explored this question\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/cpwQ5OFIZRQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/cpwQ5OFIZRQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Because mercury converts into methylmercury, which bioaccumulates up the food chain, fish, especially large fish, can carry high levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Bay is slowly cleaning itself, washing 3,100 pounds a year out to sea, but because so much has built up over time, it needs a helping hand,” the story said. “At a minimum, three generations will be impacted by the potent and long-lasting poison still lingering in the Bay mud. It may take more than 100 years for the Bay to recover.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2023, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment recommended that children and women of childbearing age steer clear of fish like \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/downloads/advisories/fishadvisorysfbayreport2023.pdf\">sharks and striped bass\u003c/a>. Ocean-going fish like Chinook salmon would be the safer bet.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Has Cornish culture survived in the region?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Our final listener question comes from Andrew Long, who lives all the way over in Cornwall, on the far southwest tip of England. He came to the Bay Area some time ago to visit a relative and had some questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m Cornish from the U.K. I know of the Cornish Camp at the Alamaden Quicksilver Mine. It would be great to know if Cornish culture survived, and is growing, like it is here with our language,” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062446\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062446\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-ALMADENQUICKSILVER00296_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum features a Cinnabar display south of San Joséon Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Long filled me in on the long, rich history of mining tin and copper in Cornwall, which extends all the way back to the early Bronze Age, circa 2200 B.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of you may be thinking about the British TV series “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A0U6kQNCN0\">Poldark,\u003c/a>” and you’d be in the right territory. There were more than 300 active mines in Cornwall in the 1860s. But by the late 19th century, the industry had largely collapsed, and Cornish miners left in droves, traveling across the world to places like New Almaden in search of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a saying, ‘If you go to the bottom of a mine, a hole in the ground, at the bottom of it you’ll find a Cornishman,’” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They took a bit of Cornwall with them and left cultural evidence everywhere they went. In central Mexico, they introduced the Cornish pasty, which became, in Spanish, the paste. Over in \u003ca href=\"https://califcornishcousins.org/\">Grass Valley\u003c/a>, home to a lot of gold mining back in the day, there’s an annual Cornish Christmas Celebration. But in the South Bay, the history’s more subtle, almost hiding in plain sight. Like cinnabar.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I just did a very cursory search of your phone book in San José, and I saw a scattering of Cornish surnames,” Long said. Also on his trip to San José not too long ago, he spotted the \u003ca href=\"https://www.vta.org/go/stations/ohlone-chynoweth\">Ohlone-Chynoweth\u003c/a> station sign for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chynoweth in Cornish means ‘new house.’ So that got me thinking, well, there’s got to be a reason you have a Cornish name for a Cornish railway station in South San José,” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two most prominent settlements at New Almaden were Spanish Town and English Camp, but that was really Cornish Camp, if you ask him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 1960 documentary collaboration entitled \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/casjhsj_000081\">Quicksilver!\u003c/a> noted that, even then, in the mid-20th century, the mine was fading into the mists of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The international flavor of the old mining camp is shown by the names that survive. Manyales. Danielson. Castro. At one time, 26 nationalities were represented in New Almaden, and they helped fill two other cemeteries up on Mine Hill, which have long since been swept bare by souvenir hunters and the ravages of time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cornish culture has largely faded into the rearview mirror in the South Bay, but Long has an idea related to his membership in a Cornish chorus. The Cornish are big singers. Here’s Barrett’s Privateers singing \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/60i1cJcq1fCNgolbUc67Xn\">The Miners’ Anthem\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long wants to take the band on tour to the South Bay, to reintroduce locals to our Cornish connections and light a fire under our interest in the history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe to link up with a museum and do some promotional singing in shopping malls and that sort of stuff, to give people an idea that where they’re living has a history that is maybe something they never knew about,” Long said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>This story starts with three things that don’t seem like they belong together: Cornish miners, mercury poisoning, and Abraham Lincoln. They are, however, all connected to a mine in the foothills south of San José. We’re talking about the Almaden Quicksilver mine. Its glory days are long gone, and so Bay Curious gets a lot of questions about it. KQED’s Rachael Myrow knows all sorts of things South Bay, so we called her up to answer some of your questions. Hey, Rachael!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Hey, Olivia!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So the Almaden Quicksilver mine sits in what is today Almaden Quicksilver County Park. I visited some years ago, and I remember a sprawling park with rolling hills. I think I went in the summertime, so it was very, very, very hot and quite dry. But I can’t say I remember the mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> That could be because there’s not a lot of the mining apparatus left. But in its heyday, in the 19th century, 1,800 miners and their families populated these hills, primarily in a couple of self-contained villages. Imagine churches, saloons, a school, and much, much more. Now there’s just a few moldering cemeteries …and the old mine supervisor’s mansion, which has been turned into a museum, with really restricted hours. I’m going to guess it was closed when you hiked or drove past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Hmmm, yeah. Must have been. Now, over the years on Bay Curious, we have done quite a few stories that touch on the California Gold Rush, less about the Silver Rushes that followed, but really nothing about quicksilver. To be honest, I don’t even really know what quicksilver is …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>To be honest, Olivia, neither did I before reporting this story out. But mining it was a lucrative hustle during the Gold Rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>OK, well, before we dive in, then, could we do a little quicksilver 101?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Of course! The South Bay is full of \u003cem>cinnabar\u003c/em>, a bright red rock the color of a stop sign. It formed 10-12 million years ago during a time of intense volcanic and hydrothermal activity. Chemically speaking, cinnabar is mercury bonded to sulfur. Mercury being a more proper name for quicksilver, by the way …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>This is really taking me back to high school chemistry class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> As it should! And what do you remember about mercury, Olivia?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> OK, well, it’s a liquid at room temperature, and that’s unusual for a metal. And it’s a silvery color…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> You’ve got it! To get mercury out of cinnabar, you heat the rocks up and the mercury essentially sweats out. Now, mercury was super important during the Gold Rush because it was used by gold and silver miners to extract the precious metals from the crushed rocks they were trapped in. Here’s Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation, to explain further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>So you pour your mercury over that sand. The mercury kind of grabs onto any precious metal. All the sand and other waste rock is left alone and left behind. And then you have — uh — looks kinda of like a silver putty. So it’s called an amalgam, and then you heat that amalgam to 1,076 degrees, the mercury vapor goes off into the air, and then you are left with your precious metal, which could be gold or silver. It usually looks like spun sugar, almost. It has all these holes where the mercury had been. So then you can take that spun gold, as we call it, and so you can make nuggets or even bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> All right, I get it. And this stuff must have been in high demand after the Gold Rush kicked off in 1848. I imagine?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Exactly. In 1845, California is still a Mexican territory. A Mexican cavalry officer named Andrés Castillero was riding through these foothills when he noticed something unusual — a fiery red-orange paint that local Indigenous people were using on the walls of nearby missions. Castillero knew exactly what he was looking at. He knew that red paint had to have come from cinnabar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> But how did he know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> At the time Castillero made his discovery, the world’s main source of mercury was in Almadén, Spain. So Spain controlled the supply. Which meant they could charge what they wanted. Castillero, just from reading the newspapers, would have understood mercury’s importance in economic terms. So when Castillero saw that cinnabar in 1845, he understood he was looking at a potential fortune.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What was Castillero doing in San José anyway?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>He was sent by the Mexican government to catalogue strategic assets. Now, under Mexican law, officers and citizens could claim mines they discovered for themselves. So when Castillero saw the cinnabar, his life changed forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And this brings us to one of our Almaden Quicksilver listener questions! It comes from Kiera O’Hara of Santa Clara, who joined you, Rachael, on her \u003cem>second\u003c/em> tour of the Almaden Quicksilver Museum. Second, because she first visited when she was seven or eight years old. The museum is a regular pit stop for South Bay school children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kiera O’Hara:\u003c/strong> What was the Civil War history behind the Almaden mercury mine in San José? I remember hearing Abraham Lincoln was involved?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The museum sits in the Casa Grande, or big house, a 27-room Classical Revival mansion the mine’s superintendents used to live in. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long after Castillero discovered the cinnabar that other people wanted to take the mine from him, especially after the Gold Rush sent demand for quicksilver soaring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So multiple parties, including private investors and mining companies, tried to claim the land, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1859, SCOTUS recognized Castillero’s claim, but the mine’s ownership remained split among several parties. And then in 1861, the U.S. Civil War started. And this is where we get to Kiera’s question, about whether Abraham Lincoln was involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>There was an aide to President Lincoln who went, “Oh, there’s enough questionability about who owns this land, so maybe it’s owned by the U.S. government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Again, the quicksilver mine is an obvious money maker, and war is expensive. California gold was vital to the Union’s war effort, providing more than $170 million dollars in gold mostly that stabilized the federal currency and paid for roughly 10% of things like weapons and supplies. For those of you wondering, $170 million dollars in the 1860s would be worth roughly $7 billion dollars today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So this aide is thinking, ‘Why not claim the New Almaden mine and its profits for the Union side of the U.S. civil war?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>And so he came down with a marshal and even a cavalry behind him to say, “Lincoln’s going to take over this mine. And, you know, you’re supposed to just surrender it to me, the aide.” Then, mine manager, John Young, said ‘no!’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>So, just put yourself in John Young’s shoes. Who the heck is this aide showing up all of a sudden with troops behind him and a half-baked plan to take over the mine, because says who?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>He got the miners and said, “If they take over the mines, you’re going to be out of a job. So come down with, you know, your best rifles and your guns and, you know, help me defend this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>First, Young rallies his workers. And he fires off urgent telegraphs, not only to other mine operators across California, but to a former Almaden manager who now sits inside Lincoln’s administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>And said, “This is what’s happening out here. If he takes this mine, there’s the potential that he could take over every mine in California and the western United States.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Young was essentially saying, if the federal government seizes this mine, it could set off a chain reaction across the West, and at a moment when the Union depends on the support of California’s gold miners. There \u003cem>were\u003c/em> people in the state who sympathized with the South during the Civil War. So it would be really, really dumb to piss off Union supporters and drive them into the waiting arms of the Confederacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kiera, our question asker, asked if Abraham Lincoln was involved. Lynda told us it’s possible Lincoln didn’t even know this whole fight was going on, given how distracted he was with the Civil War. Whatever the case, John Young’s quick thinking — his calculated warning framed as patriotism — stopped a bright idea from a government man that could have thrown California and the rest of the Western U.S. to the Confederate side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>When we return, we dig in on the environmental impacts of this mine. Plus a listener question about the miners who once worked there. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Sponsor Message\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So we’ve learned that mercury comes from cinnabar. It was super valuable during the Gold Rush because it helps separate gold from ore. And there was a big kerfuffle over the ownership of the Almaden mine that could have changed California’s posture during the Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, I want to touch on the environment … because you don’t have to be a geologist to know mercury is a neurotoxin, and a huge environmental hazard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Yes. Unfortunately, some of that mercury made its way downstream, into the San Francisco Bay. In 2002 — not that long ago — scientists identified \u003cem>this\u003c/em> mine as the single largest source of mercury in the Bay, making the fish unsafe to eat for humans and birds alike. I asked Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation, about this very question …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lynda Will: \u003c/strong>I can tell you a little bit about it. Yeah. When we acquired the land in the mid-70s, 1970s, there was quite a bit of mercury contamination of the land. Under the furnace yards was, you know, pools of mercury. They had paved roads with cinnabar waste rock, which we call calcines. They had just dumped it over the sides of the hills. They had dumped it into the creeks. And so we have been remediating it ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Local governments, including Santa Clara County, which purchased part of the mine property for parkland, found themselves partially on the hook for a multimillion-dollar cleanup effort to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. They did, I should mention, get help from the state and the feds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Is it safe for us to be in this park?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Additional work and monitoring continues, but authorities say it’s safe to picnic, hike, ride horses, et cetera.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And what about the fish in the Bay, can we eat them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Errr, that’s a different story, more complicated. As recently as 10 years ago, 2 years then into the big effort to clean up the Bay, KQED explored this very question. Let’s just say, they were still describing it as problematic, not just because of the direct legacy from mining days, but from stormwater runoff and air pollution. Because mercury converts into methylmercury, which bioaccumulates up the food chain, fish … especially large fish … can carry high levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip from documentary: \u003c/strong>The Bay is slowly cleaning itself, washing 3,100 pounds a year out to sea, but because so much has built up over time, it needs a helping hand. … At a minimum, three generations will be impacted by the potent and long-lasting poison still lingering in the Bay mud.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So that old adage, “Don’t fish off the pier,” sounds like it remains true today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> Well, the longer-lived, big fish, especially. In 2023, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA, recommended children and women of childbearing age steer clear of fish like sharks and striped bass. Ocean-going fish like Chinook salmon would be the safer bet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Alright, so that’s two questions dispatched. Let’s move on to question number three. It comes from Andrew Long, who lives all the way over in Cornwall — the county at the far south west tip of England. He came to the Bay Area some time ago to visit a relative and had some questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>I’m Cornish from the U.K. I know of the Cornish Camp at the Alamaden Quicksilver Mine. It would be great to know if Cornish culture survived, and is growing, like it is here with our language.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Andrew filled me in on the long, rich history of mining tin and copper in Cornwall, which extends all the way back to the early Bronze Age, circa 2200 BC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of you may be thinking about the British TV series “Poldark,” and you’d be in the right territory. There were more than 300 active mines in Cornwall in the 1860s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the late 19th century, the industry had largely collapsed … and Cornish miners left in droves, traveling across the world to places like New Almaden in search of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>So there is a saying, if you go to the bottom of a mine, a hole in the ground, at the bottom of it you’ll find a Cornishman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>They took a bit of Cornwall with them and left cultural evidence everywhere they went. In central Mexico, they introduced the Cornish \u003cem>pasty\u003c/em>, which became, in Spanish, the \u003cem>paste. \u003c/em>Over in Grass Valley, home to a lot of gold mining back in the day, there’s an annual Cornish Christmas Celebration. But in the South Bay, the history’s more subtle, almost hiding in plain sight. Like cinnabar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>I just did a very cursory search of your — the phone book in San José — and I saw a scattering of Cornish surnames.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Cornish surnames like “Hicks” and even “Cornish.” Also, on his trip to San José, not too long ago, and he spotted a curious station sign for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>There’s a station called Ohlone-Chy-NO-weth. Or CHIN-oh-weth, as you call it. Well, Chynoweth in Cornish means “new house.” So that got me thinking, well, there’s got to be a reason you have a Cornish name for a Cornish railway station in South San José.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The two most prominent settlements at New Almaden were Spanish Town and English Camp, but that was really Cornish Camp, if you ask Andrew. Today, little remains of the area’s once-bustling village life. Aside from the large mansion that now houses the museum, the only hints are the nonnative cypress and poplar trees, and the spreading vinca ground cover … green survivors of gardens long since forgotten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a bit from a 1960 documentary collaboration I dug up between the Museum and Channel 11 News.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip from documentary: \u003c/strong>The international flavor of the old mining camp is shown by the names that survive. Manyales. Danielson. Castro. At one time, 26 nationalities were represented in New Almaden, and they helped fill two other cemeteries up on Mine Hill, that have long since been swept bare by souvenir hunters and the ravages of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Cornish culture has largely faded into the rearview mirror in the South Bay, but Andrew has an idea, related to his membership in a Cornish chorus called Barrett’s Privateers. The Cornish are big singers. Here’s Barrett’s Privateers singing The Miners’ Anthem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip of The Miners Anthem\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Andrew wants to take the band on tour to the South Bay, to reintroduce locals to our Cornish connections and light a fire under our interest in the history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrew Long: \u003c/strong>Maybe to link up with the museum and do some promotional singing in shopping malls and that sort of stuff, to give people an idea that where they’re living has a history that is maybe something they never knew about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Thanks to Andrew, Kiera and to you, Rachael.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/strong> My pleasure, as always!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It’s the start of a month, and that means a new voting round is up at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>. Let’s hear your choices …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voice 1: Why is there a taco truck on every corner in San Francisco and San Mateo? They seem to have sprung up in the last year or two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voice 2: Why are there huge fans over the tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voice 3: What’s the story with the abandoned cop car in front of the airport off 101? Everyone knows no actual cop is in it, so what’s the scoop with leaving it there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Tally a vote for your favorite of those questions at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve still got space in our upcoming Bay Curious Trivia game. Snag some tickets for you and your friends at KQED.org/live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. With extra support from Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Thanks for listening!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Women have dramatically influenced San Francisco Bay Area history since before the Gold Rush, but their stories are often far less well known. Rae Alexandra’s new book, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">\u003cem>Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area\u003c/em> \u003c/a>shines a light on these untold stories, highlight these women’s impact on the social, cultural and political life of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8955735736&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rae Alexandra, an arts and culture reporter here at KQED was frustrated.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>I think I learned there were no statues of women. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or, there were very few.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was 2018 and she had just found out that just 12 percent of San Francisco’s street names, statues, parks and public art honored women.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that made me angry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, the names of important men were everywhere. Anza, Coit, Sutro, Sutter, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore. I could go on. So for Women’s History Month, she made a pledge to find and honor five women from local history to write about for KQED.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that just in case somebody wants to add a statue later, they might have an easy list to look at.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It seemed like a simple idea, but once she started looking, she found troves of stories to tell. Countless women whose impact on local life, culture, and politics was profound yet overlooked.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then I kept dipping back in because I kept finding more women. Couple. I’ll just do another couple.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What started as a month-long project grew into an ongoing series, and now a book. It’s out this month. It’s called Unsung Heroines, 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area. Rae Alexandra is here to talk with us about it. Welcome, Rae. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>Hello. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>I think for a long time, people would look back on history and see a lack of women and think, well, women weren’t able to participate. They often didn’t have as much education as their male counterparts. It’s no wonder they couldn’t contribute as much. But that isn’t really true, is it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People kept saying to me, well, San Francisco is a gold rush town, and maybe there just weren’t many women here, and maybe the women here weren’t in a position to do anything, and I just, it didn’t ring true to me. Because where there is life, there are women, and where there are woman, there are useful things being done. So I just didn’t believe it. And, of course, now that I’ve done the digging, that’s absolutely not true. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So many of the people who you profiled in this book are names that are new to me. And I work on a podcast that does a fair amount of history stories. How did you find these women and their stories? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was literally at one point g\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">oing through the indexes at the back of books and finding a woman who’d been mentioned twice and then trying to do some research on newspapers.com in newspaper archives to see, did they do anything else? And sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. The oral histories that libraries have online and archives have online were very useful. I was constantly looking, I got obsessive about looking for. Teeny-tiny plaques on the side of buildings. Is there a woman on that? Is there a woman that? So there were an awful lot of dead ends but when you find a good one it’s a real joy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you feel like this book, do you hope that it will create sort of a more complete history of the Bay Area? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absolutely. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The thing that I found in the course of writing this is that now that the book has put the women in chronological order, you kind of do get an overview of the Bay Area from the very beginning up to the present day, and it does reflect the social and cultural events of our entire history. But once I started looking at even major events that we think we all know, like the 1906 earthquake, when you start looking at it from an individual working class woman’s perspective, it gave me a completely different idea of what that whole crisis was at the time. Breaking history down to small individual people is very different to hearing it from fancy historians perspective.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I love that. And that’s part of what makes your book, I think, so compelling is really, you know, looking at everything through that individual female lens. Yeah. I’d love to get into one of these stories now. Can you tell us about Tianfu Wu, whose contributions in Chinatown have led San Francisco city leaders to rename a street in her honor just this month? So this is very topical.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She was trafficked from China in the early 1890s. She was sold by her father to pay off gambling debts. She wasn’t told anything that was happening. She was just, she was told that she was gonna be going to visit her grandmother. She was dropped off, put in a boat. She was left with her supper and a toothbrush and her father just said, you know, stay here, be quiet, didn’t say goodbye. And that was it and she never saw her family again. And it wasn’t for lack of trying years later, she did try and track them down and was unable to. And she found herself in San Francisco. She was under the age of 10 at the time. She was basically a domestic slave and the second place that she found herself was a gambling den and the owner of that gambling den was very physically abusive to her. So she wound up getting rescued in 1894 by a group of Presbyterian missionaries who operated out of the Occidental Mission House. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I found a newspaper report about it, and the reporters said that she was in such a bad way that the police officers who were escorting the missionaries had tears in their eyes when they found her. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what was the Occidental Mission home? What was their larger purpose at the time?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11700225 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/10/10062018_AW_GhostStory_103-e1540151366310.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, it was literally taking in children and young women, because what happened to the trafficked children is that once they reached a certain age, once they got to be adolescents, then they’re sold into the brothel system. And the girls working in the brothels had very short life expectancies because of what they were coping with physically. So the missionaries would take the girls. They were giving them Christian educations. There was an element here of trying to rescue these people from a life of sin, as they saw it. But they were educated, they were housed, they had playtime. So Tien ended up going there. She was raised in the mission house. Within about 15 months of her being there, there was a new superintendent who came in named Donaldina Cameron. And she became a mentor and a teacher to Tien. When Tien was little and she first got there and Donaldina was quite a strict teacher and Tien was quite strong-willed, they would butt heads a lot. And they somehow met in the middle. And it became a very mother-daughter relationship. And the two of them wound up, as Tien reached her teens, they wound up working together. She started off as Donaldina’s aide, just because Donaldina needed a translator. She didn’t speak Chinese. And when they were on rescue missions, it was really important that someone be able to communicate clearly with the poor girls in these situations. The two started working more and more closely together. She was going on rescue mission. She was a travel guardian for any girls trying to get out of the country. She went to court against brothel owners, which was extremely dangerous. She got death threats all the time. And she even, as the girls got older and were trying to leave the home, she would even vet fiancees. She’d bring in the grooms and interview them about whether or not they were appropriate and financially stable enough for her young ones. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>Truly an auntie in that way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>They called her Auntie Wu. Donaldina retired at a certain point and Tien basically took over the whole running of the Mission House. She was working as a fundraiser as well by that point. She didn’t retire until 1951 and at the time that she did retire from the Mission House, Donaldina was living down in Palo Alto and offered Tien the cottage next door to hers that she also owned and they lived side by side for the rest of their and they’re even buried next to each other. In Los Angeles, which I think is quite remarkable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, quite a partner o\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ver many, many years, and get us to modern times. I mean, Tien was an unsung heroine, perhaps getting a little bit of flowers now. What’s happening with her naming in the city? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, t\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he old Mission House is still at 920 Sacramento Street, they still work with women dealing with domestic violence every day. I mean, if you go in there in the afternoon, it’s full of kids having the time of their lives. They’re still doing great work. And last year, at the end of last summer, the manager of special projects at Cameron House, her name’s Leanne Mar came up with the idea of trying to get a street named after Tien And then they roped in District 3 Supervisor Daniel Sauter. And they now, the street behind the mission house where all of the children used to play is now named for Tien. It’s part of Joy Street. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we come back, we meet another unsung heroine from Bay Area history. Stick around. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>Rae, last night I attended one of your book launch events, a night of bingo here at KQED, where you told stories of the unsung heroines between each round. It was super fun, even though I didn’t win a single game, and I’m a little salty about it. But of the women you spoke about, one that especially stuck with me was the story of Charlotte Brown, who you suggested should be as much of a household name as Rosa Parks. Can you tell us about her? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12069545 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Charlotte L. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brown. I can’t remember how I stumbled across her exactly but as soon as I found her I was like why? Why do we not know who this woman is? And I do think that there was an active effort to erase her in some ways. So Charlotte took San Francisco’s omnibus railroad and cable company to court all the way back in 1863. So that’s almost a full century before Rosa Parks and it’s two years before slavery was officially abolished by the 13th amendment. So she was way ahead of her time. And taking on a large company at a time when black people only made up 2% of San Francisco’s population, this was really scary. But she had been traveling in April of 1863. She already had a ticket. She got onto the streetcar. And a conductor told her that she could not be there because there were white passengers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In your book you included some of her affidavit that she presented in court. Could you read from that so we can kind of hear her voice?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra reading: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I lived one block from where I took the car. When the conductor first came to me and refused to take my ticket, I told him I thought I had a right to ride. It was a public conveyance. I told him I had long distance to go. I told him I would not get out. He took hold of my arm. I made no resistance. I knew it was of no use to resist. And therefore I went out and he kept hold of me until I was out of the car, holding on to me until I struck the walk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Wow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She went home and she told her family and she had really formidable parents. Her father, James E. Brown, had been enslaved until her mother, Charlotte Sr., who was a seamstress, had raised enough money to buy his freedom. So these were two both very determined people. And so her father and her took the cable car company to court and they won. And then her award got reduced to five cents, which was just the cost of the ticket. At the end of that, she got removed from another bus. So she and her father went back to court, and that time they had a much more sympathetic judge and she wound up winning $500. It was a definitive win.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I love how bold it is. Like you’ve just finished this long drawn out court case with Omnibus Railroad, and then you go a couple of days later and you get back on the railroad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They just were not having it. This family was not having it. They knew that somebody had to stand up and do something about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what impact did this case ultimately have on the ability for black people to ride streetcars in San Francisco?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Honestly, it kind of didn’t help. That problem persisted. People of color continued to be removed from cable cars for many years afterwards. there wasn’t a state ban on street car segregation until 1893. Thirty years after Charlotte brought her case.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The book, by the way, is beautiful. I don’t know what this texture is on the cover, but it’s very pleasing to touch. Along with your 35 profiles, there were very nice illustrations of most of the women in the book. What was the process like to create those illustrations?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adrienne Simms is a fine artist and illustrator. And I am astonished by what I gave her and what she produced from it, because one of the biggest challenges for this entire series was finding usable images. Sometimes that was impossible. Sometimes it’s me making a copy of a copy of a newspaper that’s 120 years old. So I was giving her like the worst, grainiest images in some cases, and she just sat with them and got to know the women and managed to, I think, give them the shine that they’ve deserved this whole time. I found it very moving to see her illustrations for the first time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, it adds such a nice layer to be able to read these stories that have kind of been forgotten, but also see these women’s faces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some of these women I’m seeing for the first time with these illustrations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rae Alexandra, congratulations on your book.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you so much, Olivia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you for coming to talk to us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Thank you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rae’s new book, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is available wherever books are sold. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are partway through our limited experiment with dropping two episodes each week, and we’d love to know, what do you think? Write to us at Baycurious at kqed.org. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious Trivia is coming up on April 8th. Join us at KQED’s headquarters for a rousing game of trivia, where all the questions are related to the Nine County Bay Area. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/6151\">Tickets and details at kqed.org/live. \u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. You can support shows like Bay Curious and projects like Rae’s Rebel Girls series with a donation at kqed.org slash donate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQed podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Ellen-Price. I hope you have a great day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "San Francisco Bay Area history is full of women who had a powerful impact on the social, cultural and political life here. Rae Alexandra's new book Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area highlights the little known stories of these women.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Women have dramatically influenced San Francisco Bay Area history since before the Gold Rush, but their stories are often far less well known. Rae Alexandra’s new book, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">\u003cem>Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area\u003c/em> \u003c/a>shines a light on these untold stories, highlight these women’s impact on the social, cultural and political life of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8955735736&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rae Alexandra, an arts and culture reporter here at KQED was frustrated.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>I think I learned there were no statues of women. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or, there were very few.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was 2018 and she had just found out that just 12 percent of San Francisco’s street names, statues, parks and public art honored women.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that made me angry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, the names of important men were everywhere. Anza, Coit, Sutro, Sutter, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore. I could go on. So for Women’s History Month, she made a pledge to find and honor five women from local history to write about for KQED.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that just in case somebody wants to add a statue later, they might have an easy list to look at.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It seemed like a simple idea, but once she started looking, she found troves of stories to tell. Countless women whose impact on local life, culture, and politics was profound yet overlooked.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then I kept dipping back in because I kept finding more women. Couple. I’ll just do another couple.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What started as a month-long project grew into an ongoing series, and now a book. It’s out this month. It’s called Unsung Heroines, 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area. Rae Alexandra is here to talk with us about it. Welcome, Rae. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>Hello. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>I think for a long time, people would look back on history and see a lack of women and think, well, women weren’t able to participate. They often didn’t have as much education as their male counterparts. It’s no wonder they couldn’t contribute as much. But that isn’t really true, is it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People kept saying to me, well, San Francisco is a gold rush town, and maybe there just weren’t many women here, and maybe the women here weren’t in a position to do anything, and I just, it didn’t ring true to me. Because where there is life, there are women, and where there are woman, there are useful things being done. So I just didn’t believe it. And, of course, now that I’ve done the digging, that’s absolutely not true. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So many of the people who you profiled in this book are names that are new to me. And I work on a podcast that does a fair amount of history stories. How did you find these women and their stories? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was literally at one point g\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">oing through the indexes at the back of books and finding a woman who’d been mentioned twice and then trying to do some research on newspapers.com in newspaper archives to see, did they do anything else? And sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. The oral histories that libraries have online and archives have online were very useful. I was constantly looking, I got obsessive about looking for. Teeny-tiny plaques on the side of buildings. Is there a woman on that? Is there a woman that? So there were an awful lot of dead ends but when you find a good one it’s a real joy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you feel like this book, do you hope that it will create sort of a more complete history of the Bay Area? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absolutely. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The thing that I found in the course of writing this is that now that the book has put the women in chronological order, you kind of do get an overview of the Bay Area from the very beginning up to the present day, and it does reflect the social and cultural events of our entire history. But once I started looking at even major events that we think we all know, like the 1906 earthquake, when you start looking at it from an individual working class woman’s perspective, it gave me a completely different idea of what that whole crisis was at the time. Breaking history down to small individual people is very different to hearing it from fancy historians perspective.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I love that. And that’s part of what makes your book, I think, so compelling is really, you know, looking at everything through that individual female lens. Yeah. I’d love to get into one of these stories now. Can you tell us about Tianfu Wu, whose contributions in Chinatown have led San Francisco city leaders to rename a street in her honor just this month? So this is very topical.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She was trafficked from China in the early 1890s. She was sold by her father to pay off gambling debts. She wasn’t told anything that was happening. She was just, she was told that she was gonna be going to visit her grandmother. She was dropped off, put in a boat. She was left with her supper and a toothbrush and her father just said, you know, stay here, be quiet, didn’t say goodbye. And that was it and she never saw her family again. And it wasn’t for lack of trying years later, she did try and track them down and was unable to. And she found herself in San Francisco. She was under the age of 10 at the time. She was basically a domestic slave and the second place that she found herself was a gambling den and the owner of that gambling den was very physically abusive to her. So she wound up getting rescued in 1894 by a group of Presbyterian missionaries who operated out of the Occidental Mission House. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I found a newspaper report about it, and the reporters said that she was in such a bad way that the police officers who were escorting the missionaries had tears in their eyes when they found her. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what was the Occidental Mission home? What was their larger purpose at the time?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, it was literally taking in children and young women, because what happened to the trafficked children is that once they reached a certain age, once they got to be adolescents, then they’re sold into the brothel system. And the girls working in the brothels had very short life expectancies because of what they were coping with physically. So the missionaries would take the girls. They were giving them Christian educations. There was an element here of trying to rescue these people from a life of sin, as they saw it. But they were educated, they were housed, they had playtime. So Tien ended up going there. She was raised in the mission house. Within about 15 months of her being there, there was a new superintendent who came in named Donaldina Cameron. And she became a mentor and a teacher to Tien. When Tien was little and she first got there and Donaldina was quite a strict teacher and Tien was quite strong-willed, they would butt heads a lot. And they somehow met in the middle. And it became a very mother-daughter relationship. And the two of them wound up, as Tien reached her teens, they wound up working together. She started off as Donaldina’s aide, just because Donaldina needed a translator. She didn’t speak Chinese. And when they were on rescue missions, it was really important that someone be able to communicate clearly with the poor girls in these situations. The two started working more and more closely together. She was going on rescue mission. She was a travel guardian for any girls trying to get out of the country. She went to court against brothel owners, which was extremely dangerous. She got death threats all the time. And she even, as the girls got older and were trying to leave the home, she would even vet fiancees. She’d bring in the grooms and interview them about whether or not they were appropriate and financially stable enough for her young ones. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>Truly an auntie in that way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>They called her Auntie Wu. Donaldina retired at a certain point and Tien basically took over the whole running of the Mission House. She was working as a fundraiser as well by that point. She didn’t retire until 1951 and at the time that she did retire from the Mission House, Donaldina was living down in Palo Alto and offered Tien the cottage next door to hers that she also owned and they lived side by side for the rest of their and they’re even buried next to each other. In Los Angeles, which I think is quite remarkable. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, quite a partner o\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ver many, many years, and get us to modern times. I mean, Tien was an unsung heroine, perhaps getting a little bit of flowers now. What’s happening with her naming in the city? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, t\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he old Mission House is still at 920 Sacramento Street, they still work with women dealing with domestic violence every day. I mean, if you go in there in the afternoon, it’s full of kids having the time of their lives. They’re still doing great work. And last year, at the end of last summer, the manager of special projects at Cameron House, her name’s Leanne Mar came up with the idea of trying to get a street named after Tien And then they roped in District 3 Supervisor Daniel Sauter. And they now, the street behind the mission house where all of the children used to play is now named for Tien. It’s part of Joy Street. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we come back, we meet another unsung heroine from Bay Area history. Stick around. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>Rae, last night I attended one of your book launch events, a night of bingo here at KQED, where you told stories of the unsung heroines between each round. It was super fun, even though I didn’t win a single game, and I’m a little salty about it. But of the women you spoke about, one that especially stuck with me was the story of Charlotte Brown, who you suggested should be as much of a household name as Rosa Parks. Can you tell us about her? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Charlotte L. \u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brown. I can’t remember how I stumbled across her exactly but as soon as I found her I was like why? Why do we not know who this woman is? And I do think that there was an active effort to erase her in some ways. So Charlotte took San Francisco’s omnibus railroad and cable company to court all the way back in 1863. So that’s almost a full century before Rosa Parks and it’s two years before slavery was officially abolished by the 13th amendment. So she was way ahead of her time. And taking on a large company at a time when black people only made up 2% of San Francisco’s population, this was really scary. But she had been traveling in April of 1863. She already had a ticket. She got onto the streetcar. And a conductor told her that she could not be there because there were white passengers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In your book you included some of her affidavit that she presented in court. Could you read from that so we can kind of hear her voice?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra reading: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I lived one block from where I took the car. When the conductor first came to me and refused to take my ticket, I told him I thought I had a right to ride. It was a public conveyance. I told him I had long distance to go. I told him I would not get out. He took hold of my arm. I made no resistance. I knew it was of no use to resist. And therefore I went out and he kept hold of me until I was out of the car, holding on to me until I struck the walk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Wow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She went home and she told her family and she had really formidable parents. Her father, James E. Brown, had been enslaved until her mother, Charlotte Sr., who was a seamstress, had raised enough money to buy his freedom. So these were two both very determined people. And so her father and her took the cable car company to court and they won. And then her award got reduced to five cents, which was just the cost of the ticket. At the end of that, she got removed from another bus. So she and her father went back to court, and that time they had a much more sympathetic judge and she wound up winning $500. It was a definitive win.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I love how bold it is. Like you’ve just finished this long drawn out court case with Omnibus Railroad, and then you go a couple of days later and you get back on the railroad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They just were not having it. This family was not having it. They knew that somebody had to stand up and do something about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what impact did this case ultimately have on the ability for black people to ride streetcars in San Francisco?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Honestly, it kind of didn’t help. That problem persisted. People of color continued to be removed from cable cars for many years afterwards. there wasn’t a state ban on street car segregation until 1893. Thirty years after Charlotte brought her case.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The book, by the way, is beautiful. I don’t know what this texture is on the cover, but it’s very pleasing to touch. Along with your 35 profiles, there were very nice illustrations of most of the women in the book. What was the process like to create those illustrations?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adrienne Simms is a fine artist and illustrator. And I am astonished by what I gave her and what she produced from it, because one of the biggest challenges for this entire series was finding usable images. Sometimes that was impossible. Sometimes it’s me making a copy of a copy of a newspaper that’s 120 years old. So I was giving her like the worst, grainiest images in some cases, and she just sat with them and got to know the women and managed to, I think, give them the shine that they’ve deserved this whole time. I found it very moving to see her illustrations for the first time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, it adds such a nice layer to be able to read these stories that have kind of been forgotten, but also see these women’s faces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some of these women I’m seeing for the first time with these illustrations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rae Alexandra, congratulations on your book.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you so much, Olivia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you for coming to talk to us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rae Alexandra:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Thank you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rae’s new book, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is available wherever books are sold. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are partway through our limited experiment with dropping two episodes each week, and we’d love to know, what do you think? Write to us at Baycurious at kqed.org. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious Trivia is coming up on April 8th. Join us at KQED’s headquarters for a rousing game of trivia, where all the questions are related to the Nine County Bay Area. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/6151\">Tickets and details at kqed.org/live. \u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. You can support shows like Bay Curious and projects like Rae’s Rebel Girls series with a donation at kqed.org slash donate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQed podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Ellen-Price. I hope you have a great day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Who Is the Bear on the California Flag? A Story Bigger Than One Legend",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\"> the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many state flags stick to geometric designs. Wyoming has a buffalo, Louisiana has a pelican. But the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">California\u003c/a> flag has a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em> listener Mark Karn was researching the flag one day when he found an unexpected story behind it, one that has been repeated for many years in newspapers, videos, and websites. He read that the bear on California’s flag was modeled after a famous bear named Monarch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as he looked into the history further, Karn started to have doubts. He noticed some inconsistencies in the story that made him question whether Monarch was indeed the bear on our flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>California used to have thousands of grizzlies\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before the Gold Rush, historians estimate there were \u003ca href=\"https://nhmlac.org/california-grizzly-bear#:~:text=Some%20have%20estimated%20that%20California,skins%20and%20skeletons%20in%20existence.\">10,000 grizzly bears\u003c/a> in California, living alongside hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Spanish ranchers and then gold miners who flooded into California in the 1800s portrayed the animals as brutal, bloodthirsty killers, even though grizzlies mostly minded their own business unless provoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076801\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076801\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1339\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED-1536x1028.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">It is often said that the bear on the modern California state flag is based on “Monarch,” one of the last grizzly bears to live in the state. But researchers now believe it was based on the drawing of another bear, Samson. \u003ccite>(Joseph Sohm/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You see the bear being really cast as this obstacle to progress, much like the wolves and much like native people,” said Devlin Gandy, tribal liaison for the California Grizzly Alliance. “As something that has to be done away with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bounties on grizzlies became common. Ranchers often put strychnine onto the carcasses of dead cows. By the late 1800s, very few grizzlies were left in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Monarch the bear’s infamous life\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1887, after getting kicked out of Harvard for bad behavior, William Randolph Hearst landed back in his hometown of San Francisco, where his father gave him a small newspaper called the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was in his 20s and thought it would be great publicity if someone from the Examiner could capture one of the last California grizzly bears and bring it back to San Francisco alive. So, he tasked one of his reporters, Allen Kelly, with the assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly had never actually hunted a bear before. But he strapped on a bandolier of ammunition and struck out for the mountains of Southern California, where it was rumored there were still a few grizzlies left.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076803\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076803\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED-1536x1229.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The taxidermied form of Monarch the bear is part of an exhibit called California: State of Nature on display at the California Academy of Sciences. \u003ccite>(Gayle Laird/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With help from local hunters, Kelly spent months hiking around the mountains looking for bears with no luck. But eventually, a monstrous grizzly came to his camp and walked into one of the traps he had set.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least, that’s how \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/460837694/?match=1&terms=monarch%20the%20bear\">Kelly reported\u003c/a> it in the \u003cem>Examiner \u003c/em>at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Gandy thinks there was no trap. “[Monarch] was actually probably captured by some of the vaqueros using lassos,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure enough, Kelly later \u003ca href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15276/15276-h/15276-h.htm#chap02\">retold his story\u003c/a> in a book, this time saying that some Mexicans caught the bear, and he heard about it and went and bought it from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076813\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076813\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-08-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-08-KQED.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-08-KQED-160x96.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An 1875 image of Woodward’s Gardens, an attraction that was open in the Mission District from 1866 to 189. It featured a museum, art gallery, zoo, rides and more. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kelly called the bear “Monarch,” as an advertisement for the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em>, which had the slogan: “The Monarch of the Dailies.” He brought Monarch, via sled, wagon and train, to a place called Woodward’s Garden in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late 1800’s, \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/Woodward%27s_Gardens,_c._1860s\">Woodward’s Garden \u003c/a>was an amusement park in the Mission, near where the Armory is now. It had an aquatic carousel, balloon rides, camel rides and an 8-foot-3-inch-tall man who was billed as a giant. It was kind of a carnival, and a sign of its times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monarch stayed there for five years, in a cage so small he could barely turn around in it. Then he was moved to the World’s Fair in Golden Gate Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fair, called the \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/California_Midwinter_Fair_of_1894:_An_Orientalist_Exposition\">California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894\u003c/a>, took up 200 acres in Golden Gate Park. It was built like an amusement park, with large outdoor attractions. There were Inuit people on display — real people — in a village of papier-mache igloos. \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/the-racist-fair-that-almost-ruined-golden-gate-16770528.php\">There was a Japanese village\u003c/a>, which is now the Japanese Tea Garden. And a \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/378308351/?match=1&terms=%2749%20mining%20camp\">pretend mining camp\u003c/a>, where you could go to a saloon and see a grizzly bear — Monarch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the fair, Monarch was moved to his final home — a cage in Golden Gate Park’s menagerie — where the AIDS Memorial Grove is now. The menagerie had bison, kangaroos, elk, an aviary and now a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could walk up to the enclosure [and] stick your arm in if you wanted to,” said Rebekah Kim, head librarian at the California Academy of Sciences. “You could throw peanuts or whatever snacks you wanted to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076816\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076816\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A young guest inspects Monarch the bear, on view for the first time since 2012 at Cal Academy’s “California: State of Nature” exhibition. \u003ccite>(Gayle Laird/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And Monarch lived there for the rest of his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see many times he looks pretty sad behind bars,” said Kim, referencing a historic photograph of Monarch resting his head against the side of his cage, staring, it seems, at nothing. And in 1911, after over two decades in captivity, Monarch died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At that point, he was very overweight; he was paralyzed,” said Kim, “Their way of euthanasia was like a policeman coming and shooting him in the head.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monarch was one of the last of his kind. California grizzlies were classified as a distinct subspecies, and for over half a century, they had been relentlessly, systematically poisoned, hunted and trapped. By the 1920s, scientists believed them to be extinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How California ended up with a bear on its flag\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1846, grizzly bears were all over California, which was still part of Mexico. That year, a group of about 30 American settlers rebelled against the Mexican government and took over the town of Sonoma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They painted a bear and a star on a sheet, raised it above town, and proclaimed themselves an independent nation: “the California Republic.” They said the grizzly \u003ca href=\"https://bearflagmuseum.blogspot.com/2009/08/william-b-ide-on-creation-of-bear-flag.html\">symbolized\u003c/a> “strength and unyielding resistance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076800\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1474px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076800\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1474\" height=\"848\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-03-KQED.jpg 1474w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-03-KQED-160x92.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1474px) 100vw, 1474px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This 1855 illustration of the grizzly bear, Samson, was made by artist Charles Nahl. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bear on that flag bore little resemblance to our current flag’s bear. “[It looks like] maybe a bear or a pig or a dog, right? It’s so hard to tell,” Kim said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The independent republic didn’t last; California soon became part of the United States. The bear flag stuck around, but everybody was drawing it in a different way. Some versions had the bear standing up, on others it was perched up at the top of the flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1911, California adopted the bear flag as its state flag, and the legislature set guidelines, saying the bear must be in the middle, walking toward the left, and dark brown. In 1953, the state decided to standardize the flag further and try to make the bear look more like a bear, rather than a wolf or a pig. A zoologist was brought in to advise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076799\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1099px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12076799 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1099\" height=\"621\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-02-KQED.jpg 1099w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-02-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1099px) 100vw, 1099px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photograph of an illustration showing the raising of the Bear Flag over Sonoma, June 14, 1846. The California Republic flag, complete with grizzly bear, star and stripe, is being raised on the pole. In the background is the home of General Vallejo, an army barracks and a church. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here’s where the urban legend begins. Many sources report that since all the California grizzlies were dead by then, the flag’s artist used the taxidermied form of Monarch, which was even then on display at the California Academy of Sciences, as a reference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Kim doesn’t buy it. She studied the relevant historical documents, especially the correspondence between the zoologist and the flag’s artist. \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/flag-correspondence.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">According to the letters\u003c/a>, the men used as their main reference a different grizzly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the 1850s, a man named James Capen Adams, better known as Grizzly Adams, opened the Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco. It was on Clay Street, just a few blocks from where the Ferry Building is today. It had several live grizzlies chained to the floor, as well as elk, mountain lions, and a few eagles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the rear, in a very large iron cage, was a massive grizzly named Samson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A painter called Charles Nahl made illustrations for \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/adventuresofjame00hittrich/page/n9/mode/2up\">a book\u003c/a> about Adams, and one of his paintings was of \u003ca href=\"https://bancroftlibrarycara.wordpress.com/nahl_grizzly_monterey_image_cropped/\">Samson\u003c/a>. It’s \u003cem>that\u003c/em> painting, of Samson, that was consistently used as a reference for the California state flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The California grizzly’s undeserved reputation\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not only did Monarch’s story get distorted and manipulated, but so did the story of all the California grizzlies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most wrong part of it was the idea that the extinction of grizzly bears in California was inevitable and the recovery of them is impossible,” said Peter Alagona, a professor in the environmental studies program at UC Santa Barbara.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together with a team of researchers, Alagona analyzed Monarch’s bones and fur, along with those of other grizzlies. He found startling results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076817\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076817\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fran Ritchie of the California Academy of Sciences works to restore Monarch’s fur. \u003ccite>(Gayle Laird/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It turns out, California grizzlies were mostly vegetarian and averaged around 500 pounds, much smaller than the monstrous sizes attributed to them. Perhaps most surprisingly, they are genetically indistinguishable from modern-day grizzlies in Yellowstone and Montana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re gone from California, but they’re not really extinct,” said Alagona. “They just kind of live in Montana right now. It’s the same bear. It’s just not here at the moment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Alagona is working with the California Grizzly Alliance, which proposes \u003ca href=\"https://www.calgrizzly.org/\">bringing grizzlies back\u003c/a> to the state.[aside postID=news_12076077 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-09-KQED.jpg']He’s aware that to many people this sounds like a very bad idea. But the concept is to start with just a couple of animals, very closely monitored, in a very remote area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They do a lot of amazing things,” he said. “They turn over soil and enrich the soil. They are by far the biggest seed dispersers of any animal out there in the world on a per capita basis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alagona’s research suggests that with sufficient numbers and time, grizzlies could even change the state’s vegetation and create firebreaks. But to him, the most important benefit is less tangible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re more about imagination,” Alagona said. “They’re more about this idea that yes, we can restore things that seem unrestorable. To me, that’s what the bear does for us is it enables you to see a different kind of future by showing you a little bit more about yourself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Out of the 50 states that make up the union, California is considered pretty cool. We’ve got the good weather, the stunning coastline, those laid-back vibes. And we’ve definitely got a cool state flag. If you’ve looked at other flags, many stick to geometric designs. Wyoming does have a buffalo. Louisiana’s got a pelican. But California? Our flag has a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em> listener Mark Karn was researching the flag one day,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I like to read a lot, and whenever I read, I like to, um, go off on tangents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He found an unexpected story behind it — one that has been repeated for many years in newspapers, videos, and websites. He read that the bear on our flag was modeled after a famous bear named Monarch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monarch was one of California’s last grizzlies, captured in the mountains and then put on display in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I kind of deep dived into Monarch the bear. I was fascinated by it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Mark has always had a passion for wild animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I was born in Nigeria and grew up in South Africa. I love looking at nature in its wild state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>As a teenager, he would take a book out to a remote watering hole where he’d read and wait for animals to come and drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>And I used to see a little, uh, a duiker. A duiker is a very small antelope. I used to watch the duiker come and, and drink water at the water hole. Definitely one of my most memorable moments, and you know, my happy memories. \u003cem>(Laughs.)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So, Mark was dismayed to learn that Monarch, this big, powerful grizzly, was kept behind bars for most of his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I kind of cringe at animals in zoos. You know, they supposedly live longer, but to me there’s a, a beauty that they lack when they’re in a cage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And while he was doing his own research, he noticed some inconsistencies in Monarch’s story that made him question if Monarch was indeed the bear on our flag. So he reached out to \u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>The bear on the California flag, is it the actual Monarch the Bear that they claim it is?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>To find out if it really was, and to sort through some of the other legends around the bear, reporter Katherine Monahan went to meet Monarch. Or rather, his taxidermied form, more than a century old, on display at the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of chatter and kids in an echoey space\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> It’s a weekday afternoon, and the academy is packed with kids and families, mostly checking out the aquarium or the T-rex. They don’t all head for this dimly lit corner of the California exhibit. But those who do\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor: \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>Wow. That is crazy. Man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Get to see a California grizzly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 2: \u003c/strong>Did you know we had grizzly bears?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 3: \u003c/strong>We don’t have ’em anymore, do we?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch is powerful-looking, with a muscular hump above his shoulders. He’s dark and shaggy and bigger than a black bear for sure, but not nearly as big as, say, a two-ton polar bear. His claws, though\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 2: \u003c/strong>They look lethal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> They’re easily as long as my fingers. There’s a cast paw print where people can put their own hand in to compare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 4: \u003c/strong>Go put your hand in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 5: \u003c/strong>Oh my goodness. That’s just the palm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch is standing flat on all fours with kind of a Mona Lisa smile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 6: \u003c/strong>Was he old?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> He looks peaceful. But then, he is taxidermied, quite literally a puppet. And we could have made him look however we wanted. Which, in many ways, is what we did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy:\u003c/strong> So much of what we know about grizzlies is a myth. It’s fictitious, it’s fear-based.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> That’s Devlin Gandy, tribal liaison for the California Grizzly Alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says it’s estimated there were ten thousand grizzly bears in the state before the California Gold Rush. And, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>It’s very abundantly clear that they not only existed alongside grizzlies, but they thrived with grizzlies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> But the Spanish ranchers and then the gold miners who flooded into California in the 1800s saw the bears differently. They told sensational stories that featured the animals as brutal, bloodthirsty killers — even though grizzlies mostly minded their own business unless provoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>You see the bear being really cast as this, um, obstacle to progress, much like the wolves and much like native people, and as something that, you know, has to be done away with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Bounties on grizzlies became common. Mostly, they were killed with poison. Ranchers put strychnine onto the carcasses of dead cows. By the late 1800s, very few grizzlies were left in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>It’s a time of extreme ecological degradation, and you start to get this romanticism for the West, this romantic notion of Native Americans and wildlife. And Monarch falls right into that narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Enter William Randolph Hearst. In 1887, after getting kicked out of Harvard for bad behavior, he landed back in his hometown of San Francisco. Where his father gave him a small newspaper called the San Francisco Examiner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>Hearst is leading this new wave of journalism that has a lot of sensationalism tied to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> He was about 25 years old. And he thought it would be great publicity if someone from the Examiner could capture a live grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So he asked one of his reporters, Allen Kelly, to do it. Kelly clearly got right into character, as you can see in his portrait from the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>He has these bandoliers of ammunition on both sides of his chest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s just like he’s trying to be Rambo. You’re like, what are you doing, dude?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Kelly had never actually hunted a bear before. So when he struck out for the mountains of Southern California, where it was rumored there were still a few grizzlies left, he hired local helpers. They were happy to oblige.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>A man coming from San Francisco with a blank check from one of the richest men in California to go on a bear hunt? That sounds absolutely great.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> They led this city-slicker journalist around in circles, all the while camping and eating well and seeing plenty of bear sign, but not trapping any bears. Kelly eventually caught on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>He starts to realize that all these grizzly bear tracks that he’s seeing are actually probably not being made by a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> So he fired his crew. But by then he’d been gone for five months, and he was getting desperate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>Like, I need a bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Just then, a monstrous grizzly came to his camp, conquered a cinnamon bear called Six-Toed Pete in an epic moonlit battle, and walked into his trap. At least, that’s how Kelly reported it in the Examiner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping: \u003c/strong>A great ripping and tearing was heard going on inside. The Monarch was caught at last. Upon the approach of men, the grizzly became furious and made the heavy logs tremble and shake in his efforts to get out and resent the indignity that had been put upon him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> But Gandy thinks there was no trap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>He was actually probably captured by some of the vaqueros using lassos. And when they’re able to use four different horses to pull the bear’s arms and legs in four different directions, you have a bear that basically is stuck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> About fifteen years later, Kelly \u003ca href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15276/15276-h/15276-h.htm#chap02\">retold his story\u003c/a> in a book, this time saying that some Mexicans caught the bear, and he heard about it and went and bought it from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless, he still had to transport it to San Francisco. Which he reports in swashbuckling, self-aggrandizing detail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping: \u003c/strong>The Monarch was now bound, gagged, and utterly helpless, but he never ceased roaring with rage at his captors and struggling to get just one swipe at them with his paw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Naming the bear “Monarch” was kind of an advertisement for the Examiner, which had the slogan “The Monarch of the Dailies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly describes how the grizzly broke his teeth trying to gnaw through his chains. How he tied Monarch to a kind of sled and hauled him down the mountain, and then built a cage and mounted it on a wagon and then a train for San Francisco … to a place called Woodward’s Garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> In the late 1800’s, Woodward’s Garden was an amusement park in the Mission, near where the Armory is now. It had an aquatic carousel, balloon rides, camel rides, an eight foot three inch tall man who was billed as a giant . . . It was kind of a carnival. And a sign of its time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Academy of Sciences head librarian Rebekah Kim shows me a picture of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>They had, like, live bears jumping from like a diving board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan: \u003c/strong>Whoa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim:\u003c/strong> Oh, and then bears in captivity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The Examiner covered Monarch’s arrival at the garden with great drama: how one of the black bears died of fright when he arrived. How he tore through his cage into the hyena enclosure and rolled up sheets of iron like they were paper. How he was the only grizzly bear in captivity (which is not true. There was another one at the Oregon Zoo). How he weighed a thousand pounds (also not true).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ambi of chatter at the Academy of Sciences\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Back at Monarch’s taxidermy display, we talk about how the fabled massiveness of grizzly bears was yet another tall tale\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> I have never seen a grizzly, and I thought they’d be a lot bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>No, actually, technically. Monarch is a little overweight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Kim explains that despite grizzlies’ reputation for being huge and vicious\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>They were mostly vegan. And they probably weighed close to like 500 ish pounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan: \u003c/strong>Why would you bother being vegan with a body like that? Look at those claws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>I don’t know. I mean, and that’s the thing, it’s like a dispelling a myth. I think California grizzlies were hunted down because they were thought to be, um, apex predators and a threat to livestock and people, but they really weren’t going after those things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> It turns out the claws, along with the muscular hump on the shoulders, are really for digging. Grizzlies are omnivores, and eat mostly vegetarian. In captivity, however,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>Monarch’s diet consisted of biscuits, sugar, peanuts, not his natural diet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> No wonder he is portly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>He is. He was like, um, I don’t know exactly, around 900 pounds. So double the normal size of a grizzly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch stayed in Woodward’s Garden for five years, in a cage so small he could barely turn around in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>And then he moved to the World’s Fair in Golden Gate Park as part of like the 49 ERs camp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Wait a second. \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/457584756/?match=1&terms=monarch%20the%20bear\">As a live bear. He was in the World Fair?\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>Yeah, he was. There’s, oh, I have a picture somewhere. He’s like in a pit. It’s actually really sad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The 1894 World’s Fair took up 200 acres in Golden Gate Park. It was built like an amusement park, with large outdoor attractions. There were Inuit people on display, real people, in a village of papier-mache igloos. There was a Japanese village, which is now the Japanese Tea Garden. And a \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/378308351/?match=1&terms=%2749%20mining%20camp\">pretend mining camp\u003c/a>, where you could go to a saloon and see a grizzly bear. Here’s, once again, the San Francisco Examiner:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping: \u003c/strong>Monarch, the Examiner bear, is a wild and untamed beast, and has not yet been told that one of the lion tribe is likely to invade his home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Fairgoers were clamouring for a lion to be dropped into Monarch’s concrete pit so they’d fight. But the fair managers, in a rare moment of good taste, refused.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the World’s Fair, Monarch was moved to his final home — a cage in Golden Gate Park’s menagerie, where the AIDS Memorial Grove is now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>You could see a bunch of different animals. It was free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> This was the late 1800s, well before the San Francisco Zoo, and really before any real understanding of how to run a zoo. The park had bison, as it still does, but also kangaroos and elk and an aviary. And a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>You could walk up to the enclosure, stick your arm in if you wanted to. Um, and you could throw peanuts or whatever snacks you wanted to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> And Monarch lived there for the rest of his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>There’s a lot of historic photos. You can see many times he looks pretty sad behind bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> She shows me one of Monarch resting his head against the side of his cage, staring, it seems, into nothing. After the first decade, his keepers became concerned by his apparent depression and brought a female grizzly called Montana Babe. Over time, they had several cubs. Some of them died. And in 1911, after over two decades in captivity, Monarch died too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>At that point. He was very overweight, he was like paralyzed and not moving, and so the, I think their way of euthanasia was like a policeman coming and shooting him in the head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch was one of the last of his kind. California grizzlies were classified as a distinct subspecies. And for over half a century, they had been relentlessly, systematically poisoned, hunted and trapped. By the 1920s, they were extinct … or so we believed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> When we come back, we turn to Mark’s question. \u003cem>Is Monarch\u003c/em> the bear on the California flag? Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor break\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Now we come to the question of our state flag, featuring a strong and proud-looking grizzly bear. Our question asker, Mark Karn, wanted to know if, as the legend goes, \u003cem>Monarch\u003c/em> is the bear on the flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s Katherine Monahan again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The history of the bear flag goes way back – to before California was even a state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1846, grizzly bears were all over California, which was still part of Mexico. That year, a group of about thirty American settlers rebelled against the Mexican government and took over the town of Sonoma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They painted a bear and a star on a sheet, raised it above town, and proclaimed themselves an independent nation. The California Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Academy of Sciences head librarian Rebekah Kim shows me a picture of their flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>The first one is just like a silhouette of a. You think maybe a bear or a pig or a dog, right? It’s so hard to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> To the rebels, the grizzly \u003ca href=\"https://bearflagmuseum.blogspot.com/2009/08/william-b-ide-on-creation-of-bear-flag.html\">symbolized\u003c/a> “strength and unyielding resistance.” Their new republic didn’t last – California soon became part of the United States. But the bear flag stuck around. Only everybody was drawing it in a different way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>There’s another variation where the bear is up on its hind legs and kind of standing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> In 1911, California decided to make it the state flag. And the state legislature set guidelines, saying the bear must be in the middle, walking toward the left, and it must be dark brown\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>But there are no specific specifications about what it’s supposed to look like, so then, depending on the printer, you can get a different version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> So, in 1953, the legislature decided we needed to standardize the flag and try to make the bear look more reliably like a bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>And so there is a zoologist who is an expert on California grizzlies, who’s sort of informing the designer about how to change the image to make it less like either a wolf or like a pig.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The problem was, all the California grizzlies were dead by then. So what could the artist look at for a reference? The taxidermied form of Monarch could have been helpful, and there is a 1953 article in the San Francisco Chronicle that suggests it was part of the process. But Kim doesn’t buy it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>No. Looking at the historical documents of the illustrator. All the back and forth is not about Monarch. The references he uses is a different illustration and some, um, images of other grizzlies in other states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> So it’s. Kind of an urban legend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>It is, and it is perpetuated by lots of sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Kim herself was one of them, until she did this research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong> I was like, oh no, I’ve told people, like I’ve told the wrong thing to people. Cause that has been the narrative that we’ve been fed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The real model for the California state flag, as it turns out, was Samson, another famous grizzly that spent time in San Francisco long before Monarch showed up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the 1850s, a man named James Capen Adams, better known as Grizzly Adams, opened the Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco. It was on Clay Street, just a few blocks from where the Ferry Building is today. A newspaper reporter described a dingy basement with several live grizzlies chained to the floor. There were also elk, mountain lions, and a few eagles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping:\u003c/strong> At the rear, in a very large iron cage, was the monster grizzly Samson. He was an immense creature weighing some three-quarters of a ton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> A painter called Charles Nahl made a detailed portrait of Samson. And \u003cem>that\u003c/em> painting of \u003cem>that\u003c/em> bear was consistently used as a reference for the California state flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>The entire story was, was wrong in a lot of ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Pete Alagona is a professor in the environmental studies program at UC Santa Barbara. He says not only did \u003cem>Monarch’s \u003c/em>story get distorted and manipulated, but so did the story of all the California grizzlies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>And the most wrong part of it was the idea that the extinction of grizzly bears in California was inevitable, and the recovery of them is impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> To get closer to the truth, Alagona analyzed Monarch’s bones and fur, along with those of other grizzlies. His team found startling results. It turns out California grizzlies are genetically indistinguishable from modern-day grizzlies in Yellowstone and Montana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>They’re gone from California, but they’re not really extinct. They just kind of live in Montana right now. It’s the same bear. It’s just not here at the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Now, Alagona is working with the California Grizzly Alliance, which proposes \u003ca href=\"https://www.calgrizzly.org/\">bringing grizzlies back\u003c/a> to the state. The idea is to start with just a couple of animals, very closely monitored, in a very remote area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> You are aware that to a lot of people, the idea of reintroducing grizzlies sounds pretty nuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>Um, yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> What’s, what’s your response to that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>So, you know, when I started this project, it sounded nuts to me too. I wasn’t interested in that. I was just interested in learning about them. And as I went further along, I realized, it’s totally possible. Which means it’s a choice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> And if it’s a choice, he figures, we should make it an informed one by learning more about grizzlies. And not, this time, from what people have said about them, but by studying the animals themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>They do a lot of amazing things. They turn over soil and enrich the soil. They are by far the biggest seed dispersers of any animal out there in the world on a per capita basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> He says the biggest benefits that grizzlies might bring back to California, though, are not really about the ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>They’re more about. Imagination. They’re more about this idea that yes, we can restore things that seem unrestorable. Yes, there is a possibility for things that seem impossible. To me, that’s what the bear does for us is it enables you to see a different kind of future by showing you a little bit more about yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Maybe Monarch’s story is a kind of allegory for our present moment. On one hand, we live in a time of severe environmental loss, and many of us, to some extent, feel it and can relate to the depressed, overweight captive bear. On the other hand, this is a time of incredible possibility. When enough of our natural world still lives that it may be able to make a comeback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knows if we’ll ever find grizzlies in California again? But for now, we have our flag — adorned with an image of the fierce, proud, mostly vegetarian bear — named Samson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was KQED’s Katherine Monahan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are in the middle of our experiment of dropping two episodes a week, and we want to know what you think! Share your feedback with us by emailing \u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This question came from listener Mark Karn, and hey, who knows, a future episode could come from YOUR question. Our show is only possible because you keep asking them. Head to \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a> and submit a question right at the top of the page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em> is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriella Glueck, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a good one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\"> the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many state flags stick to geometric designs. Wyoming has a buffalo, Louisiana has a pelican. But the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">California\u003c/a> flag has a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em> listener Mark Karn was researching the flag one day when he found an unexpected story behind it, one that has been repeated for many years in newspapers, videos, and websites. He read that the bear on California’s flag was modeled after a famous bear named Monarch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as he looked into the history further, Karn started to have doubts. He noticed some inconsistencies in the story that made him question whether Monarch was indeed the bear on our flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>California used to have thousands of grizzlies\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Before the Gold Rush, historians estimate there were \u003ca href=\"https://nhmlac.org/california-grizzly-bear#:~:text=Some%20have%20estimated%20that%20California,skins%20and%20skeletons%20in%20existence.\">10,000 grizzly bears\u003c/a> in California, living alongside hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Spanish ranchers and then gold miners who flooded into California in the 1800s portrayed the animals as brutal, bloodthirsty killers, even though grizzlies mostly minded their own business unless provoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076801\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076801\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1339\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-04-KQED-1536x1028.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">It is often said that the bear on the modern California state flag is based on “Monarch,” one of the last grizzly bears to live in the state. But researchers now believe it was based on the drawing of another bear, Samson. \u003ccite>(Joseph Sohm/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You see the bear being really cast as this obstacle to progress, much like the wolves and much like native people,” said Devlin Gandy, tribal liaison for the California Grizzly Alliance. “As something that has to be done away with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bounties on grizzlies became common. Ranchers often put strychnine onto the carcasses of dead cows. By the late 1800s, very few grizzlies were left in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Monarch the bear’s infamous life\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1887, after getting kicked out of Harvard for bad behavior, William Randolph Hearst landed back in his hometown of San Francisco, where his father gave him a small newspaper called the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was in his 20s and thought it would be great publicity if someone from the Examiner could capture one of the last California grizzly bears and bring it back to San Francisco alive. So, he tasked one of his reporters, Allen Kelly, with the assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly had never actually hunted a bear before. But he strapped on a bandolier of ammunition and struck out for the mountains of Southern California, where it was rumored there were still a few grizzlies left.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076803\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076803\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-06-KQED-1536x1229.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The taxidermied form of Monarch the bear is part of an exhibit called California: State of Nature on display at the California Academy of Sciences. \u003ccite>(Gayle Laird/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With help from local hunters, Kelly spent months hiking around the mountains looking for bears with no luck. But eventually, a monstrous grizzly came to his camp and walked into one of the traps he had set.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least, that’s how \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/460837694/?match=1&terms=monarch%20the%20bear\">Kelly reported\u003c/a> it in the \u003cem>Examiner \u003c/em>at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Gandy thinks there was no trap. “[Monarch] was actually probably captured by some of the vaqueros using lassos,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure enough, Kelly later \u003ca href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15276/15276-h/15276-h.htm#chap02\">retold his story\u003c/a> in a book, this time saying that some Mexicans caught the bear, and he heard about it and went and bought it from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076813\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076813\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-08-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-08-KQED.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-08-KQED-160x96.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An 1875 image of Woodward’s Gardens, an attraction that was open in the Mission District from 1866 to 189. It featured a museum, art gallery, zoo, rides and more. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kelly called the bear “Monarch,” as an advertisement for the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em>, which had the slogan: “The Monarch of the Dailies.” He brought Monarch, via sled, wagon and train, to a place called Woodward’s Garden in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late 1800’s, \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/Woodward%27s_Gardens,_c._1860s\">Woodward’s Garden \u003c/a>was an amusement park in the Mission, near where the Armory is now. It had an aquatic carousel, balloon rides, camel rides and an 8-foot-3-inch-tall man who was billed as a giant. It was kind of a carnival, and a sign of its times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monarch stayed there for five years, in a cage so small he could barely turn around in it. Then he was moved to the World’s Fair in Golden Gate Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fair, called the \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/California_Midwinter_Fair_of_1894:_An_Orientalist_Exposition\">California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894\u003c/a>, took up 200 acres in Golden Gate Park. It was built like an amusement park, with large outdoor attractions. There were Inuit people on display — real people — in a village of papier-mache igloos. \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/the-racist-fair-that-almost-ruined-golden-gate-16770528.php\">There was a Japanese village\u003c/a>, which is now the Japanese Tea Garden. And a \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/378308351/?match=1&terms=%2749%20mining%20camp\">pretend mining camp\u003c/a>, where you could go to a saloon and see a grizzly bear — Monarch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the fair, Monarch was moved to his final home — a cage in Golden Gate Park’s menagerie — where the AIDS Memorial Grove is now. The menagerie had bison, kangaroos, elk, an aviary and now a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could walk up to the enclosure [and] stick your arm in if you wanted to,” said Rebekah Kim, head librarian at the California Academy of Sciences. “You could throw peanuts or whatever snacks you wanted to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076816\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076816\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-09-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A young guest inspects Monarch the bear, on view for the first time since 2012 at Cal Academy’s “California: State of Nature” exhibition. \u003ccite>(Gayle Laird/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And Monarch lived there for the rest of his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see many times he looks pretty sad behind bars,” said Kim, referencing a historic photograph of Monarch resting his head against the side of his cage, staring, it seems, at nothing. And in 1911, after over two decades in captivity, Monarch died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At that point, he was very overweight; he was paralyzed,” said Kim, “Their way of euthanasia was like a policeman coming and shooting him in the head.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monarch was one of the last of his kind. California grizzlies were classified as a distinct subspecies, and for over half a century, they had been relentlessly, systematically poisoned, hunted and trapped. By the 1920s, scientists believed them to be extinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How California ended up with a bear on its flag\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1846, grizzly bears were all over California, which was still part of Mexico. That year, a group of about 30 American settlers rebelled against the Mexican government and took over the town of Sonoma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They painted a bear and a star on a sheet, raised it above town, and proclaimed themselves an independent nation: “the California Republic.” They said the grizzly \u003ca href=\"https://bearflagmuseum.blogspot.com/2009/08/william-b-ide-on-creation-of-bear-flag.html\">symbolized\u003c/a> “strength and unyielding resistance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076800\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1474px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076800\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1474\" height=\"848\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-03-KQED.jpg 1474w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-03-KQED-160x92.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1474px) 100vw, 1474px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This 1855 illustration of the grizzly bear, Samson, was made by artist Charles Nahl. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bear on that flag bore little resemblance to our current flag’s bear. “[It looks like] maybe a bear or a pig or a dog, right? It’s so hard to tell,” Kim said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The independent republic didn’t last; California soon became part of the United States. The bear flag stuck around, but everybody was drawing it in a different way. Some versions had the bear standing up, on others it was perched up at the top of the flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1911, California adopted the bear flag as its state flag, and the legislature set guidelines, saying the bear must be in the middle, walking toward the left, and dark brown. In 1953, the state decided to standardize the flag further and try to make the bear look more like a bear, rather than a wolf or a pig. A zoologist was brought in to advise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076799\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1099px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12076799 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1099\" height=\"621\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-02-KQED.jpg 1099w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-02-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1099px) 100vw, 1099px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photograph of an illustration showing the raising of the Bear Flag over Sonoma, June 14, 1846. The California Republic flag, complete with grizzly bear, star and stripe, is being raised on the pole. In the background is the home of General Vallejo, an army barracks and a church. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here’s where the urban legend begins. Many sources report that since all the California grizzlies were dead by then, the flag’s artist used the taxidermied form of Monarch, which was even then on display at the California Academy of Sciences, as a reference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Kim doesn’t buy it. She studied the relevant historical documents, especially the correspondence between the zoologist and the flag’s artist. \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/flag-correspondence.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">According to the letters\u003c/a>, the men used as their main reference a different grizzly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the 1850s, a man named James Capen Adams, better known as Grizzly Adams, opened the Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco. It was on Clay Street, just a few blocks from where the Ferry Building is today. It had several live grizzlies chained to the floor, as well as elk, mountain lions, and a few eagles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the rear, in a very large iron cage, was a massive grizzly named Samson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A painter called Charles Nahl made illustrations for \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/adventuresofjame00hittrich/page/n9/mode/2up\">a book\u003c/a> about Adams, and one of his paintings was of \u003ca href=\"https://bancroftlibrarycara.wordpress.com/nahl_grizzly_monterey_image_cropped/\">Samson\u003c/a>. It’s \u003cem>that\u003c/em> painting, of Samson, that was consistently used as a reference for the California state flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The California grizzly’s undeserved reputation\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not only did Monarch’s story get distorted and manipulated, but so did the story of all the California grizzlies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most wrong part of it was the idea that the extinction of grizzly bears in California was inevitable and the recovery of them is impossible,” said Peter Alagona, a professor in the environmental studies program at UC Santa Barbara.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together with a team of researchers, Alagona analyzed Monarch’s bones and fur, along with those of other grizzlies. He found startling results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076817\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076817\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260317-MONARCH-THE-BEAR-10-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fran Ritchie of the California Academy of Sciences works to restore Monarch’s fur. \u003ccite>(Gayle Laird/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It turns out, California grizzlies were mostly vegetarian and averaged around 500 pounds, much smaller than the monstrous sizes attributed to them. Perhaps most surprisingly, they are genetically indistinguishable from modern-day grizzlies in Yellowstone and Montana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re gone from California, but they’re not really extinct,” said Alagona. “They just kind of live in Montana right now. It’s the same bear. It’s just not here at the moment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Alagona is working with the California Grizzly Alliance, which proposes \u003ca href=\"https://www.calgrizzly.org/\">bringing grizzlies back\u003c/a> to the state.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He’s aware that to many people this sounds like a very bad idea. But the concept is to start with just a couple of animals, very closely monitored, in a very remote area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They do a lot of amazing things,” he said. “They turn over soil and enrich the soil. They are by far the biggest seed dispersers of any animal out there in the world on a per capita basis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alagona’s research suggests that with sufficient numbers and time, grizzlies could even change the state’s vegetation and create firebreaks. But to him, the most important benefit is less tangible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re more about imagination,” Alagona said. “They’re more about this idea that yes, we can restore things that seem unrestorable. To me, that’s what the bear does for us is it enables you to see a different kind of future by showing you a little bit more about yourself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Out of the 50 states that make up the union, California is considered pretty cool. We’ve got the good weather, the stunning coastline, those laid-back vibes. And we’ve definitely got a cool state flag. If you’ve looked at other flags, many stick to geometric designs. Wyoming does have a buffalo. Louisiana’s got a pelican. But California? Our flag has a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em> listener Mark Karn was researching the flag one day,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I like to read a lot, and whenever I read, I like to, um, go off on tangents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He found an unexpected story behind it — one that has been repeated for many years in newspapers, videos, and websites. He read that the bear on our flag was modeled after a famous bear named Monarch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monarch was one of California’s last grizzlies, captured in the mountains and then put on display in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I kind of deep dived into Monarch the bear. I was fascinated by it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Mark has always had a passion for wild animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I was born in Nigeria and grew up in South Africa. I love looking at nature in its wild state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>As a teenager, he would take a book out to a remote watering hole where he’d read and wait for animals to come and drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>And I used to see a little, uh, a duiker. A duiker is a very small antelope. I used to watch the duiker come and, and drink water at the water hole. Definitely one of my most memorable moments, and you know, my happy memories. \u003cem>(Laughs.)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So, Mark was dismayed to learn that Monarch, this big, powerful grizzly, was kept behind bars for most of his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>I kind of cringe at animals in zoos. You know, they supposedly live longer, but to me there’s a, a beauty that they lack when they’re in a cage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And while he was doing his own research, he noticed some inconsistencies in Monarch’s story that made him question if Monarch was indeed the bear on our flag. So he reached out to \u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mark Karn: \u003c/strong>The bear on the California flag, is it the actual Monarch the Bear that they claim it is?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>To find out if it really was, and to sort through some of the other legends around the bear, reporter Katherine Monahan went to meet Monarch. Or rather, his taxidermied form, more than a century old, on display at the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of chatter and kids in an echoey space\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> It’s a weekday afternoon, and the academy is packed with kids and families, mostly checking out the aquarium or the T-rex. They don’t all head for this dimly lit corner of the California exhibit. But those who do\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor: \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>Wow. That is crazy. Man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Get to see a California grizzly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 2: \u003c/strong>Did you know we had grizzly bears?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 3: \u003c/strong>We don’t have ’em anymore, do we?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch is powerful-looking, with a muscular hump above his shoulders. He’s dark and shaggy and bigger than a black bear for sure, but not nearly as big as, say, a two-ton polar bear. His claws, though\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 2: \u003c/strong>They look lethal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> They’re easily as long as my fingers. There’s a cast paw print where people can put their own hand in to compare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 4: \u003c/strong>Go put your hand in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 5: \u003c/strong>Oh my goodness. That’s just the palm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch is standing flat on all fours with kind of a Mona Lisa smile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Museum visitor 6: \u003c/strong>Was he old?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> He looks peaceful. But then, he is taxidermied, quite literally a puppet. And we could have made him look however we wanted. Which, in many ways, is what we did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy:\u003c/strong> So much of what we know about grizzlies is a myth. It’s fictitious, it’s fear-based.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> That’s Devlin Gandy, tribal liaison for the California Grizzly Alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says it’s estimated there were ten thousand grizzly bears in the state before the California Gold Rush. And, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>It’s very abundantly clear that they not only existed alongside grizzlies, but they thrived with grizzlies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> But the Spanish ranchers and then the gold miners who flooded into California in the 1800s saw the bears differently. They told sensational stories that featured the animals as brutal, bloodthirsty killers — even though grizzlies mostly minded their own business unless provoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>You see the bear being really cast as this, um, obstacle to progress, much like the wolves and much like native people, and as something that, you know, has to be done away with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Bounties on grizzlies became common. Mostly, they were killed with poison. Ranchers put strychnine onto the carcasses of dead cows. By the late 1800s, very few grizzlies were left in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>It’s a time of extreme ecological degradation, and you start to get this romanticism for the West, this romantic notion of Native Americans and wildlife. And Monarch falls right into that narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Enter William Randolph Hearst. In 1887, after getting kicked out of Harvard for bad behavior, he landed back in his hometown of San Francisco. Where his father gave him a small newspaper called the San Francisco Examiner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>Hearst is leading this new wave of journalism that has a lot of sensationalism tied to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> He was about 25 years old. And he thought it would be great publicity if someone from the Examiner could capture a live grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So he asked one of his reporters, Allen Kelly, to do it. Kelly clearly got right into character, as you can see in his portrait from the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>He has these bandoliers of ammunition on both sides of his chest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s just like he’s trying to be Rambo. You’re like, what are you doing, dude?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Kelly had never actually hunted a bear before. So when he struck out for the mountains of Southern California, where it was rumored there were still a few grizzlies left, he hired local helpers. They were happy to oblige.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>A man coming from San Francisco with a blank check from one of the richest men in California to go on a bear hunt? That sounds absolutely great.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> They led this city-slicker journalist around in circles, all the while camping and eating well and seeing plenty of bear sign, but not trapping any bears. Kelly eventually caught on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>He starts to realize that all these grizzly bear tracks that he’s seeing are actually probably not being made by a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> So he fired his crew. But by then he’d been gone for five months, and he was getting desperate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>Like, I need a bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Just then, a monstrous grizzly came to his camp, conquered a cinnamon bear called Six-Toed Pete in an epic moonlit battle, and walked into his trap. At least, that’s how Kelly reported it in the Examiner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping: \u003c/strong>A great ripping and tearing was heard going on inside. The Monarch was caught at last. Upon the approach of men, the grizzly became furious and made the heavy logs tremble and shake in his efforts to get out and resent the indignity that had been put upon him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> But Gandy thinks there was no trap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Devlin Gandy: \u003c/strong>He was actually probably captured by some of the vaqueros using lassos. And when they’re able to use four different horses to pull the bear’s arms and legs in four different directions, you have a bear that basically is stuck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> About fifteen years later, Kelly \u003ca href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15276/15276-h/15276-h.htm#chap02\">retold his story\u003c/a> in a book, this time saying that some Mexicans caught the bear, and he heard about it and went and bought it from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless, he still had to transport it to San Francisco. Which he reports in swashbuckling, self-aggrandizing detail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping: \u003c/strong>The Monarch was now bound, gagged, and utterly helpless, but he never ceased roaring with rage at his captors and struggling to get just one swipe at them with his paw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Naming the bear “Monarch” was kind of an advertisement for the Examiner, which had the slogan “The Monarch of the Dailies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly describes how the grizzly broke his teeth trying to gnaw through his chains. How he tied Monarch to a kind of sled and hauled him down the mountain, and then built a cage and mounted it on a wagon and then a train for San Francisco … to a place called Woodward’s Garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> In the late 1800’s, Woodward’s Garden was an amusement park in the Mission, near where the Armory is now. It had an aquatic carousel, balloon rides, camel rides, an eight foot three inch tall man who was billed as a giant . . . It was kind of a carnival. And a sign of its time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Academy of Sciences head librarian Rebekah Kim shows me a picture of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>They had, like, live bears jumping from like a diving board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan: \u003c/strong>Whoa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim:\u003c/strong> Oh, and then bears in captivity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The Examiner covered Monarch’s arrival at the garden with great drama: how one of the black bears died of fright when he arrived. How he tore through his cage into the hyena enclosure and rolled up sheets of iron like they were paper. How he was the only grizzly bear in captivity (which is not true. There was another one at the Oregon Zoo). How he weighed a thousand pounds (also not true).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ambi of chatter at the Academy of Sciences\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Back at Monarch’s taxidermy display, we talk about how the fabled massiveness of grizzly bears was yet another tall tale\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> I have never seen a grizzly, and I thought they’d be a lot bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>No, actually, technically. Monarch is a little overweight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Kim explains that despite grizzlies’ reputation for being huge and vicious\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>They were mostly vegan. And they probably weighed close to like 500 ish pounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan: \u003c/strong>Why would you bother being vegan with a body like that? Look at those claws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>I don’t know. I mean, and that’s the thing, it’s like a dispelling a myth. I think California grizzlies were hunted down because they were thought to be, um, apex predators and a threat to livestock and people, but they really weren’t going after those things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> It turns out the claws, along with the muscular hump on the shoulders, are really for digging. Grizzlies are omnivores, and eat mostly vegetarian. In captivity, however,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>Monarch’s diet consisted of biscuits, sugar, peanuts, not his natural diet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> No wonder he is portly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>He is. He was like, um, I don’t know exactly, around 900 pounds. So double the normal size of a grizzly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch stayed in Woodward’s Garden for five years, in a cage so small he could barely turn around in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>And then he moved to the World’s Fair in Golden Gate Park as part of like the 49 ERs camp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Wait a second. \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/457584756/?match=1&terms=monarch%20the%20bear\">As a live bear. He was in the World Fair?\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>Yeah, he was. There’s, oh, I have a picture somewhere. He’s like in a pit. It’s actually really sad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The 1894 World’s Fair took up 200 acres in Golden Gate Park. It was built like an amusement park, with large outdoor attractions. There were Inuit people on display, real people, in a village of papier-mache igloos. There was a Japanese village, which is now the Japanese Tea Garden. And a \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/378308351/?match=1&terms=%2749%20mining%20camp\">pretend mining camp\u003c/a>, where you could go to a saloon and see a grizzly bear. Here’s, once again, the San Francisco Examiner:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping: \u003c/strong>Monarch, the Examiner bear, is a wild and untamed beast, and has not yet been told that one of the lion tribe is likely to invade his home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Fairgoers were clamouring for a lion to be dropped into Monarch’s concrete pit so they’d fight. But the fair managers, in a rare moment of good taste, refused.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the World’s Fair, Monarch was moved to his final home — a cage in Golden Gate Park’s menagerie, where the AIDS Memorial Grove is now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>You could see a bunch of different animals. It was free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> This was the late 1800s, well before the San Francisco Zoo, and really before any real understanding of how to run a zoo. The park had bison, as it still does, but also kangaroos and elk and an aviary. And a grizzly bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>You could walk up to the enclosure, stick your arm in if you wanted to. Um, and you could throw peanuts or whatever snacks you wanted to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> And Monarch lived there for the rest of his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>There’s a lot of historic photos. You can see many times he looks pretty sad behind bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> She shows me one of Monarch resting his head against the side of his cage, staring, it seems, into nothing. After the first decade, his keepers became concerned by his apparent depression and brought a female grizzly called Montana Babe. Over time, they had several cubs. Some of them died. And in 1911, after over two decades in captivity, Monarch died too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>At that point. He was very overweight, he was like paralyzed and not moving, and so the, I think their way of euthanasia was like a policeman coming and shooting him in the head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Monarch was one of the last of his kind. California grizzlies were classified as a distinct subspecies. And for over half a century, they had been relentlessly, systematically poisoned, hunted and trapped. By the 1920s, they were extinct … or so we believed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> When we come back, we turn to Mark’s question. \u003cem>Is Monarch\u003c/em> the bear on the California flag? Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor break\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Now we come to the question of our state flag, featuring a strong and proud-looking grizzly bear. Our question asker, Mark Karn, wanted to know if, as the legend goes, \u003cem>Monarch\u003c/em> is the bear on the flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s Katherine Monahan again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The history of the bear flag goes way back – to before California was even a state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1846, grizzly bears were all over California, which was still part of Mexico. That year, a group of about thirty American settlers rebelled against the Mexican government and took over the town of Sonoma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They painted a bear and a star on a sheet, raised it above town, and proclaimed themselves an independent nation. The California Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Academy of Sciences head librarian Rebekah Kim shows me a picture of their flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>The first one is just like a silhouette of a. You think maybe a bear or a pig or a dog, right? It’s so hard to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> To the rebels, the grizzly \u003ca href=\"https://bearflagmuseum.blogspot.com/2009/08/william-b-ide-on-creation-of-bear-flag.html\">symbolized\u003c/a> “strength and unyielding resistance.” Their new republic didn’t last – California soon became part of the United States. But the bear flag stuck around. Only everybody was drawing it in a different way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>There’s another variation where the bear is up on its hind legs and kind of standing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> In 1911, California decided to make it the state flag. And the state legislature set guidelines, saying the bear must be in the middle, walking toward the left, and it must be dark brown\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>But there are no specific specifications about what it’s supposed to look like, so then, depending on the printer, you can get a different version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> So, in 1953, the legislature decided we needed to standardize the flag and try to make the bear look more reliably like a bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>And so there is a zoologist who is an expert on California grizzlies, who’s sort of informing the designer about how to change the image to make it less like either a wolf or like a pig.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The problem was, all the California grizzlies were dead by then. So what could the artist look at for a reference? The taxidermied form of Monarch could have been helpful, and there is a 1953 article in the San Francisco Chronicle that suggests it was part of the process. But Kim doesn’t buy it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>No. Looking at the historical documents of the illustrator. All the back and forth is not about Monarch. The references he uses is a different illustration and some, um, images of other grizzlies in other states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> So it’s. Kind of an urban legend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong>It is, and it is perpetuated by lots of sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Kim herself was one of them, until she did this research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rebekah Kim: \u003c/strong> I was like, oh no, I’ve told people, like I’ve told the wrong thing to people. Cause that has been the narrative that we’ve been fed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> The real model for the California state flag, as it turns out, was Samson, another famous grizzly that spent time in San Francisco long before Monarch showed up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the 1850s, a man named James Capen Adams, better known as Grizzly Adams, opened the Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco. It was on Clay Street, just a few blocks from where the Ferry Building is today. A newspaper reporter described a dingy basement with several live grizzlies chained to the floor. There were also elk, mountain lions, and a few eagles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over reads newspaper clipping:\u003c/strong> At the rear, in a very large iron cage, was the monster grizzly Samson. He was an immense creature weighing some three-quarters of a ton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> A painter called Charles Nahl made a detailed portrait of Samson. And \u003cem>that\u003c/em> painting of \u003cem>that\u003c/em> bear was consistently used as a reference for the California state flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>The entire story was, was wrong in a lot of ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Pete Alagona is a professor in the environmental studies program at UC Santa Barbara. He says not only did \u003cem>Monarch’s \u003c/em>story get distorted and manipulated, but so did the story of all the California grizzlies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>And the most wrong part of it was the idea that the extinction of grizzly bears in California was inevitable, and the recovery of them is impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> To get closer to the truth, Alagona analyzed Monarch’s bones and fur, along with those of other grizzlies. His team found startling results. It turns out California grizzlies are genetically indistinguishable from modern-day grizzlies in Yellowstone and Montana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>They’re gone from California, but they’re not really extinct. They just kind of live in Montana right now. It’s the same bear. It’s just not here at the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Now, Alagona is working with the California Grizzly Alliance, which proposes \u003ca href=\"https://www.calgrizzly.org/\">bringing grizzlies back\u003c/a> to the state. The idea is to start with just a couple of animals, very closely monitored, in a very remote area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> You are aware that to a lot of people, the idea of reintroducing grizzlies sounds pretty nuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>Um, yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> What’s, what’s your response to that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>So, you know, when I started this project, it sounded nuts to me too. I wasn’t interested in that. I was just interested in learning about them. And as I went further along, I realized, it’s totally possible. Which means it’s a choice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> And if it’s a choice, he figures, we should make it an informed one by learning more about grizzlies. And not, this time, from what people have said about them, but by studying the animals themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>They do a lot of amazing things. They turn over soil and enrich the soil. They are by far the biggest seed dispersers of any animal out there in the world on a per capita basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> He says the biggest benefits that grizzlies might bring back to California, though, are not really about the ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Alagona: \u003c/strong>They’re more about. Imagination. They’re more about this idea that yes, we can restore things that seem unrestorable. Yes, there is a possibility for things that seem impossible. To me, that’s what the bear does for us is it enables you to see a different kind of future by showing you a little bit more about yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katherine Monahan:\u003c/strong> Maybe Monarch’s story is a kind of allegory for our present moment. On one hand, we live in a time of severe environmental loss, and many of us, to some extent, feel it and can relate to the depressed, overweight captive bear. On the other hand, this is a time of incredible possibility. When enough of our natural world still lives that it may be able to make a comeback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knows if we’ll ever find grizzlies in California again? But for now, we have our flag — adorned with an image of the fierce, proud, mostly vegetarian bear — named Samson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was KQED’s Katherine Monahan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are in the middle of our experiment of dropping two episodes a week, and we want to know what you think! Share your feedback with us by emailing \u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This question came from listener Mark Karn, and hey, who knows, a future episode could come from YOUR question. Our show is only possible because you keep asking them. Head to \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a> and submit a question right at the top of the page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious\u003c/em> is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriella Glueck, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a good one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I moved to San Francisco in the summer of 2013 with a giant patch the size of a maxi pad covering my left eye. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just a week before my move, I had eye surgery to repair a partially detached retina, a condition that could have left me blind. The first month or so after surgery was tough. Anytime my pulse got a little elevated, I would feel it pounding in my eye. And so my first month in San Francisco was profoundly dark and lonely. I spent most of it lying in bed, listening to audiobooks in a darkened room. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As healing progressed, though, I started to venture outside. First on short walks to the coffee shop, but soon on little runs through Golden Gate Park. I started off on the main thoroughfares. I’d pass by the Conservatory of Flowers, loop around Blue Heron Lake, stop to admire the bison. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As my body recovered, my runs grew longer. And it was the sense of discovery in the park that propelled me to add a mile or two here or there on my run each day. Follow an uncertain path into the woods only to find a new garden I’d never seen. My run stretched out first to six miles, then eight miles, 10 miles, and finally 13.1 miles when I kicked my way across the finish line of my very first half marathon which, fittingly, finished in Golden Gate Park. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music ends\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The park revived me, gave me a space to rebuild myself after feeling pretty broken. And that’s why I’m excited to share today’s episode where we dig in on how it was created more than 150 years ago. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But first, let me introduce our special guest. Marta Lindsay has combed over every dell, every stone, every pathway to write a new book, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Discovering Golden Gate Park, a Local’s Guide\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And she’s here to share some hot tips about the park today. Welcome, Marta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you so much for having me. This is a delight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I’m so glad you could join us. What is it that captured your imagination about Golden Gate Park enough to spend all the time that I know it takes to write a book about it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, end of the day, I just really love Golden Gate Park, but I got into it in part because of having a fussy baby. If she was having one of those days where she’s super fussy, like you just have to get outside, right? And for us outside basically was Golden Gate park in the inner sunset area. And I think as I started to spend so much more time in the park, I just saw there was so much more to it than first meets the eye.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1625030704&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your book has so much information about the different spaces within the park, but today you’ve brought a few things to talk about that even the most devout park lovers might not know. Let’s start with some of those unique stones found in the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The monastery stones. Yes. Once you know about these, then you’re always looking for them and it’s really fun because they are scattered all around the park. Go back in medieval times everyone, and we’re in Spain…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Around the year 1,200 at a monastery overlooking the Tagus River.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And there is this incredibly beautiful series of buildings, kind of castle-like. And they were all made by hand by these monks who hand-carved all these limestones, thousands and thousands of stones.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The monastery built of these beautiful stones flourished for hundreds of years until the 1830s, but was shut down by royal decree.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And over the years, it was not used, and it was kind of falling apart. And enter William Randolph Hearst. He was, like, kind of the ultimate rich guy of the era. He owned the San Francisco Examiner. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, of course, Hearst Castle, the sprawling estate down in San Simeon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He had someone who had scoped out this old monastery in Spain and was like, I think we should take the whole thing apart! Ship it to America and build another amazing castle, but in Northern California this time. 11 ships had to transport the stones of these multiple ancient buildings all the way to San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Depression takes enough wind out of the sails of Hearst’s fortune that this is an impossible thing. And so he ends up selling the stones to the city of San Francisco in 1941. So these stones are just sitting in this warehouse in San Francisco and they’re all marked by the way, when they took them apart, it was like, we got to be able to reassemble them. So they were marked.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">essentially packed in wooden crates with instructions on the outside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then there’s this idea to build a medieval art museum in Golden Gate Park using the stones. The stones are moved to Golden Gate Park, and then right away there’s a fire. And then there’s some more fires, which burned the markings off. This made it, at the time, impossible to reassemble. Then you’ve just got all these monastery stones sitting in Golden Gate park and what’s gonna happen to them. And eventually they just start using them for gardening. There’s a ton of them in the botanical gardens used in a variety of ways. And then also sometimes you’ll just find one here or there along a path. Some of them are really ornately carved and have like. You know, rounded edges and lots of, like, designs in them. If you go right into the main gate at the botanical garden, immediately to your left, they’ve built this whole wall and structure using them, and so you get to see kind of a variety of the design.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11915008 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/05/Conservatory-of-flowers.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And also how neat to be able to touch these stones and think about the journey they took to get there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Them every day and have no idea that they’re walking by this medieval treasure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of folks are probably familiar with the Beach Chalet, the restaurant at the very end of the park that borders on Ocean Beach. They have a lovely view of the Pacific, if you can get a spot in the dining room, which is tricky on the weekends, some solid food, but it can also get pretty crowded on a sunny day. I have heard that you have a tip about somewhere else to try just a short walk away.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the golf clubhouse. I do not golf, but when I went there for researching the book, I was like, oh my gosh, this is a little hidden secret. They redid it a couple years ago and the patio is beautiful. And because of the way they redid the golf course, you can now see through the trees to the ocean, which I think is one of the very few places in the park that you’re actually like having ocean-ness in the background. And they have got this little clubhouse and they’re like serving up. Bill’s burger dog, trademark, which is one of three places you can get a Bill’s Burger Dog, which is basically a hamburger shaped like the size, like a hot dog bun size, but even better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did they put it in a hot dog bun?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>I\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t’s on a hot dog bun.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>Then i\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t’s a burger?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>I\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t is a burger.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you put burger toppings on it or hot dog toppings on?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I think you could go either way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the height of the COVID-19 shutdowns, the park really became, I think, a sanctuary for a lot of people, maybe including yourself. It was a way to get out of your house. It was way to interact with other people in a way that was, you know, a bit safer. Do something with your body. In this book, you mentioned that some people really started to make the park their own during that time. Can you tell us about some of those folks?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I would say quietly during the pandemic, some parts of the park really were transformed in these really magical ways and a lot of people don’t know about them. One of them is if you’re walking along JFK Promenade and you get almost to the whale sculpture that’s in the middle of JFK promenade, on your right side would be 14th Avenue Meadow, which is where they have the beer garden in the summer with the free live music. And then right past that is, you’ll see like a lot of succulents and stuff. And this woman, Marta, happens to share my name.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the pandemic. She’s like, ‘I was, you know, it was two weeks in, I was depressed, I had a house cleaning business and I couldn’t do that anymore.’ And she’s like I just started going to the park and then there was a rec and park gardener and I told them I was a hard worker and I needed something to do. And so she started tending that area and it’s totally transformed it. And again, like. You’ve got to get off the main path and then you’ll be on these little magical trails and it’s so pretty back there. And she has said, if you see her there, and she’s always wearing this large brimmed hat, like she has extra gloves, and you can go help her anytime.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The little paths that she’s created are especially cool because it looks like there’s just bushes lining the sidewalk there, but if you follow the woodchip paths that she has created back sort of beyond the bushes, there’s a whole little world back there that you can’t see from the main road. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11915065 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/05/GettyImages-1322040719-scaled-e1653522839658.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One name that people have probably heard a lot related to Golden Gate Park is John McLaren. He was an early park superintendent who served for more than 50 years, and he did a lot to make the park the special place it is today. His fingerprints are really all over it. He comes up a lot in your book. Can you tell us what it is about him that captured your imagination.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So John McLaren oversaw the park starting in 1890. And William Hammond Hall created the canvas, but then John McLaren was the artist and he really ran with it. And at that time he took over half of the park still had nothing had happened to it yet. Half of the Park, the dunes had been reclaimed and things were starting to be planted, but that was still a whole half of park to deal with, and John McLaren oversaw it all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His vision for the park was just right on, with wanting it to really feel like an escape into nature. And he had to fight a lot of fights during those years to try to hold to that. But he also was this master gardener with this just eye for design that was. Really special for the time too because the parks that existed at that time were mostly European parks but nature doesn’t run in a straight line was one of his quotes. His favorite thing was the dells. He loved to have flowers growing within a grove of trees somewhere so it’s like you stumble on to this little magical scene right and because he was on the job for so long he was really able to realize that. I just think of how much of what we think of as the look and feel of the park it’s John McLaren.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can find much more about John McLaren in Marta’s book, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Discovering Golden Gate Park, A Local’s Guide\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Find it wherever books are sold. Marta Lindsay, thank you so much for talking with us today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you so for having me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we return, The Making of Golden Gate park. Stay with us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next up, producer Katrina Schwartz and I are exploring the early history of how Golden Gate Park was built.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of stories about how this park came to be. One tale goes that only a magical combination of horse manure and spit was enough to tame the sandy soil and make it rich enough for plants to grow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, I’m no gardener, but even to me, that sounds a little far-fetched. To find some definitive answers, we headed over to the northeast corner of the park. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz in scene:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So this little path says Oak Woodland Path. should we go up there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, let’s check it out. Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trees we walked through were here before anything else in the park. It’s one of the few areas that remains relatively unchanged.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is an old-growth forest. These would be descendants of the trees that were cut down for firewood during the gold rush. It predated the park, it predated European colonization here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re here with Nicole Meldahl, the executive director of the Western Neighborhoods Project, a community history nonprofit focused on the west side of San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s just behind the conservatory flowers, kind of hidden.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We decided to start here because it was this corner of the park where trees grew naturally that gave park creators the confidence they could make the rest of the Park green.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As beautiful as the Oak Grove is, we are still surrounded by the city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Trucks that back up are the worst. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We kept going deeper and deeper into the park, hoping to find a quiet spot for our interview.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sorry, we’re off-roading a little. I thought it was a path, but then it became not a path.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nicole says what we now know as Golden Gate Park, a lush place with winding pathways, protected dells and lots of recreation, wasn’t even part of the city at first.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What did this place look like at the beginning of the gold rush?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An 1853 map of this area, called it the Great Sand Bank. So yeah, it was very empty, isolated. There were a few scattered beach cottages for some adventurous folks. There were homesteaders out here.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s population skyrocketed during the years after the gold rush, and city leaders had big ambitions. But first, they needed more space. In the Outside Lands Act of 1866, the western half of the city became part of San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco has always thought of itself as like a great, amazing city, right? And it is, we definitely know it is. But really it was the new kid in town. So at some point they decided they needed a park that was befitting of the amazing city that they hoped to build this into.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As luck would have it, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for designing Central Park in New York, was traveling in California. City leaders asked for his opinion about building the new park in the newly acquired Outside Lands.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he was like, oh no, no, you can never build a park here. Trees won’t grow in these sand dunes, so I recommend the other side of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">City leaders did not like that recommendation, so instead of following Olmsted’s advice, they found someone else who promised he could transform the dunes into forest. A young surveyor from Stockton named William Hammond Hall.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how did Hammond Hall turn the Great Sandy Bank into this park that we know and love?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, there’s a legend about that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some with less veritable facts…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Legend goes Hammond Hall is out with his team surveying the land after the city designated it for the park in 1870.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’ve got their horses with them\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and one of the horse’s feed buckets that hangs around their nose drops, and the barley that’s in their feed spills out into the sand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then, of course, you need a little fertilizer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, manure from the same horse that the barley fell out of the feed bag from landed directly on top of this little patch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Hammond hog comes back through that area in a week or so, the quick growing barley from the horse’s bucket has already taken root and is growing. And William Hammond Hall goes…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is going to be the secret recipe for how we tame these dunes, because if you combine the quick growing barley with native lupine here, that will sort of stabilize the dunes long enough to allow for these trees that he wanted to put through the park as wind breaks to grow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s all a little convenient, isn’t it? Nicole thinks elements of this story are true, but the mythical telling leaves out some context. First, historians have recently discovered that there was a farm on the eastern edge of the park that grew barley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, Hammond Hall probably already knew barley could grow here. And second, the process of reclaiming sand by starting with small, quick-growing grasses to build up topsoil before planting trees on top of them was already a well-established practice in Europe. As for the horse manure part of the legend, that is where we get to street sweepers. And no, I’m not talking about the kind that get you a parking ticket.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was common practice for the city to use horse manure they collected in the streets because this is still an era where people used horses on a daily basis so it was a sort of thrifty way to fertilize city parks and areas around town.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that’s how acres and acres of sand dunes were transformed into forest. No spit, but there was definitely manure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We were just about to ask Nicole about the park’s many hills and dells, when who should come strolling by but the guy who literally wrote a book on Golden Gate Park’s history? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chris Pollock?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh my god! Hi! We’re from Be Curious. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The park’s historian in the park. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi! Lovely to meet you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What a coincidence!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s a happy meeting because in addition to the land reclamation technique Nicole has been describing, Hammond Hall did something else pretty ingenious when he was superintendent of the park. Chris Pollack calls it respecting the genius of the place.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what the genius of the place means is utilizing what you’ve got to work with to the best ability you can.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Basically respect that the landscape looks the way it does for a reason.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What that meant was a very efficient way of using the sand dunes as the existing topography, for the most part, to create this undulating, kind of interesting landscape, because to have it just flat would have been rather boring and counterintuitive to the idea of sustainable environment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They knew that the wind coming off the ocean was their worst enemy. If they leveled the park, the wind would continue to push sand eastward and kill new plantings.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the area behind the sand dune, it wouldn’t be so windy there, and it might be more hospitable to plant something there as opposed to on the windy side of the sand dunes. So there was a lot of selection being done.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The hidden dells, small hills, and winding paths in the park are the result of using the genius of the place in the design.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Hammond Hall started greening the eastern end of the park, slowly moving westward. But he simultaneously took on the far west end near the beach. Stopping the sand dunes from encroaching was critical to the success of the project. Here’s Nicole again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like okay we’re gonna build a fence and we’re going to put the planks really close together and the dunes will come up and it will hit against that fence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the sand piled up it made a windbreak \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And on the other side of the fence you know where the dunes aren’t we’re start planning all these things and it’ll start growing up and the Dunes will up to the top of the fence and then we’ll build the fence higher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today, at the far western end of the park, you can still see Hammond Hall’s idea at work. Large trees and bushes protect the intersections of the Park from the sand that comes whipping across the Great Highway, and little sand dunes sometimes pile up at the park’s edges.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Within five years, San Franciscans were delighted by their new park. An 1875 article in the San Francisco Examiner said,\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Newspaper clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Calling to mind the inhospitable desolate aspect of the region a few years since, we cannot but regard with favor the result.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammond Hall had the sand mostly under control, but something else had become unruly. The politics of the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In general, there was a lot of graft in the city at the time, and William Hammond Hall didn’t like it. So he tried to control what he could with his powers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Superintendent of the park. He fired a blacksmith for padding his contract. A blacksmith who, unfortunately for Hammond Hall, ended up becoming a state legislator. He sought his revenge by blocking funding for the park and accused Hammond hall of misusing park resources.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The allegations were completely false. However, William Hammond Hall had enough. In 1876, he resigns and the entire Park Commission resigns because they’re so disgusted by what they’re seeing as politics getting in the way of a beautiful city park that the city wanted.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The years that followed were bad ones for Golden Gate Park. Hammond Hall’s plans were neglected.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of this sort of falls to the wayside because there’s no money and more people who come to power on the Commission aren’t there for the right reason.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many men with railroad interests were appointed to the Park Commission and lo and behold a railroad gets built to the park — and is barely taxed. And more buildings are popping up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All these things start to materialize that aren’t the wilderness that was initially envisioned here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Though some of the park’s most beloved attractions did come from this time period.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You have the Conservatory of Flowers, which was a bunch of very wealthy men who purchased it from another wealthy man, James Lick, who had passed away and gifted it to the city that put it here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Without a fierce defender of the initial vision for the park, tensions arose over what the park should be. A wild green space where people could connect with nature, or a cultural center to showcase the growing wealth and power of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1890, the Park Commission promoted a man named John McLaren from assistant superintendent up to superintendent.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">John McLaren, I think he’s one of the most universally beloved city employees of all time. They built him a giant house. McLaren Lodge was built in 1896 specifically for him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many people think John McLaren was the first superintendent of the park. He wasn’t, but he did continue to build it up in line with the vision Hammond Hall set forward.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He just did it without making so many enemies.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This is the most famous story you’re ever gonna hear when it comes to John McLaren, is he hated statues in the park, hated them. So he would let them put it wherever it was. They’ve always made a big deal. And then John McLarin would very quietly plant things around the monuments that would grow up over time and totally obscure them so you couldn’t see them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can still find statues nearly hidden by bushes around the music concourse today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">McLaren worked in the park for more than 50 years, overseeing its transformation into the urban gem it is today. Millions of people visit the park each year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">William Hammond Hall, on the other hand, often gets forgotten. But the two men had a lot in common.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They really stuck to their principles. They didn’t like graft. They didn’t like to see people throwing their weight around for other reasons than making this park better.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They were truly public servants who loved the park. Hammond Hall once wrote:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice over: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With drives and rides for the rich, and pleasant rambles for the poor, quiet retreats for those who would be to themselves, and thronged promenades for the gaily disposed, and open grounds for lovers of boisterous sports, and tracks adapted to the special wants of children. The modern urban park is, indeed, the municipality’s open-air assembly room, acceptable, alike to all, and pleasing to each of her citizens.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During our day in the park, it was inspiring to see how vibrant this place is. We saw school kids volunteering, cyclists whizzing by, couples out for a romantic stroll, and folks enjoying a quiet moment on a bench.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">clear the park is a place for everyone, just like Hammond Hall imagined it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Olivia Allen Price: And I’m Olivia Allen Price. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Special thanks to Chris Pollock, whose book, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, 1,017 Acres of Stories, has all kinds of fun facts about the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And Nicole Meldahl, who you can hear on the Outside Lands San Francisco Podcast. They go deep on the history of the city western neighborhoods. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And thanks to Brendan Willard, Sebastian Mino-Buccelli, Kiana Mogadam, Sarah Rose Leonard, Lance Gardner.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rebekah Kao, Christopher Beale, Katie Springer, Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, and Ethan Tovan Lindsay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have a few Bay Curious events coming up. First up is \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/6151\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious Trivia\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on April 8th here at KQED’s headquarters in the Mission District. If you’ve been following the show for a while, you know to scoop up tickets quickly because they will sell out. Details at kqed.org slash live. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other event we have coming up is a brand new one for us, and it’s in Golden Gate Park at the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/6232\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conservatory of Flowers on June 20th and 21st\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We are creating a historically-themed, immersive experience that is going to bring the past of this beautiful building and all its incredible exhibits to life. Join us for an interactive game that will allow you to explore the history of the conservatory and the people who created it. Space is limited. There are timed tours that will be running throughout the evening on both nights. So go ahead and register. That’s also at kqed.org slash live. Hope to see you there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I moved to San Francisco in the summer of 2013 with a giant patch the size of a maxi pad covering my left eye. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just a week before my move, I had eye surgery to repair a partially detached retina, a condition that could have left me blind. The first month or so after surgery was tough. Anytime my pulse got a little elevated, I would feel it pounding in my eye. And so my first month in San Francisco was profoundly dark and lonely. I spent most of it lying in bed, listening to audiobooks in a darkened room. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As healing progressed, though, I started to venture outside. First on short walks to the coffee shop, but soon on little runs through Golden Gate Park. I started off on the main thoroughfares. I’d pass by the Conservatory of Flowers, loop around Blue Heron Lake, stop to admire the bison. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As my body recovered, my runs grew longer. And it was the sense of discovery in the park that propelled me to add a mile or two here or there on my run each day. Follow an uncertain path into the woods only to find a new garden I’d never seen. My run stretched out first to six miles, then eight miles, 10 miles, and finally 13.1 miles when I kicked my way across the finish line of my very first half marathon which, fittingly, finished in Golden Gate Park. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music ends\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The park revived me, gave me a space to rebuild myself after feeling pretty broken. And that’s why I’m excited to share today’s episode where we dig in on how it was created more than 150 years ago. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But first, let me introduce our special guest. Marta Lindsay has combed over every dell, every stone, every pathway to write a new book, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Discovering Golden Gate Park, a Local’s Guide\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And she’s here to share some hot tips about the park today. Welcome, Marta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you so much for having me. This is a delight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I’m so glad you could join us. What is it that captured your imagination about Golden Gate Park enough to spend all the time that I know it takes to write a book about it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, end of the day, I just really love Golden Gate Park, but I got into it in part because of having a fussy baby. If she was having one of those days where she’s super fussy, like you just have to get outside, right? And for us outside basically was Golden Gate park in the inner sunset area. And I think as I started to spend so much more time in the park, I just saw there was so much more to it than first meets the eye.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1625030704&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your book has so much information about the different spaces within the park, but today you’ve brought a few things to talk about that even the most devout park lovers might not know. Let’s start with some of those unique stones found in the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The monastery stones. Yes. Once you know about these, then you’re always looking for them and it’s really fun because they are scattered all around the park. Go back in medieval times everyone, and we’re in Spain…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Around the year 1,200 at a monastery overlooking the Tagus River.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And there is this incredibly beautiful series of buildings, kind of castle-like. And they were all made by hand by these monks who hand-carved all these limestones, thousands and thousands of stones.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The monastery built of these beautiful stones flourished for hundreds of years until the 1830s, but was shut down by royal decree.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And over the years, it was not used, and it was kind of falling apart. And enter William Randolph Hearst. He was, like, kind of the ultimate rich guy of the era. He owned the San Francisco Examiner. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, of course, Hearst Castle, the sprawling estate down in San Simeon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He had someone who had scoped out this old monastery in Spain and was like, I think we should take the whole thing apart! Ship it to America and build another amazing castle, but in Northern California this time. 11 ships had to transport the stones of these multiple ancient buildings all the way to San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Depression takes enough wind out of the sails of Hearst’s fortune that this is an impossible thing. And so he ends up selling the stones to the city of San Francisco in 1941. So these stones are just sitting in this warehouse in San Francisco and they’re all marked by the way, when they took them apart, it was like, we got to be able to reassemble them. So they were marked.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">essentially packed in wooden crates with instructions on the outside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then there’s this idea to build a medieval art museum in Golden Gate Park using the stones. The stones are moved to Golden Gate Park, and then right away there’s a fire. And then there’s some more fires, which burned the markings off. This made it, at the time, impossible to reassemble. Then you’ve just got all these monastery stones sitting in Golden Gate park and what’s gonna happen to them. And eventually they just start using them for gardening. There’s a ton of them in the botanical gardens used in a variety of ways. And then also sometimes you’ll just find one here or there along a path. Some of them are really ornately carved and have like. You know, rounded edges and lots of, like, designs in them. If you go right into the main gate at the botanical garden, immediately to your left, they’ve built this whole wall and structure using them, and so you get to see kind of a variety of the design.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And also how neat to be able to touch these stones and think about the journey they took to get there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Them every day and have no idea that they’re walking by this medieval treasure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of folks are probably familiar with the Beach Chalet, the restaurant at the very end of the park that borders on Ocean Beach. They have a lovely view of the Pacific, if you can get a spot in the dining room, which is tricky on the weekends, some solid food, but it can also get pretty crowded on a sunny day. I have heard that you have a tip about somewhere else to try just a short walk away.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the golf clubhouse. I do not golf, but when I went there for researching the book, I was like, oh my gosh, this is a little hidden secret. They redid it a couple years ago and the patio is beautiful. And because of the way they redid the golf course, you can now see through the trees to the ocean, which I think is one of the very few places in the park that you’re actually like having ocean-ness in the background. And they have got this little clubhouse and they’re like serving up. Bill’s burger dog, trademark, which is one of three places you can get a Bill’s Burger Dog, which is basically a hamburger shaped like the size, like a hot dog bun size, but even better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did they put it in a hot dog bun?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>I\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t’s on a hot dog bun.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>Then i\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t’s a burger?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>I\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t is a burger.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you put burger toppings on it or hot dog toppings on?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I think you could go either way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the height of the COVID-19 shutdowns, the park really became, I think, a sanctuary for a lot of people, maybe including yourself. It was a way to get out of your house. It was way to interact with other people in a way that was, you know, a bit safer. Do something with your body. In this book, you mentioned that some people really started to make the park their own during that time. Can you tell us about some of those folks?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I would say quietly during the pandemic, some parts of the park really were transformed in these really magical ways and a lot of people don’t know about them. One of them is if you’re walking along JFK Promenade and you get almost to the whale sculpture that’s in the middle of JFK promenade, on your right side would be 14th Avenue Meadow, which is where they have the beer garden in the summer with the free live music. And then right past that is, you’ll see like a lot of succulents and stuff. And this woman, Marta, happens to share my name.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the pandemic. She’s like, ‘I was, you know, it was two weeks in, I was depressed, I had a house cleaning business and I couldn’t do that anymore.’ And she’s like I just started going to the park and then there was a rec and park gardener and I told them I was a hard worker and I needed something to do. And so she started tending that area and it’s totally transformed it. And again, like. You’ve got to get off the main path and then you’ll be on these little magical trails and it’s so pretty back there. And she has said, if you see her there, and she’s always wearing this large brimmed hat, like she has extra gloves, and you can go help her anytime.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The little paths that she’s created are especially cool because it looks like there’s just bushes lining the sidewalk there, but if you follow the woodchip paths that she has created back sort of beyond the bushes, there’s a whole little world back there that you can’t see from the main road. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One name that people have probably heard a lot related to Golden Gate Park is John McLaren. He was an early park superintendent who served for more than 50 years, and he did a lot to make the park the special place it is today. His fingerprints are really all over it. He comes up a lot in your book. Can you tell us what it is about him that captured your imagination.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So John McLaren oversaw the park starting in 1890. And William Hammond Hall created the canvas, but then John McLaren was the artist and he really ran with it. And at that time he took over half of the park still had nothing had happened to it yet. Half of the Park, the dunes had been reclaimed and things were starting to be planted, but that was still a whole half of park to deal with, and John McLaren oversaw it all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His vision for the park was just right on, with wanting it to really feel like an escape into nature. And he had to fight a lot of fights during those years to try to hold to that. But he also was this master gardener with this just eye for design that was. Really special for the time too because the parks that existed at that time were mostly European parks but nature doesn’t run in a straight line was one of his quotes. His favorite thing was the dells. He loved to have flowers growing within a grove of trees somewhere so it’s like you stumble on to this little magical scene right and because he was on the job for so long he was really able to realize that. I just think of how much of what we think of as the look and feel of the park it’s John McLaren.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can find much more about John McLaren in Marta’s book, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Discovering Golden Gate Park, A Local’s Guide\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Find it wherever books are sold. Marta Lindsay, thank you so much for talking with us today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marta Lindsey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you so for having me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we return, The Making of Golden Gate park. Stay with us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next up, producer Katrina Schwartz and I are exploring the early history of how Golden Gate Park was built.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of stories about how this park came to be. One tale goes that only a magical combination of horse manure and spit was enough to tame the sandy soil and make it rich enough for plants to grow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, I’m no gardener, but even to me, that sounds a little far-fetched. To find some definitive answers, we headed over to the northeast corner of the park. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz in scene:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So this little path says Oak Woodland Path. should we go up there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, let’s check it out. Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trees we walked through were here before anything else in the park. It’s one of the few areas that remains relatively unchanged.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is an old-growth forest. These would be descendants of the trees that were cut down for firewood during the gold rush. It predated the park, it predated European colonization here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re here with Nicole Meldahl, the executive director of the Western Neighborhoods Project, a community history nonprofit focused on the west side of San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s just behind the conservatory flowers, kind of hidden.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We decided to start here because it was this corner of the park where trees grew naturally that gave park creators the confidence they could make the rest of the Park green.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As beautiful as the Oak Grove is, we are still surrounded by the city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Trucks that back up are the worst. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We kept going deeper and deeper into the park, hoping to find a quiet spot for our interview.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sorry, we’re off-roading a little. I thought it was a path, but then it became not a path.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nicole says what we now know as Golden Gate Park, a lush place with winding pathways, protected dells and lots of recreation, wasn’t even part of the city at first.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What did this place look like at the beginning of the gold rush?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An 1853 map of this area, called it the Great Sand Bank. So yeah, it was very empty, isolated. There were a few scattered beach cottages for some adventurous folks. There were homesteaders out here.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s population skyrocketed during the years after the gold rush, and city leaders had big ambitions. But first, they needed more space. In the Outside Lands Act of 1866, the western half of the city became part of San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco has always thought of itself as like a great, amazing city, right? And it is, we definitely know it is. But really it was the new kid in town. So at some point they decided they needed a park that was befitting of the amazing city that they hoped to build this into.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As luck would have it, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for designing Central Park in New York, was traveling in California. City leaders asked for his opinion about building the new park in the newly acquired Outside Lands.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he was like, oh no, no, you can never build a park here. Trees won’t grow in these sand dunes, so I recommend the other side of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">City leaders did not like that recommendation, so instead of following Olmsted’s advice, they found someone else who promised he could transform the dunes into forest. A young surveyor from Stockton named William Hammond Hall.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how did Hammond Hall turn the Great Sandy Bank into this park that we know and love?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, there’s a legend about that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some with less veritable facts…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Legend goes Hammond Hall is out with his team surveying the land after the city designated it for the park in 1870.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’ve got their horses with them\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and one of the horse’s feed buckets that hangs around their nose drops, and the barley that’s in their feed spills out into the sand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then, of course, you need a little fertilizer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, manure from the same horse that the barley fell out of the feed bag from landed directly on top of this little patch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Hammond hog comes back through that area in a week or so, the quick growing barley from the horse’s bucket has already taken root and is growing. And William Hammond Hall goes…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is going to be the secret recipe for how we tame these dunes, because if you combine the quick growing barley with native lupine here, that will sort of stabilize the dunes long enough to allow for these trees that he wanted to put through the park as wind breaks to grow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s all a little convenient, isn’t it? Nicole thinks elements of this story are true, but the mythical telling leaves out some context. First, historians have recently discovered that there was a farm on the eastern edge of the park that grew barley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, Hammond Hall probably already knew barley could grow here. And second, the process of reclaiming sand by starting with small, quick-growing grasses to build up topsoil before planting trees on top of them was already a well-established practice in Europe. As for the horse manure part of the legend, that is where we get to street sweepers. And no, I’m not talking about the kind that get you a parking ticket.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was common practice for the city to use horse manure they collected in the streets because this is still an era where people used horses on a daily basis so it was a sort of thrifty way to fertilize city parks and areas around town.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that’s how acres and acres of sand dunes were transformed into forest. No spit, but there was definitely manure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We were just about to ask Nicole about the park’s many hills and dells, when who should come strolling by but the guy who literally wrote a book on Golden Gate Park’s history? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chris Pollock?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh my god! Hi! We’re from Be Curious. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The park’s historian in the park. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi! Lovely to meet you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What a coincidence!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s a happy meeting because in addition to the land reclamation technique Nicole has been describing, Hammond Hall did something else pretty ingenious when he was superintendent of the park. Chris Pollack calls it respecting the genius of the place.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what the genius of the place means is utilizing what you’ve got to work with to the best ability you can.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Basically respect that the landscape looks the way it does for a reason.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What that meant was a very efficient way of using the sand dunes as the existing topography, for the most part, to create this undulating, kind of interesting landscape, because to have it just flat would have been rather boring and counterintuitive to the idea of sustainable environment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They knew that the wind coming off the ocean was their worst enemy. If they leveled the park, the wind would continue to push sand eastward and kill new plantings.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the area behind the sand dune, it wouldn’t be so windy there, and it might be more hospitable to plant something there as opposed to on the windy side of the sand dunes. So there was a lot of selection being done.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The hidden dells, small hills, and winding paths in the park are the result of using the genius of the place in the design.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Hammond Hall started greening the eastern end of the park, slowly moving westward. But he simultaneously took on the far west end near the beach. Stopping the sand dunes from encroaching was critical to the success of the project. Here’s Nicole again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like okay we’re gonna build a fence and we’re going to put the planks really close together and the dunes will come up and it will hit against that fence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the sand piled up it made a windbreak \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And on the other side of the fence you know where the dunes aren’t we’re start planning all these things and it’ll start growing up and the Dunes will up to the top of the fence and then we’ll build the fence higher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today, at the far western end of the park, you can still see Hammond Hall’s idea at work. Large trees and bushes protect the intersections of the Park from the sand that comes whipping across the Great Highway, and little sand dunes sometimes pile up at the park’s edges.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Within five years, San Franciscans were delighted by their new park. An 1875 article in the San Francisco Examiner said,\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Newspaper clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Calling to mind the inhospitable desolate aspect of the region a few years since, we cannot but regard with favor the result.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammond Hall had the sand mostly under control, but something else had become unruly. The politics of the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In general, there was a lot of graft in the city at the time, and William Hammond Hall didn’t like it. So he tried to control what he could with his powers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Superintendent of the park. He fired a blacksmith for padding his contract. A blacksmith who, unfortunately for Hammond Hall, ended up becoming a state legislator. He sought his revenge by blocking funding for the park and accused Hammond hall of misusing park resources.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The allegations were completely false. However, William Hammond Hall had enough. In 1876, he resigns and the entire Park Commission resigns because they’re so disgusted by what they’re seeing as politics getting in the way of a beautiful city park that the city wanted.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The years that followed were bad ones for Golden Gate Park. Hammond Hall’s plans were neglected.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of this sort of falls to the wayside because there’s no money and more people who come to power on the Commission aren’t there for the right reason.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many men with railroad interests were appointed to the Park Commission and lo and behold a railroad gets built to the park — and is barely taxed. And more buildings are popping up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All these things start to materialize that aren’t the wilderness that was initially envisioned here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Though some of the park’s most beloved attractions did come from this time period.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You have the Conservatory of Flowers, which was a bunch of very wealthy men who purchased it from another wealthy man, James Lick, who had passed away and gifted it to the city that put it here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Without a fierce defender of the initial vision for the park, tensions arose over what the park should be. A wild green space where people could connect with nature, or a cultural center to showcase the growing wealth and power of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1890, the Park Commission promoted a man named John McLaren from assistant superintendent up to superintendent.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">John McLaren, I think he’s one of the most universally beloved city employees of all time. They built him a giant house. McLaren Lodge was built in 1896 specifically for him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many people think John McLaren was the first superintendent of the park. He wasn’t, but he did continue to build it up in line with the vision Hammond Hall set forward.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He just did it without making so many enemies.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This is the most famous story you’re ever gonna hear when it comes to John McLaren, is he hated statues in the park, hated them. So he would let them put it wherever it was. They’ve always made a big deal. And then John McLarin would very quietly plant things around the monuments that would grow up over time and totally obscure them so you couldn’t see them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can still find statues nearly hidden by bushes around the music concourse today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">McLaren worked in the park for more than 50 years, overseeing its transformation into the urban gem it is today. Millions of people visit the park each year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">William Hammond Hall, on the other hand, often gets forgotten. But the two men had a lot in common.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nicole Meldahl: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They really stuck to their principles. They didn’t like graft. They didn’t like to see people throwing their weight around for other reasons than making this park better.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They were truly public servants who loved the park. Hammond Hall once wrote:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice over: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With drives and rides for the rich, and pleasant rambles for the poor, quiet retreats for those who would be to themselves, and thronged promenades for the gaily disposed, and open grounds for lovers of boisterous sports, and tracks adapted to the special wants of children. The modern urban park is, indeed, the municipality’s open-air assembly room, acceptable, alike to all, and pleasing to each of her citizens.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During our day in the park, it was inspiring to see how vibrant this place is. We saw school kids volunteering, cyclists whizzing by, couples out for a romantic stroll, and folks enjoying a quiet moment on a bench.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">clear the park is a place for everyone, just like Hammond Hall imagined it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Olivia Allen Price: And I’m Olivia Allen Price. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Special thanks to Chris Pollock, whose book, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, 1,017 Acres of Stories, has all kinds of fun facts about the park.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And Nicole Meldahl, who you can hear on the Outside Lands San Francisco Podcast. They go deep on the history of the city western neighborhoods. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And thanks to Brendan Willard, Sebastian Mino-Buccelli, Kiana Mogadam, Sarah Rose Leonard, Lance Gardner.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rebekah Kao, Christopher Beale, Katie Springer, Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, and Ethan Tovan Lindsay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have a few Bay Curious events coming up. First up is \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/6151\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious Trivia\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on April 8th here at KQED’s headquarters in the Mission District. If you’ve been following the show for a while, you know to scoop up tickets quickly because they will sell out. Details at kqed.org slash live. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other event we have coming up is a brand new one for us, and it’s in Golden Gate Park at the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/6232\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conservatory of Flowers on June 20th and 21st\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We are creating a historically-themed, immersive experience that is going to bring the past of this beautiful building and all its incredible exhibits to life. Join us for an interactive game that will allow you to explore the history of the conservatory and the people who created it. Space is limited. There are timed tours that will be running throughout the evening on both nights. So go ahead and register. That’s also at kqed.org slash live. Hope to see you there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "the-navy-jet-generations-of-san-francisco-kids-played-on",
"title": "The Navy Jet Generations of San Francisco Kids Played On",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Dennis O’Neill was a kid growing up in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\"> San Francisco\u003c/a>, his world largely consisted of several blocks to either side of his home. In one direction was his school, Saint Cecilia’s, and in the other was Carl Larsen Park, which had all the usual fun and games plus something a little extra special — a real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was fantastic, I have to say,” O’Neill said. “I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he’s certainly not the only one. Every time a picture of the Larsen Park plane gets posted to history groups on Facebook, the comments blow up with hundreds of people fondly remembering playing on the jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was a meeting place, after school,” O’Neill remembered. “‘Meet at the airplane.’ That was common. And when you started getting girlfriends or hanging out with girls, that was a safe place to hang out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each kid who played in Larsen Park remembers \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/larsen_park_jets.php\">“their plane” clearly\u003c/a>, but over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975 — and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane our \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycurious.org\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, played on when he was little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s some of my earliest memories,” said Van Lieu, who thinks he was 5 for 6. “My brother, dad and I we [went] there in the late 80s.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067017\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067017\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks up at the Vought F-8 Crusader with Janet Doto at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Van Lieu remembers stopping at the park with his dad and brother as a treat after a Saturday morning spent going to open houses with his dad, who was a realtor. The jet was the kids’ reward for behaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved, and hide and seek,” Van Lieu reminisced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite these fond memories, Aaron also remembers watching the jet slowly fall apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067018\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12067018 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks at a display showing photos of the Vought F-8 Crusader from when it was located at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco, and its removal from the park at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and disappearing,” Van Lieu said. “And then, eventually, it was kind of like this skeleton.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then one day it was gone. Aaron has spent the better part of 30 years wondering where it landed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wants to know: “What happened to the jet and why did it get taken out — aside from being covered in graffiti? I just wanna know where it went from there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How did a Navy jet end up in Larsen Park in the first place?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park opened in 1926 after Danish immigrant and Tivoli Cafe owner Carl Larsen donated the land. At the time, the concept of a playground was fairly new. \u003ca href=\"https://savingplaces.org/stories/how-we-came-to-play-the-history-of-playgrounds/\">They came into fashion at the turn of the century \u003c/a>when people started to realize that children weren’t just mini adults, but developing beings that learned through play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off-hours of school,” said Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, every park had a Recreation Director who kept play equipment in their office, organized games and kept an eye on the kids when they were at the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1254\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-1536x963.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play on the first Larsen Park jet circa 1964. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of San Francisco History Center/San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first jet came to Larsen Park in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That period is called the jet age because we have rockets being developed,” Pollock said. “People want to go to the moon, and people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollock said even back then, San Francisco didn’t want to be like everywhere else. The general manager of Rec and Park at the time heard that there were surplus jets at \u003ca href=\"https://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/\">Moffett Field \u003c/a>in Mountain View.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing,” Pollock said. “Our kids were going to learn the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They took the engine out of the jet, put it on a truck and dragged it up the freeway to the park with a California Highway Patrol escort. But once in the park, kids were hard on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076061\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076061\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1387\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1065.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The third and final Larsen Park jet, a 1956 F-8 Crusader, just before being removed from the park by Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteers. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Pacific Coast Air Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“About every 10 years, these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “Shark in the Park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> article from Jan. 15, 1975, details its route:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo. … The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After landing at the Zoo, workers towed the jet two and a half miles northeast, going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park. And there it stayed for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the early 1990s, the F-8 Crusader had seen better days, and city leaders were learning more about the hazards to kids that it posed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070945\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The jet play structure that replaced the Vought F-8 Crusader at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue. It was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based, and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1993, city leaders had the Navy take the jet back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park was without a jet for 22 years. In 2015, Larsen Park playground got a makeover, and community leaders insisted that the new play structure look like a jet plane. It’s no longer the real deal, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So, what happened to the Shark in the Park?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Jim Mattison used to commute from Santa Rosa to a job in Daly City. When he was idling in traffic on 19th Avenue, he’d look over at Larsen Park and see the plane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look over there, and I say, ‘What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible,’” Mattison remembered. “And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retired from the workforce now, and an Air Force veteran, Mattison is a volunteer at the \u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/\">Pacific Coast Air Museum (PCAM)\u003c/a>, where the Shark in the Park ended up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067090\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067090\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Mattison, the Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteer responsible for restoring the Vought F-8 Crusader, talks to Aaron Van Lieu about the restoration process at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The way he tells it, San Francisco leaders were bugging the Navy to take the plane away because it was hazardous. Then, the Navy basically begged the museum to take the F-8 Crusader off their hands, promising that if they did, more aircraft might come the museum’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to say this was the catalyst,” Mattison said. “This started our association with the Navy. We developed a really close association because we started getting more and more assets. So that’s how we wound up becoming a museum, because we took this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the museum has an impressive set of aircraft to visit at its open-air site. Some planes flew during War War II, Korea and Vietnam. They have a plane that was one of the first responders to the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001. Each volunteer has their favorites — often related to the branch of the military where they served.[aside postID=news_12074947 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00252_TV-KQED.jpg']“We are not a velvet rope air museum,” Mattison said. “We encourage people to touch them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the F-8 Crusader first arrived at the museum in 1993, a crew did a ton of work to reverse some of the things San Francisco Rec and Park had done to make the plane safer for kids. Park workers had filled the body of the plane with concrete to prevent kids from crawling through it — the PCAM crew had to jackhammer it out. And, the body of the plane had been buried in the sand — another safety measure to soften the landing when kids fell off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The entire section of the fuselage where the engine and all the internal components were was filled with sand,” said Guy Crow, a PCAM volunteer who worked on the plane when it first arrived. “About seven yards of sand we scraped, swept, shoveled, vacuumed. And it took us a couple of weeks to get it all out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That original team got the plane looking presentable and painted it with the telltale shark mouth for which it was known. They even had T-shirts made up with “Shark in the Park” on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after more than two decades on display in the field at the museum, the weather had taken its toll on the F-8. Museum staff removed it from the display in 2012 and started revamping it once again in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We treat [them like] they’re full-size model airplanes,” Mattison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mattison’s team removed still more sand, fixed the rudder and reskinned the wings and flaps, patched the fuselage and gave it a new paint job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067024\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067024\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Museum visitor Michael Wilkins reads about the F-5E Tiger II at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors,” Mattison said. “That was the last squadron it flew out of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The F-8 Crusader was built in 1956 as a “supersonic dayfighter. It was fast. I think it was [one of] the first Navy aircraft that achieved a thousand miles an hour. It’s very maneuverable, and the pilots loved flying it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, accompanied me on the trip to the museum. He remembered the jet immediately, although he said it looked bigger than he remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just a rush and flush of emotions and memories,” he said. “I’m on top of the world, being able to see it again. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Pacific Coast Air Museum is open \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/visit-us/#hours_admin\">\u003cem>Thursday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> It’s\u003c/em> \u003cem>located at the Charles M Schulz — Sonoma County Airport, off Airport Boulevard on the corner of N. Laughlin Road. and Becker Boulevard.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Things were different for San Francisco kids back in the 1960s and ’70s. For one, there was a lot more freedom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>In those days, there were no cars parked on the street for the most part. And there were kids everywhere. You know, there were six or seven kids on my block. My name’s Dennis O’Neill. I grew up on 18th Avenue from about 1963 to 1980.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dennis and the other neighborhood kids spent a lot of time at nearby Larsen Park. It’s right on busy 19th Avenue at Vicente Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>We were seven or eight. And our parents, you know, allowed us to cross 19th Avenue, the highway, on a green light and go to the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Back then, every city park had a park director. They would organize games, keep an eye on the kids and maintain play equipment. But Larsen Park also had something that made it extra special. A real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It felt like an actual jet landed in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And wow, was that jet beloved by the neighborhood kids!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It was fantastic, I have to say. I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: Our question asker this week, Aaron Van Lieu, also spent a lot of time at the plane in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu:\u003c/strong> It’s some of my earliest memories. My brother, dad and I were going there in the late ’80s, like ’88-’89. So I was like 4, 5, 6.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975, and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane Aaron remembers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved. And hide and seek and you know, just running around it. My dad, you know, trying to explain what certain things were because for a long time the canopy was there, and you could see inside of it, and it had all the gauges and stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>But Aaron also remembers how the jet slowly started falling apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and going and disappearing. So, and then eventually it was like kind of like this, like skeleton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And then, one day, it was gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aaron has spent decades wondering what happened to that jet that he loved so much. He even credits it, in small part, with his love of aviation and a short stint as a flight attendant. He wants to know:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>What happened to the jet, and why did it get taken out, aside from being covered in graffiti? So I just wanna know where it went from there, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And, I want to know who thought a jet in a playground was a good idea in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz, always the pragmatic one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A real fighter jet has to be one of the most expensive pieces of playground equipment ever!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So, I did a little math, and the plane cost about 2 million to build originally, which is nearly $24 million today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of pickleball\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Our modern obsessions on display at the park are a little more mundane … and a lot less expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Pickleball sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The near constant pop and thwack of the very popular pickleball courts has been the soundtrack to Larsen Park since they opened in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I visited with Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, to learn a little more about this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>So Carl L Larsen is a Danish immigrant who was a cafe owner in downtown San Francisco. He owned the Tivoli Cafe and he was quite a large landowner in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Larsen gave the city a parcel of land to create a park before this west side neighborhood was even fully built. The park opened in 1926. Bisected by Vicente Street, one side had tennis courts and playground equipment and the other side had an open field and a swimming pool, now called Sava Pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>He, as a developer, certainly had the vision that San Francisco was going to grow and that things would grow to be what they are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>At this point, playgrounds were a fairly new idea. They only came into fashion in the early 1900s as a tool to keep kids off the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off hours of school. Yeah, they had their playgrounds within the schools, but those were closed when school was not open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first Navy jet came to Larsen Park in 1958. It was during the Cold War and people were obsessed with going to the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 1: \u003c/strong>In October 1957, the world entered the Space Age. At that time, a multistage rocket took off from Russia – Sputnik 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 2: \u003c/strong>More and more teenagers are giving up rock and roll for Rocket Rolls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>People want to go to the moon, and so it becomes a very popular kind of thing that people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Space exploration was a national obsession. But you know, San Francisco, it had to approach the trend a little differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>There was surplus jet down at Moffat Field in Mountain View and that it could be had for a song. It just had to be brought to San Francisco. So that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing. Our kids were going to learn, you know, the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It’s easy to forget that back then, San Francisco was a Navy town. The city was surrounded by Naval stations and there were jets like this one in playgrounds in Bayview, Sunnyvale and San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as any parent knows, kids are hard on stuff. Even military grade materials were no match for their grubby little hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>About every 10 years these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The \u003cem>second\u003c/em> jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “shark in the park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion eight years later, in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They then towed the jet two and a half miles northeast … going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And there it stayed, delighting generations of children … for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock:\u003c/strong> When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety, but as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first two planes were propped up, with ladders to climb into the cockpits. Kids would crawl on the wings, fall off and break arms and legs. And, the metal was sharp — many a kid got a nasty gash playing on the jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Not only that but it was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children. It was decided in 1993 to remove the last of the three jets. And so we were without a jet for a very long time in this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>After 22 jetless years, Larsen Park got an all new playground in 2015, one complete with a play structure that looks like a jet. It may not be the \u003cem>real\u003c/em> thing, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the shark in the park was removed, it was a hunk of junk. The wings were gone, the nose ripped off and it was covered in graffiti.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>My last memory of it is being like a skeleton. So I would hope that it was maybe fixed a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It was in that forlorn state that Aaron, our question asker, last saw the plane. Until I met up with him at the Pacific Coast Air Museum to show him what had become of it. That’s coming up, after this short break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor Message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron Van Lieu has always wondered what happened to the jet in San Francisco’s Larsen Park that made such an impression on him as a child. And it turns out, its new home isn’t too far away, at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>OK, we ready?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>I guess so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>All right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron and I meet up at the museum and hop in a golf cart for a quick tour with Janet Doto, an Airforce veteran and volunteer here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>These are the two top gun aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat and then the F-18 Viper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>The Tomcat was one of my favorite jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Dotto:\u003c/strong> Oh, it’s a beautiful jet. My favorite’s the F4, but yeah, I’m partial. 23 years in the Air Force, you can’t love a navy aircraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum is a small but mighty operation. Almost all outdoors, they have 37 restored aircraft. One plane fought in WWII, another was a first responder to the 911 attacks and of course, parked out on the tarmac they’ve got the Shark in the Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>And there she is, the F-8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>This one right here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s the one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Whoa!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Is it how you remember it looking?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Yeah, very much. Yeah, the canopy, it actually looks bigger than I remember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s probably because there’s more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This F-8 jet is the very one that generations of San Francisco kids played on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>Aaron, okay, I’m Jim Mattison. I’m the crew chief. And I’m proud to say I’m responsible for how this came out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim is also an Air Force veteran and volunteer. But his memories of the Shark in the Park go way back to when he used to be stuck in traffic on 19th Avenue, commuting to Daly City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I look over there, and I say, What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible. And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim and his team have lovingly restored this 1956 F-8. The paint scheme is mostly gray with accents of red and navy blue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors. Why? Because that was the last squadron it flew out of. And this was such an amazing paint scheme, I saw that and thought, I know what I want to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Navy basically begged the museum to take the plane. San Francisco officials wanted the dangerous eyesore gone, especially because by the 90s, the Navy’s presence in the Bay Area had waned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>They got a big crane and a low boy truck. Dug it out of the sand, took it apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And like so many jets before it, put it on a truck and drove it up to Santa Rosa\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And then just like a model airplane, put it all back together. My teammate, he was working on the belly. And every once in a while, he’s busy banging and drilling holes. He’d get a face full of Larson Park sand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum initially didn’t want to take this plane, but now, it’s one of the most popular attractions. Many visitors who remember playing on the F-8 as kids never knew much about what the jet did before it became playground equipment. That history is something Jim is passionate about sharing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>This was designed as a supersonic day fighter for the Navy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It would land on incredibly short runways … just 500 feet … on floating aircraft carriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And it was fast. Very maneuverable and the pilots loved flying it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>I’m curious, Aaron, what do you think now that you’ve seen it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>There’s been a rush and flush of emotions and and memories, you know. I’m on top of the world being able to see it again, really. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And if you remember playing on this jet and have always wondered what happened to it … the Pacific Coast Air Museum is waiting for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can still play on some real Navy equipment if you go to Lincoln and 45th Avenue Playground in Golden Gate Park. There’s a blue boat there that was donated by the Navy … and it’s the real deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Are you loving having more Bay Curious episodes in your podcast feed? If so, you can get even more Bay Curious in your life via the Bay Curious newsletter! Head to our website to sign up. As always, at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BC is made in SF at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone at team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Cleared for takeoff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Dennis O’Neill was a kid growing up in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\"> San Francisco\u003c/a>, his world largely consisted of several blocks to either side of his home. In one direction was his school, Saint Cecilia’s, and in the other was Carl Larsen Park, which had all the usual fun and games plus something a little extra special — a real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was fantastic, I have to say,” O’Neill said. “I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he’s certainly not the only one. Every time a picture of the Larsen Park plane gets posted to history groups on Facebook, the comments blow up with hundreds of people fondly remembering playing on the jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was a meeting place, after school,” O’Neill remembered. “‘Meet at the airplane.’ That was common. And when you started getting girlfriends or hanging out with girls, that was a safe place to hang out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each kid who played in Larsen Park remembers \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/larsen_park_jets.php\">“their plane” clearly\u003c/a>, but over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975 — and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane our \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycurious.org\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, played on when he was little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s some of my earliest memories,” said Van Lieu, who thinks he was 5 for 6. “My brother, dad and I we [went] there in the late 80s.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067017\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067017\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks up at the Vought F-8 Crusader with Janet Doto at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Van Lieu remembers stopping at the park with his dad and brother as a treat after a Saturday morning spent going to open houses with his dad, who was a realtor. The jet was the kids’ reward for behaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved, and hide and seek,” Van Lieu reminisced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite these fond memories, Aaron also remembers watching the jet slowly fall apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067018\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12067018 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks at a display showing photos of the Vought F-8 Crusader from when it was located at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco, and its removal from the park at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and disappearing,” Van Lieu said. “And then, eventually, it was kind of like this skeleton.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then one day it was gone. Aaron has spent the better part of 30 years wondering where it landed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wants to know: “What happened to the jet and why did it get taken out — aside from being covered in graffiti? I just wanna know where it went from there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How did a Navy jet end up in Larsen Park in the first place?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park opened in 1926 after Danish immigrant and Tivoli Cafe owner Carl Larsen donated the land. At the time, the concept of a playground was fairly new. \u003ca href=\"https://savingplaces.org/stories/how-we-came-to-play-the-history-of-playgrounds/\">They came into fashion at the turn of the century \u003c/a>when people started to realize that children weren’t just mini adults, but developing beings that learned through play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off-hours of school,” said Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, every park had a Recreation Director who kept play equipment in their office, organized games and kept an eye on the kids when they were at the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1254\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-1536x963.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play on the first Larsen Park jet circa 1964. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of San Francisco History Center/San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first jet came to Larsen Park in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That period is called the jet age because we have rockets being developed,” Pollock said. “People want to go to the moon, and people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollock said even back then, San Francisco didn’t want to be like everywhere else. The general manager of Rec and Park at the time heard that there were surplus jets at \u003ca href=\"https://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/\">Moffett Field \u003c/a>in Mountain View.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing,” Pollock said. “Our kids were going to learn the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They took the engine out of the jet, put it on a truck and dragged it up the freeway to the park with a California Highway Patrol escort. But once in the park, kids were hard on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076061\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076061\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1387\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1065.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The third and final Larsen Park jet, a 1956 F-8 Crusader, just before being removed from the park by Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteers. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Pacific Coast Air Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“About every 10 years, these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “Shark in the Park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> article from Jan. 15, 1975, details its route:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo. … The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After landing at the Zoo, workers towed the jet two and a half miles northeast, going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park. And there it stayed for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the early 1990s, the F-8 Crusader had seen better days, and city leaders were learning more about the hazards to kids that it posed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070945\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The jet play structure that replaced the Vought F-8 Crusader at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue. It was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based, and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1993, city leaders had the Navy take the jet back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park was without a jet for 22 years. In 2015, Larsen Park playground got a makeover, and community leaders insisted that the new play structure look like a jet plane. It’s no longer the real deal, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So, what happened to the Shark in the Park?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Jim Mattison used to commute from Santa Rosa to a job in Daly City. When he was idling in traffic on 19th Avenue, he’d look over at Larsen Park and see the plane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look over there, and I say, ‘What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible,’” Mattison remembered. “And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retired from the workforce now, and an Air Force veteran, Mattison is a volunteer at the \u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/\">Pacific Coast Air Museum (PCAM)\u003c/a>, where the Shark in the Park ended up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067090\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067090\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Mattison, the Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteer responsible for restoring the Vought F-8 Crusader, talks to Aaron Van Lieu about the restoration process at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The way he tells it, San Francisco leaders were bugging the Navy to take the plane away because it was hazardous. Then, the Navy basically begged the museum to take the F-8 Crusader off their hands, promising that if they did, more aircraft might come the museum’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to say this was the catalyst,” Mattison said. “This started our association with the Navy. We developed a really close association because we started getting more and more assets. So that’s how we wound up becoming a museum, because we took this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the museum has an impressive set of aircraft to visit at its open-air site. Some planes flew during War War II, Korea and Vietnam. They have a plane that was one of the first responders to the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001. Each volunteer has their favorites — often related to the branch of the military where they served.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“We are not a velvet rope air museum,” Mattison said. “We encourage people to touch them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the F-8 Crusader first arrived at the museum in 1993, a crew did a ton of work to reverse some of the things San Francisco Rec and Park had done to make the plane safer for kids. Park workers had filled the body of the plane with concrete to prevent kids from crawling through it — the PCAM crew had to jackhammer it out. And, the body of the plane had been buried in the sand — another safety measure to soften the landing when kids fell off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The entire section of the fuselage where the engine and all the internal components were was filled with sand,” said Guy Crow, a PCAM volunteer who worked on the plane when it first arrived. “About seven yards of sand we scraped, swept, shoveled, vacuumed. And it took us a couple of weeks to get it all out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That original team got the plane looking presentable and painted it with the telltale shark mouth for which it was known. They even had T-shirts made up with “Shark in the Park” on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after more than two decades on display in the field at the museum, the weather had taken its toll on the F-8. Museum staff removed it from the display in 2012 and started revamping it once again in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We treat [them like] they’re full-size model airplanes,” Mattison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mattison’s team removed still more sand, fixed the rudder and reskinned the wings and flaps, patched the fuselage and gave it a new paint job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067024\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067024\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Museum visitor Michael Wilkins reads about the F-5E Tiger II at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors,” Mattison said. “That was the last squadron it flew out of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The F-8 Crusader was built in 1956 as a “supersonic dayfighter. It was fast. I think it was [one of] the first Navy aircraft that achieved a thousand miles an hour. It’s very maneuverable, and the pilots loved flying it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, accompanied me on the trip to the museum. He remembered the jet immediately, although he said it looked bigger than he remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just a rush and flush of emotions and memories,” he said. “I’m on top of the world, being able to see it again. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Pacific Coast Air Museum is open \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/visit-us/#hours_admin\">\u003cem>Thursday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> It’s\u003c/em> \u003cem>located at the Charles M Schulz — Sonoma County Airport, off Airport Boulevard on the corner of N. Laughlin Road. and Becker Boulevard.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Things were different for San Francisco kids back in the 1960s and ’70s. For one, there was a lot more freedom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>In those days, there were no cars parked on the street for the most part. And there were kids everywhere. You know, there were six or seven kids on my block. My name’s Dennis O’Neill. I grew up on 18th Avenue from about 1963 to 1980.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dennis and the other neighborhood kids spent a lot of time at nearby Larsen Park. It’s right on busy 19th Avenue at Vicente Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>We were seven or eight. And our parents, you know, allowed us to cross 19th Avenue, the highway, on a green light and go to the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Back then, every city park had a park director. They would organize games, keep an eye on the kids and maintain play equipment. But Larsen Park also had something that made it extra special. A real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It felt like an actual jet landed in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And wow, was that jet beloved by the neighborhood kids!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It was fantastic, I have to say. I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: Our question asker this week, Aaron Van Lieu, also spent a lot of time at the plane in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu:\u003c/strong> It’s some of my earliest memories. My brother, dad and I were going there in the late ’80s, like ’88-’89. So I was like 4, 5, 6.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975, and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane Aaron remembers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved. And hide and seek and you know, just running around it. My dad, you know, trying to explain what certain things were because for a long time the canopy was there, and you could see inside of it, and it had all the gauges and stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>But Aaron also remembers how the jet slowly started falling apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and going and disappearing. So, and then eventually it was like kind of like this, like skeleton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And then, one day, it was gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aaron has spent decades wondering what happened to that jet that he loved so much. He even credits it, in small part, with his love of aviation and a short stint as a flight attendant. He wants to know:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>What happened to the jet, and why did it get taken out, aside from being covered in graffiti? So I just wanna know where it went from there, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And, I want to know who thought a jet in a playground was a good idea in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz, always the pragmatic one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A real fighter jet has to be one of the most expensive pieces of playground equipment ever!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So, I did a little math, and the plane cost about 2 million to build originally, which is nearly $24 million today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of pickleball\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Our modern obsessions on display at the park are a little more mundane … and a lot less expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Pickleball sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The near constant pop and thwack of the very popular pickleball courts has been the soundtrack to Larsen Park since they opened in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I visited with Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, to learn a little more about this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>So Carl L Larsen is a Danish immigrant who was a cafe owner in downtown San Francisco. He owned the Tivoli Cafe and he was quite a large landowner in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Larsen gave the city a parcel of land to create a park before this west side neighborhood was even fully built. The park opened in 1926. Bisected by Vicente Street, one side had tennis courts and playground equipment and the other side had an open field and a swimming pool, now called Sava Pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>He, as a developer, certainly had the vision that San Francisco was going to grow and that things would grow to be what they are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>At this point, playgrounds were a fairly new idea. They only came into fashion in the early 1900s as a tool to keep kids off the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off hours of school. Yeah, they had their playgrounds within the schools, but those were closed when school was not open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first Navy jet came to Larsen Park in 1958. It was during the Cold War and people were obsessed with going to the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 1: \u003c/strong>In October 1957, the world entered the Space Age. At that time, a multistage rocket took off from Russia – Sputnik 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 2: \u003c/strong>More and more teenagers are giving up rock and roll for Rocket Rolls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>People want to go to the moon, and so it becomes a very popular kind of thing that people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Space exploration was a national obsession. But you know, San Francisco, it had to approach the trend a little differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>There was surplus jet down at Moffat Field in Mountain View and that it could be had for a song. It just had to be brought to San Francisco. So that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing. Our kids were going to learn, you know, the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It’s easy to forget that back then, San Francisco was a Navy town. The city was surrounded by Naval stations and there were jets like this one in playgrounds in Bayview, Sunnyvale and San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as any parent knows, kids are hard on stuff. Even military grade materials were no match for their grubby little hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>About every 10 years these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The \u003cem>second\u003c/em> jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “shark in the park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion eight years later, in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They then towed the jet two and a half miles northeast … going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And there it stayed, delighting generations of children … for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock:\u003c/strong> When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety, but as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first two planes were propped up, with ladders to climb into the cockpits. Kids would crawl on the wings, fall off and break arms and legs. And, the metal was sharp — many a kid got a nasty gash playing on the jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Not only that but it was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children. It was decided in 1993 to remove the last of the three jets. And so we were without a jet for a very long time in this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>After 22 jetless years, Larsen Park got an all new playground in 2015, one complete with a play structure that looks like a jet. It may not be the \u003cem>real\u003c/em> thing, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the shark in the park was removed, it was a hunk of junk. The wings were gone, the nose ripped off and it was covered in graffiti.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>My last memory of it is being like a skeleton. So I would hope that it was maybe fixed a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It was in that forlorn state that Aaron, our question asker, last saw the plane. Until I met up with him at the Pacific Coast Air Museum to show him what had become of it. That’s coming up, after this short break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor Message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron Van Lieu has always wondered what happened to the jet in San Francisco’s Larsen Park that made such an impression on him as a child. And it turns out, its new home isn’t too far away, at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>OK, we ready?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>I guess so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>All right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron and I meet up at the museum and hop in a golf cart for a quick tour with Janet Doto, an Airforce veteran and volunteer here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>These are the two top gun aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat and then the F-18 Viper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>The Tomcat was one of my favorite jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Dotto:\u003c/strong> Oh, it’s a beautiful jet. My favorite’s the F4, but yeah, I’m partial. 23 years in the Air Force, you can’t love a navy aircraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum is a small but mighty operation. Almost all outdoors, they have 37 restored aircraft. One plane fought in WWII, another was a first responder to the 911 attacks and of course, parked out on the tarmac they’ve got the Shark in the Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>And there she is, the F-8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>This one right here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s the one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Whoa!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Is it how you remember it looking?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Yeah, very much. Yeah, the canopy, it actually looks bigger than I remember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s probably because there’s more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This F-8 jet is the very one that generations of San Francisco kids played on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>Aaron, okay, I’m Jim Mattison. I’m the crew chief. And I’m proud to say I’m responsible for how this came out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim is also an Air Force veteran and volunteer. But his memories of the Shark in the Park go way back to when he used to be stuck in traffic on 19th Avenue, commuting to Daly City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I look over there, and I say, What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible. And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim and his team have lovingly restored this 1956 F-8. The paint scheme is mostly gray with accents of red and navy blue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors. Why? Because that was the last squadron it flew out of. And this was such an amazing paint scheme, I saw that and thought, I know what I want to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Navy basically begged the museum to take the plane. San Francisco officials wanted the dangerous eyesore gone, especially because by the 90s, the Navy’s presence in the Bay Area had waned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>They got a big crane and a low boy truck. Dug it out of the sand, took it apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And like so many jets before it, put it on a truck and drove it up to Santa Rosa\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And then just like a model airplane, put it all back together. My teammate, he was working on the belly. And every once in a while, he’s busy banging and drilling holes. He’d get a face full of Larson Park sand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum initially didn’t want to take this plane, but now, it’s one of the most popular attractions. Many visitors who remember playing on the F-8 as kids never knew much about what the jet did before it became playground equipment. That history is something Jim is passionate about sharing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>This was designed as a supersonic day fighter for the Navy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It would land on incredibly short runways … just 500 feet … on floating aircraft carriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And it was fast. Very maneuverable and the pilots loved flying it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>I’m curious, Aaron, what do you think now that you’ve seen it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>There’s been a rush and flush of emotions and and memories, you know. I’m on top of the world being able to see it again, really. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And if you remember playing on this jet and have always wondered what happened to it … the Pacific Coast Air Museum is waiting for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can still play on some real Navy equipment if you go to Lincoln and 45th Avenue Playground in Golden Gate Park. There’s a blue boat there that was donated by the Navy … and it’s the real deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Are you loving having more Bay Curious episodes in your podcast feed? If so, you can get even more Bay Curious in your life via the Bay Curious newsletter! Head to our website to sign up. As always, at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BC is made in SF at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone at team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Cleared for takeoff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Longtime listener Henry Lie was driving through San Francisco one day when he realized the staggering number of legal courts located in the heart of the city. Upon further investigation, he realized we had all levels of court on the state side, and all except the U.S. Supreme Court on the federal side. Wowsa! How did so many end up here? In this episode, KQED’s Molly Lacob takes us through some legal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6205887839&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Hello, I’m Olivia Allen-Price and this is Bay Curious. A few weeks ago, I hopped on a video call with our question asker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>My name is Henry Lie. I’m from Pacifica, California in San Mateo County. And yeah, I’m an avid listener of Big Curious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price : \u003c/strong>And he was really quite dressed up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie (on phone call):\u003c/strong> Yeah, I was coming from a job interview, so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price (on phone call): \u003c/strong>Oh, I was gonna say, did you put the tie on for me, or?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie( on phone call): \u003c/strong>Yeah, just for you. (laughing)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Henry’s getting a master’s degree in urban planning, and what became apparent as we spoke is he sees the city in a way that most people might not. He just notices things. And not too long ago, he was making his way through San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>I was driving on Van Ness one day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Right near City Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>I, like, saw the Superior Court of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And a few blocks away, the U.S. District Court for Northern California. Not far from that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And finally…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>The California Supreme Court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He discovered practically all levels of court on both the state and federal sides are found right here in San Francisco. Henry wrote in to ask us why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>It seemed like in other states, other regions, they were located in like state capitals or like much larger cities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>Why aren’t more of these courts in Sacramento or Los Angeles? On this one, I decided to slide into the DMs of Molly Lacob. She’s the deputy general counsel of operations here at KQED. She’s a former litigator and is a little bit of a legal nerd. Welcome, Molly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Hi, Olivia. I guess I am a legal nerd. And when prepping for this, I realized I think I’ve appeared in every superior court in the Bay Area. We used to do that in person before we had all this technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Not in handcuffs, I assume.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob : \u003c/strong>(laughs) No, I was a willing participant. I walked in and out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Okay. Good. So I got to be honest, you know, this was a question that was not on my radar at all. So first up, is it unusual to have this many courts in one place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob :\u003c/strong>Generally speaking, yeah, it is pretty unusual. And a lot of that boils down to the history of the state of California and the city of San Francisco, as well as the development of the West Coast in general. And then another fun fact is that we are the only city and county in the state California. So every other county in California is made up of multiple cities. It’s just us in San Francisco County. You’ll see that on our seal, on all of our paperwork. It’s the city and county of San Francisco. So by default, all county courts and really any other county agency and building are going to be located in the city of San Fransisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Give us, so maybe step back a teeny bit, because I think some listeners — ahem, myself — might need a little bit of like a civics refresher …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob:\u003c/strong> What the heck is a district court about?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Like Schoolhouse Rock,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Yes. Like Schoolhouse Rock. What is happening here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Okay, so we have a state court system and we have federal court system. And then within both of those, we have civil disputes and we criminal disputes. Easiest way to think about it is, do you want money or do you jail time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So if I want to sue you, it is most likely going to be a state action. It’s rare to have a federal civil action against somebody, it’s certainly possible. And those are mostly business disputes though. It’s rare to have, you know, Molly dislikes Olivia, she’s filing a lawsuit. So I say, I want to file a lawsuit against you. And then I think about it. And I think, okay, well, where did you do the thing that I’m so mad about? Or where do you live? And that’s typically where we decide to venue a court case. And then for criminal cases, it’s really just, where did you do the really bad thing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s kind of like the high level, how we work our way through the court system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District courts are the lowest level of federal courts. And then there’s an appeals court, which is the Ninth Circuit, and then the U.S. Supreme Court. Similarly, on the state side, there are also three different levels of courts. The lowest court level is the superior court for the county, in this case, San Francisco, which again, San Fransisco is a city and a county. Uh, and then we have the first appellate district for the state of California here in San Francisco. There are six appellant districts in California. And then the state Supreme Court. And as Henry mentioned, all of those courts are really within a couple blocks of each other. If we really, really wanted to see this lawsuit through of Molly doesn’t like Olivia, we could hear the entire thing over several years though, on foot. We could walk to each courthouse and never have to leave downtown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Do you always have to start at the bottom as a lawyer? Like, do you have to file with a small court first? And do they even bother hearing? Are they ever like, “No this goes up the chain. This is above my pay grade.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah. No, that’s a really, really good question. You have to start at the bottom and then you can appeal to what, you know, mid-level, if you will. It’s either the first district for California or the Ninth Circuit and then appeal up to the State Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’ll have to have a little more than just, ‘I don’t like it’. You will have to reason as to why the outcome was wrong. And also, they can decline to hear your appeal. So the lower level courts, the superior court. Or the Northern District, they can’t decline to take your case. As a defendant, you can move to have the case thrown out, or you can have it moved to have it summarily settled with various motions, but they have to take it. The appellate courts do not. Most cases get rejected. So like I mentioned with the US Supreme Court, there’s 8,000 petitions. They take 80.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And the ones that they’re rejecting, they’re like, okay, lower courts, ruling stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so at whatever level you get rejected, be it at the appellate level or at the Supreme Court level, if it doesn’t get picked up, the lower court’s ruling stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>All right, Schoolhouse Rock is over. That was fun, right? When we come back, it’s on to Henry’s question. How did so many of these courts end up in San Francisco? Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsorship Break\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So we’ve covered that we have a lot of courts here in San Francisco, more than nearly any other city. Henry, our question asker, wanted to know how they all landed here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>So when California became state, which was in 1850, and we are the 31st state in the country, Congress decided that we needed to have two district courts. A lot of states actually only have one district court, but Congress realized that California was a pretty large state. So they divided it into the Northern District of California and the Southern District of California. And so, in 1850… The Northern District established San Francisco as its hub. And that’s because in 1850, it truly was the hub. It was the political hub of the state, it was the population hub, it was an economic hub. That’s why we have a massive port. Maritime law was a really big deal. And so we were seeing maritime disputes back then. And Sacramento wasn’t the state capital at that point. And the state capitol moved around back and forth, as did the state Supreme Court, because there was a little bit of a power struggle between all the cities in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The state capital moved a lot when California was a baby state. Monterrey, it was in San Jose, it was in Vallejo, it was in Benicia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Rumor has it that the state legislature was tired of the Supreme Court moving around. It had gone down to LA. It would be in San Jose. They would hear cases in Sacramento. They would hear case in San Francisco. And so they ordered the state Supreme Court to move to come to the Capitol. And the justices said, ‘No, we don’t want to.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The Bay Area is nice. Sacramento’s hot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Um, literally though, that is actually the rumor is that the climate played into their decision. I don’t know if you have spent a summer in the Sacramento Valley. I actually grew up there. It’s hot and they didn’t want to do it. And so they didn t show up. And so the state finally said, OK, I guess you reside in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I mean, if you think about the wardrobe you have to wear in court, it kind of checks out. You don’t want to be in formal attire in multiple layers on a 90-degree day in a place that’s not air conditioned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I do not recommend Sacramento in the summer with no air conditioning. Zero out of five stars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>Okay, so it’s weird that the state Supreme Court is here, but what about the Ninth Circuit Court? That’s the federal court. That’s just one step below the Supreme Court. How big is the Nineth Circuit Court, and why is it in San Francisco?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>The Ninth circuit is huge. It encompasses Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Geographically, that is massive. And then from a population perspective, it’s just under 20% of the United States. Almost 60 million people reside within the Ninth Circuit. So a big proportion of litigation in the U.S. Is also coming through the Ninth Circuit. It’s in San Francisco because all of those states and territories I just rattled off, most of them didn’t exist when the Nineth Circuit was founded. Some were admitted almost a hundred years after California was to the United States. So San Francisco was the obvious economic hub at the time. But also from a legal perspective, the other states and territories didn’t exist as U.S. States and territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So it sounds like the State Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit are kind of the two more unusual courts to have here. Are there any others that are surprising to find in San Francisco in 2026?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>I don’t think anything else is particularly unusual in regard to location. Having the Northern District seat here also makes a lot of sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>The Northern District being that first level of federal court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah, We do see a lot of really interesting activity through the Northern District, and that’s because of our local tech industry. So all of the major lawsuits between the big tech companies, Apple versus Samsung, Oracle versus Google, Waymo versus Uber, all of those cases are being heard in the Northern district. So we do get some really interesting ones, but it makes sense. A district court is supposed to hear the litigation from their region, and what do we have in our region?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Tech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Big, juicy tech disputes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Yeah. And I imagine, I mean, this is kind of a juicy place to be following legal matters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Oh yeah, I think we’re gonna see a lot of AI litigation that’s gonna be venued here because if you are upset with what’s happening with OpenAI or Gemini, the bulk of them are located here. We’ve got a bunch of them located literally around the corner from our office where we’re recording this. And so to the extent that that evolves or devolves rather to litigation. We’re going to see it coming through the San Francisco courthouse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Molly Lacob is the deputy general counsel of operations at KQED. Thank you, Molly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Oh, thank you for letting me nerd out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We just announced the date for our next night of Bay Curious Trivia. It will be on April 8th. Come on down to KQED’s headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission District. You can enjoy some drinks, play our super fun trivia game, and meet the Bay Curious team. Every question in our trivia is Bay Area themed, so be sure to brush up by binging old episodes, yeah? Tickets and details are at kqed.org/live. You can come with friends or come solo and we’ll pair you up with a team. I hope to see you there!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> Big thanks to Henry Lie for asking this week’s question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beal and me, Olivia Allen Price. With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Springer, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. Some members of the KQD podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. I’m Olivia Allen-Price, have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Longtime listener Henry Lie was driving through San Francisco one day when he realized the staggering number of legal courts located in the heart of the city. Upon further investigation, he realized we had all levels of court on the state side, and all except the U.S. Supreme Court on the federal side. Wowsa! How did so many end up here? In this episode, KQED’s Molly Lacob takes us through some legal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6205887839&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Hello, I’m Olivia Allen-Price and this is Bay Curious. A few weeks ago, I hopped on a video call with our question asker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>My name is Henry Lie. I’m from Pacifica, California in San Mateo County. And yeah, I’m an avid listener of Big Curious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price : \u003c/strong>And he was really quite dressed up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie (on phone call):\u003c/strong> Yeah, I was coming from a job interview, so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price (on phone call): \u003c/strong>Oh, I was gonna say, did you put the tie on for me, or?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie( on phone call): \u003c/strong>Yeah, just for you. (laughing)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Henry’s getting a master’s degree in urban planning, and what became apparent as we spoke is he sees the city in a way that most people might not. He just notices things. And not too long ago, he was making his way through San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>I was driving on Van Ness one day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Right near City Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>I, like, saw the Superior Court of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And a few blocks away, the U.S. District Court for Northern California. Not far from that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And finally…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>The California Supreme Court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He discovered practically all levels of court on both the state and federal sides are found right here in San Francisco. Henry wrote in to ask us why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>It seemed like in other states, other regions, they were located in like state capitals or like much larger cities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>Why aren’t more of these courts in Sacramento or Los Angeles? On this one, I decided to slide into the DMs of Molly Lacob. She’s the deputy general counsel of operations here at KQED. She’s a former litigator and is a little bit of a legal nerd. Welcome, Molly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Hi, Olivia. I guess I am a legal nerd. And when prepping for this, I realized I think I’ve appeared in every superior court in the Bay Area. We used to do that in person before we had all this technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Not in handcuffs, I assume.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob : \u003c/strong>(laughs) No, I was a willing participant. I walked in and out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Okay. Good. So I got to be honest, you know, this was a question that was not on my radar at all. So first up, is it unusual to have this many courts in one place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob :\u003c/strong>Generally speaking, yeah, it is pretty unusual. And a lot of that boils down to the history of the state of California and the city of San Francisco, as well as the development of the West Coast in general. And then another fun fact is that we are the only city and county in the state California. So every other county in California is made up of multiple cities. It’s just us in San Francisco County. You’ll see that on our seal, on all of our paperwork. It’s the city and county of San Francisco. So by default, all county courts and really any other county agency and building are going to be located in the city of San Fransisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Give us, so maybe step back a teeny bit, because I think some listeners — ahem, myself — might need a little bit of like a civics refresher …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob:\u003c/strong> What the heck is a district court about?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Like Schoolhouse Rock,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Yes. Like Schoolhouse Rock. What is happening here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Okay, so we have a state court system and we have federal court system. And then within both of those, we have civil disputes and we criminal disputes. Easiest way to think about it is, do you want money or do you jail time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So if I want to sue you, it is most likely going to be a state action. It’s rare to have a federal civil action against somebody, it’s certainly possible. And those are mostly business disputes though. It’s rare to have, you know, Molly dislikes Olivia, she’s filing a lawsuit. So I say, I want to file a lawsuit against you. And then I think about it. And I think, okay, well, where did you do the thing that I’m so mad about? Or where do you live? And that’s typically where we decide to venue a court case. And then for criminal cases, it’s really just, where did you do the really bad thing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s kind of like the high level, how we work our way through the court system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District courts are the lowest level of federal courts. And then there’s an appeals court, which is the Ninth Circuit, and then the U.S. Supreme Court. Similarly, on the state side, there are also three different levels of courts. The lowest court level is the superior court for the county, in this case, San Francisco, which again, San Fransisco is a city and a county. Uh, and then we have the first appellate district for the state of California here in San Francisco. There are six appellant districts in California. And then the state Supreme Court. And as Henry mentioned, all of those courts are really within a couple blocks of each other. If we really, really wanted to see this lawsuit through of Molly doesn’t like Olivia, we could hear the entire thing over several years though, on foot. We could walk to each courthouse and never have to leave downtown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Do you always have to start at the bottom as a lawyer? Like, do you have to file with a small court first? And do they even bother hearing? Are they ever like, “No this goes up the chain. This is above my pay grade.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah. No, that’s a really, really good question. You have to start at the bottom and then you can appeal to what, you know, mid-level, if you will. It’s either the first district for California or the Ninth Circuit and then appeal up to the State Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’ll have to have a little more than just, ‘I don’t like it’. You will have to reason as to why the outcome was wrong. And also, they can decline to hear your appeal. So the lower level courts, the superior court. Or the Northern District, they can’t decline to take your case. As a defendant, you can move to have the case thrown out, or you can have it moved to have it summarily settled with various motions, but they have to take it. The appellate courts do not. Most cases get rejected. So like I mentioned with the US Supreme Court, there’s 8,000 petitions. They take 80.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And the ones that they’re rejecting, they’re like, okay, lower courts, ruling stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so at whatever level you get rejected, be it at the appellate level or at the Supreme Court level, if it doesn’t get picked up, the lower court’s ruling stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>All right, Schoolhouse Rock is over. That was fun, right? When we come back, it’s on to Henry’s question. How did so many of these courts end up in San Francisco? Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsorship Break\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So we’ve covered that we have a lot of courts here in San Francisco, more than nearly any other city. Henry, our question asker, wanted to know how they all landed here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>So when California became state, which was in 1850, and we are the 31st state in the country, Congress decided that we needed to have two district courts. A lot of states actually only have one district court, but Congress realized that California was a pretty large state. So they divided it into the Northern District of California and the Southern District of California. And so, in 1850… The Northern District established San Francisco as its hub. And that’s because in 1850, it truly was the hub. It was the political hub of the state, it was the population hub, it was an economic hub. That’s why we have a massive port. Maritime law was a really big deal. And so we were seeing maritime disputes back then. And Sacramento wasn’t the state capital at that point. And the state capitol moved around back and forth, as did the state Supreme Court, because there was a little bit of a power struggle between all the cities in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The state capital moved a lot when California was a baby state. Monterrey, it was in San Jose, it was in Vallejo, it was in Benicia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Rumor has it that the state legislature was tired of the Supreme Court moving around. It had gone down to LA. It would be in San Jose. They would hear cases in Sacramento. They would hear case in San Francisco. And so they ordered the state Supreme Court to move to come to the Capitol. And the justices said, ‘No, we don’t want to.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The Bay Area is nice. Sacramento’s hot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Um, literally though, that is actually the rumor is that the climate played into their decision. I don’t know if you have spent a summer in the Sacramento Valley. I actually grew up there. It’s hot and they didn’t want to do it. And so they didn t show up. And so the state finally said, OK, I guess you reside in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I mean, if you think about the wardrobe you have to wear in court, it kind of checks out. You don’t want to be in formal attire in multiple layers on a 90-degree day in a place that’s not air conditioned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I do not recommend Sacramento in the summer with no air conditioning. Zero out of five stars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>Okay, so it’s weird that the state Supreme Court is here, but what about the Ninth Circuit Court? That’s the federal court. That’s just one step below the Supreme Court. How big is the Nineth Circuit Court, and why is it in San Francisco?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>The Ninth circuit is huge. It encompasses Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Geographically, that is massive. And then from a population perspective, it’s just under 20% of the United States. Almost 60 million people reside within the Ninth Circuit. So a big proportion of litigation in the U.S. Is also coming through the Ninth Circuit. It’s in San Francisco because all of those states and territories I just rattled off, most of them didn’t exist when the Nineth Circuit was founded. Some were admitted almost a hundred years after California was to the United States. So San Francisco was the obvious economic hub at the time. But also from a legal perspective, the other states and territories didn’t exist as U.S. States and territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So it sounds like the State Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit are kind of the two more unusual courts to have here. Are there any others that are surprising to find in San Francisco in 2026?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>I don’t think anything else is particularly unusual in regard to location. Having the Northern District seat here also makes a lot of sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price \u003c/strong>The Northern District being that first level of federal court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Yeah, We do see a lot of really interesting activity through the Northern District, and that’s because of our local tech industry. So all of the major lawsuits between the big tech companies, Apple versus Samsung, Oracle versus Google, Waymo versus Uber, all of those cases are being heard in the Northern district. So we do get some really interesting ones, but it makes sense. A district court is supposed to hear the litigation from their region, and what do we have in our region?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Tech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Big, juicy tech disputes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Yeah. And I imagine, I mean, this is kind of a juicy place to be following legal matters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Oh yeah, I think we’re gonna see a lot of AI litigation that’s gonna be venued here because if you are upset with what’s happening with OpenAI or Gemini, the bulk of them are located here. We’ve got a bunch of them located literally around the corner from our office where we’re recording this. And so to the extent that that evolves or devolves rather to litigation. We’re going to see it coming through the San Francisco courthouse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Molly Lacob is the deputy general counsel of operations at KQED. Thank you, Molly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molly Lacob: \u003c/strong>Oh, thank you for letting me nerd out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We just announced the date for our next night of Bay Curious Trivia. It will be on April 8th. Come on down to KQED’s headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission District. You can enjoy some drinks, play our super fun trivia game, and meet the Bay Curious team. Every question in our trivia is Bay Area themed, so be sure to brush up by binging old episodes, yeah? Tickets and details are at kqed.org/live. You can come with friends or come solo and we’ll pair you up with a team. I hope to see you there!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> Big thanks to Henry Lie for asking this week’s question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beal and me, Olivia Allen Price. With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Springer, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. Some members of the KQD podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. I’m Olivia Allen-Price, have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before sleek \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933882/beyond-vaccines-biotech-is-booming-in-the-bay-area-despite-a-cooling-economy\">biotech campuses\u003c/a> and venture capital arrived, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/south-san-francisco\">South San Francisco\u003c/a> had a very different identity. For much of the 20th century, it absorbed the Bay Area’s mess — industries that were noisy, dirty, politically inconvenient, or simply unwanted elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slaughterhouses. Steel mills. Shipyards. Freight terminals. Businesses that needed elbow room and cheap land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1923, the city declared its role in giant white letters on a hillside above town: “South San Francisco The Industrial City.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“South San Francisco, like Emeryville, were industrial suburbs,” said Richard Walker, a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at the University of California, Berkeley. “These were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor, and they worked very effectively.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Town councils limited housing, zoned big swaths for heavy industry, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park loud, polluting businesses far from residential neighborhoods — and make them easy to operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12075369\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12075369\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1131.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerial view of South San Francisco’s Sign Hill, circa 1930. \u003ccite>(Courtesy South San Francisco Public Library Local History Collection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Beyond town borders, the Bay Area as a whole was comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital,” Walker said of the Bay Area. “So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A risk-tolerant region meets a risky science\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Those conditions mattered when a new science arrived in the 1970s. Biotechnology required not just smart people and money, but a tolerance for uncertainty and perceived risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists were learning how to cut and paste genes — editing code, but for living things. The technique, called recombinant DNA, made it possible to insert genetic instructions into bacteria and harness them to manufacture human hormones and medicines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, that power was both thrilling and unsettling. Scientists worried that engineered microbes could behave unpredictably — escape the lab, spread through air or water, or create entirely new biological risks they didn’t yet know how to contain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concerns were serious enough that, in 1975, many molecular biologists took an extraordinary step: they voluntarily halted their own research. About 150 scientists gathered at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days, they debated the dangers, negotiated boundaries, and ultimately agreed on a set of guidelines for conducting recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Public backlash\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic because scientists might create new life they couldn’t control. News headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the era of the Andromeda Strain,” said Robin Wolfe Scheffler, historian of biology and medicine at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[aside postID=news_12074947 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00252_TV-KQED.jpg']Trust in science and government was low. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11861810/no-the-tuskegee-study-is-not-the-top-reason-some-black-americans-question-the-covid-19-vaccine\">Tuskegee syphilis study\u003c/a> had recently been exposed, revealing profound abuses. Americans were reckoning with the health impacts of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11617827/this-vietnam-paratrooper-was-exposed-to-agent-orange-today-he-lives-with-parkinsons\">Agent Orange\u003c/a>. Nuclear anxiety lingered after the meltdown at \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/three/\">Three Mile Island\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Backlash spread quickly. Cities began debating whether they should regulate or ban genetic engineering. In Cambridge, Mass., officials considered outlawing it altogether. In Berkeley and San Francisco, protesters marched, chanting slogans like, “We will not be cloned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For researchers hoping to commercialize their discoveries, this created a bottleneck. Biotech startups needed large laboratories, sewer hookups, industrial equipment, and stable local rules. They needed places without residential neighbors ready to revolt. A place like South San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Proof of concept\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the mid-1970s, South San Francisco’s leaders were actively searching for a new economic base. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. When a young venture capitalist named Bob Swanson arrived with an idea that scared much of the country, they didn’t recoil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swanson was newly laid off from a venture capital firm and living in San Francisco, broke and uncertain about his future. Convinced biotechnology was poised to take off, he cold-called a scruffy, long-haired biochemist named Herbert Boyer at the University of California, San Francisco, who agreed to a 20-minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. The casual meeting was so successful that they decided to pool $1,000 and start a new company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074375\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074375\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Genentech headquarters at 1 DNA Way in South San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2026. South San Francisco was historically an industrial area, housing shipyards, slaughterhouses and a steel mill. Now it’s a biotech hub. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Swanson floated the name Herbob — for Herb and Bob. Boyer vetoed it and suggested Genentech, short for Genetic Engineering and Technology. More marketable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco. Plus, keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. (Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/1999/11/genentech-pays-off-ucsf/\">a case\u003c/a> the two sides settled in 1999.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They landed in South San Francisco. Genentech’s first office sat off East Grand Avenue, next door to a pornography studio. There were few residents to complain, and plenty of industrial space suitable for fermentation tanks and pipes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the national debate over genetic engineering raged, Genentech’s scientists worked quietly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1977, they produced the first synthetic human insulin using genetically engineered bacteria, a breakthrough that transformed diabetes care and proved biotechnology could work at scale. Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin extracted from cows and pigs: lifesaving, but imperfect. Genentech’s insulin was identical to the human version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The success triggered a cascade. Former Genentech scientists founded new companies nearby to develop drugs for HIV and cancer. Warehouses filled. A cluster emerged. Today, South San Francisco is one of the most valuable square miles in American science, with more than 250 biotechnology companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hey everyone. I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and this is Bay Curious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today we head to South San Francisco. You pass it when you’re driving north from the airport along Highway 101– there are giant white letters carved into a hillside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They read: “The Industrial City.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It used to be meatpacking plants and steel foundries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Faris Alikhan grew up in South San Francisco, went to high school there — and about half his graduating class went on to work in biotech. His mom did too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why did it become this hub of biotechnology? People move here from all around the world to work in that one industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Biotechnology is a process. Scientists take a living cell, like yeast or bacteria, and program them to make medicine. They grow those cells in massive tanks — like a brewery — and harvest what the cells produce to make vaccines, antibiotics, and cancer treatments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, there are more than 250 biotech companies in South San Francisco, including Genentech. Faris wondered why \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and not closer to an educational hub, like Stanford or Berkeley? How and why did this stretch of waterfront become the birthplace of biotechnology? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out he’s not alone in wondering this. Today’s question won a public voting round on \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED health correspondent Lesley McClurg headed to South San Francisco to find out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When you drive down DNA way in South San Francisco it’s a little like a science fiction set. Shuttle buses glide between glass towers. Doctoral students sip matcha with CEOs. Researchers slip in workouts between experiments. Every amenity is available inside a self-contained city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Low rumble of a freight train\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But 100 years ago this stretch of land was nicknamed the smokestack capital of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Peninsula\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peninsula\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">… Freight terminals. Shipyards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Archival clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> By July 1944 nearly 16,000 men and women were employed in the shipyards all playing a role in the country’s victory.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a dirty, loud, industrial area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South San Francisco, like Emeryville, they were industrial suburbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Richard Walker is a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at UC Berkeley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> These were these were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor and they worked very effectively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early and mid-20th century, local governments actively steered factories, warehouses, and refineries into these fringe cities. Town councils zoned big swaths of land for heavy industry. They limited housing, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park the loud, dirty stuff far from residential neighborhoods — and make it easy for companies to operate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beyond the town’s borders, Walker says the Bay Area as a region was also unusually comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital. So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America, lots of capital available through San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of that mattered when a new science came along in the 70s. Biotech needed smart people and money — AND it needed places willing to tolerate risk. And that’s where South San Francisco stood apart. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Robin Wolfe Scheffler is a historian of biology and medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant and industrial neighbors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And those industries were already in flux. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. South San Francisco had space, infrastructure that was up for grabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For people seeking to work with recombinant DNA in the late 1970s, that was actually perfect. Because many of the cities next to academic centers of molecular biology research were very concerned about its potential health hazards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genetic research was controversial. And in some cities, like Berkely or Palo Alto, very unwelcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The hottest scientific controversy since man learned to split the atom is now raging over a new branch of biology called genetic engineering. This tampering with the most basic ingredients of life raises moral and ethical problems as grave as nuclear fission did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists had just learned how to cut and paste genes — kind of like editing code, but for living things. This technique, called recombinant DNA, allows researchers to use special enzymes to slip pieces of genetic material into bacteria. Suddenly it seemed possible to rewrite the instructions inside living things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was both exciting and terrifying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It might be a new drug of tremendous value in fighting disease, or it might be a new virus terribly dangerous to man. Some scientists want the research banned, and a large number want it controlled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even molecular biologists were spooked by the possibilities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The scientific community was divided over how hazardous this potential technique was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were so worried that they called a halt to their own work – and decided to convene a meeting. In 1975, about 150 scientists gathered in California at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days they argued, negotiated, and finally agreed on a set of guidelines for doing recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the era of the Andromeda strain, this is the era of Three Mile Island, this is a a moment when overall there’s a huge amount of social concern over the impact of technology and science on the environment. and trust in the institutions of science and technology to regulate themselves is at a low ebb.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Americans had learned that the government had secretly let Black men suffer and die in the Tuskegee syphilis study. They were also just beginning to reckon with the health fallout of Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic. People worried engineered bacteria could escape the lab — through the air, water, or sewers — and make people sick. Others feared scientists were crossing an ethical line, creating new life they couldn’t control. Headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By 1975, there is a national conversation about what regulations should be placed on the use of recombinant DNA technology, and individual municipalities begin to consider whether or not they can regulate it as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Cambridge, Massachusetts, city officials considered banning the new technology altogether. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The debate over the new experiments has filled over into the streets. “We science for the people are here to try to bring the issues of this controversy to the public. To the people. Because the people are at risk and will benefit from the experiments that are being done with recombinant DNA.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The same was true in San Francisco and Berkeley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People marching down the street chanting, we will not be cloned. And so this is a concern for anybody seeking to move outside of an academic laboratory to set up a fledgling biotechnology company because these companies need laboratories, they need space to work. They want to connect to sewers, they want to have the assurance that they’re going to be able to sort of operate on a stable basis.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cue South San Francisco. It’s a community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant products. Plus, the 1970s were a time of deindustrialization and so…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The city leaders were very concerned to find a new economic base.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when a young venture capitalist came knocking with an idea that could revive South San Francisco – city leaders welcomed him.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When we return – a behemoth is born. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the 1970s, South San Francisco leaders were concerned about the dwindling industries that propped up its tax base. Little did they know the next big thing was waiting at their doorstep. KQED’s Lesley McClurg.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time Bob Swanson was an unemployed MIT graduate living in San Francisco. He’d just been laid off by the venture capital firm Kleiner and Perkins. According to his wife Judy he was living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He had no extra money, and he was really scared that what am I going to do next? I don’t want to be a failure in life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He started reading about biotechnology. And was quickly convinced this was the moment it could take off. So, he called a scruffy long haired biochemist named Herb Boyer at UCSF, who agreed to a 20 minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob showed up in his you know three piece vests outfit and and they hit it off. They decided to go get a beer afterwards. So the two of them decided to put what money they had which was five hundred dollars each to create a company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob wanted to call it Herbob. For Herb and Bob. Herb thought that was a terrible idea. His suggestion was Genentech for Genetic Engineering and Technology. They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, a case the two sides settled in 1999. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Long before the lawyers got involved, Bob looked south of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He rented the most inexpensive office space that he could rent, which was in South San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The offices were in a nondescript building off East Grand Avenue.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco was nothing then really, and they were welcoming, you know, of any idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genentech’s new office was next door to a pornography studio. Because there were so few residential areas – nobody griped about what was in their backyard. And most importantly — there were plenty of empty warehouses large enough to handle vats, pipes, and fermentation columns that are key to biotechnology.\u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, as the nation argued over the risks of genetic engineering. Scientists at Genentech were quietly at work in South San Francisco, on the verge of transforming diabetes care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NBC News clip from 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists around the country today were paying close attention to reports from California that genetic engineering in a laboratory may be able to produce an insulin gene that could have all kinds of effects.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin taken from cow and pig pancreases. It kept them alive, but it wasn’t an exact match for human insulin and could trigger immune reactions. Genentech made the first synthetic human insulin — identical to what our bodies produce, using genetically engineered bacteria. Production began in 1978. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Genetic engineering has become big business\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Within a decade, companies founded by former Genentech scientists began filling nearby warehouses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd entirely new firms have emerged solely devoted to genetic engineering.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A cluster formed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And over time, South San Francisco became one of the most valuable square miles in American science.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years that followed, work done here led to HIV drugs that changed the course of the AIDS epidemic. And cancer treatments were developed that are now standard care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While much of the country hesitated, South San Francisco made room. What had been noisy, polluted, and overlooked proved well suited for a risky new science — one that grew into a multibillion-dollar industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was KQED Health Correspondent Lesley McClurg. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This question was part of a Bay Curious voting round. Did you know we have a new one up on our website every month? This month, here’s what’s up for consideration…\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Question 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why is there truly a taco truck on every corner in San Francisco and San Mateo?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why are there huge fans over the tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s the story with the abandoned cop car in front of the airport off of 101? Everyone knows no actual cop is in it, so what’s the scoop with leaving there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voting takes just a click — no registering or drama, I promise. Do it at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. You can become a member today, and enjoy all sorts of nice benefits — the biggest one though. Those warm fuzzies you get knowing you support shows like ours. Thanks!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Katherine Monahan, and everyone on Team KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before sleek \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933882/beyond-vaccines-biotech-is-booming-in-the-bay-area-despite-a-cooling-economy\">biotech campuses\u003c/a> and venture capital arrived, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/south-san-francisco\">South San Francisco\u003c/a> had a very different identity. For much of the 20th century, it absorbed the Bay Area’s mess — industries that were noisy, dirty, politically inconvenient, or simply unwanted elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slaughterhouses. Steel mills. Shipyards. Freight terminals. Businesses that needed elbow room and cheap land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1923, the city declared its role in giant white letters on a hillside above town: “South San Francisco The Industrial City.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“South San Francisco, like Emeryville, were industrial suburbs,” said Richard Walker, a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at the University of California, Berkeley. “These were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor, and they worked very effectively.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Town councils limited housing, zoned big swaths for heavy industry, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park loud, polluting businesses far from residential neighborhoods — and make them easy to operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12075369\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12075369\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1131.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerial view of South San Francisco’s Sign Hill, circa 1930. \u003ccite>(Courtesy South San Francisco Public Library Local History Collection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Beyond town borders, the Bay Area as a whole was comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital,” Walker said of the Bay Area. “So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A risk-tolerant region meets a risky science\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Those conditions mattered when a new science arrived in the 1970s. Biotechnology required not just smart people and money, but a tolerance for uncertainty and perceived risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists were learning how to cut and paste genes — editing code, but for living things. The technique, called recombinant DNA, made it possible to insert genetic instructions into bacteria and harness them to manufacture human hormones and medicines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, that power was both thrilling and unsettling. Scientists worried that engineered microbes could behave unpredictably — escape the lab, spread through air or water, or create entirely new biological risks they didn’t yet know how to contain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concerns were serious enough that, in 1975, many molecular biologists took an extraordinary step: they voluntarily halted their own research. About 150 scientists gathered at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days, they debated the dangers, negotiated boundaries, and ultimately agreed on a set of guidelines for conducting recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Public backlash\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic because scientists might create new life they couldn’t control. News headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the era of the Andromeda Strain,” said Robin Wolfe Scheffler, historian of biology and medicine at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Trust in science and government was low. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11861810/no-the-tuskegee-study-is-not-the-top-reason-some-black-americans-question-the-covid-19-vaccine\">Tuskegee syphilis study\u003c/a> had recently been exposed, revealing profound abuses. Americans were reckoning with the health impacts of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11617827/this-vietnam-paratrooper-was-exposed-to-agent-orange-today-he-lives-with-parkinsons\">Agent Orange\u003c/a>. Nuclear anxiety lingered after the meltdown at \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/three/\">Three Mile Island\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Backlash spread quickly. Cities began debating whether they should regulate or ban genetic engineering. In Cambridge, Mass., officials considered outlawing it altogether. In Berkeley and San Francisco, protesters marched, chanting slogans like, “We will not be cloned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For researchers hoping to commercialize their discoveries, this created a bottleneck. Biotech startups needed large laboratories, sewer hookups, industrial equipment, and stable local rules. They needed places without residential neighbors ready to revolt. A place like South San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Proof of concept\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the mid-1970s, South San Francisco’s leaders were actively searching for a new economic base. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. When a young venture capitalist named Bob Swanson arrived with an idea that scared much of the country, they didn’t recoil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swanson was newly laid off from a venture capital firm and living in San Francisco, broke and uncertain about his future. Convinced biotechnology was poised to take off, he cold-called a scruffy, long-haired biochemist named Herbert Boyer at the University of California, San Francisco, who agreed to a 20-minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. The casual meeting was so successful that they decided to pool $1,000 and start a new company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074375\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074375\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Genentech headquarters at 1 DNA Way in South San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2026. South San Francisco was historically an industrial area, housing shipyards, slaughterhouses and a steel mill. Now it’s a biotech hub. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Swanson floated the name Herbob — for Herb and Bob. Boyer vetoed it and suggested Genentech, short for Genetic Engineering and Technology. More marketable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco. Plus, keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. (Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/1999/11/genentech-pays-off-ucsf/\">a case\u003c/a> the two sides settled in 1999.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They landed in South San Francisco. Genentech’s first office sat off East Grand Avenue, next door to a pornography studio. There were few residents to complain, and plenty of industrial space suitable for fermentation tanks and pipes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the national debate over genetic engineering raged, Genentech’s scientists worked quietly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1977, they produced the first synthetic human insulin using genetically engineered bacteria, a breakthrough that transformed diabetes care and proved biotechnology could work at scale. Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin extracted from cows and pigs: lifesaving, but imperfect. Genentech’s insulin was identical to the human version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The success triggered a cascade. Former Genentech scientists founded new companies nearby to develop drugs for HIV and cancer. Warehouses filled. A cluster emerged. Today, South San Francisco is one of the most valuable square miles in American science, with more than 250 biotechnology companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hey everyone. I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and this is Bay Curious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today we head to South San Francisco. You pass it when you’re driving north from the airport along Highway 101– there are giant white letters carved into a hillside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They read: “The Industrial City.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It used to be meatpacking plants and steel foundries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Faris Alikhan grew up in South San Francisco, went to high school there — and about half his graduating class went on to work in biotech. His mom did too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why did it become this hub of biotechnology? People move here from all around the world to work in that one industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Biotechnology is a process. Scientists take a living cell, like yeast or bacteria, and program them to make medicine. They grow those cells in massive tanks — like a brewery — and harvest what the cells produce to make vaccines, antibiotics, and cancer treatments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, there are more than 250 biotech companies in South San Francisco, including Genentech. Faris wondered why \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and not closer to an educational hub, like Stanford or Berkeley? How and why did this stretch of waterfront become the birthplace of biotechnology? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out he’s not alone in wondering this. Today’s question won a public voting round on \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED health correspondent Lesley McClurg headed to South San Francisco to find out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When you drive down DNA way in South San Francisco it’s a little like a science fiction set. Shuttle buses glide between glass towers. Doctoral students sip matcha with CEOs. Researchers slip in workouts between experiments. Every amenity is available inside a self-contained city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Low rumble of a freight train\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But 100 years ago this stretch of land was nicknamed the smokestack capital of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Peninsula\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peninsula\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">… Freight terminals. Shipyards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Archival clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> By July 1944 nearly 16,000 men and women were employed in the shipyards all playing a role in the country’s victory.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a dirty, loud, industrial area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South San Francisco, like Emeryville, they were industrial suburbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Richard Walker is a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at UC Berkeley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> These were these were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor and they worked very effectively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early and mid-20th century, local governments actively steered factories, warehouses, and refineries into these fringe cities. Town councils zoned big swaths of land for heavy industry. They limited housing, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park the loud, dirty stuff far from residential neighborhoods — and make it easy for companies to operate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beyond the town’s borders, Walker says the Bay Area as a region was also unusually comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital. So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America, lots of capital available through San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of that mattered when a new science came along in the 70s. Biotech needed smart people and money — AND it needed places willing to tolerate risk. And that’s where South San Francisco stood apart. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Robin Wolfe Scheffler is a historian of biology and medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant and industrial neighbors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And those industries were already in flux. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. South San Francisco had space, infrastructure that was up for grabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For people seeking to work with recombinant DNA in the late 1970s, that was actually perfect. Because many of the cities next to academic centers of molecular biology research were very concerned about its potential health hazards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genetic research was controversial. And in some cities, like Berkely or Palo Alto, very unwelcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The hottest scientific controversy since man learned to split the atom is now raging over a new branch of biology called genetic engineering. This tampering with the most basic ingredients of life raises moral and ethical problems as grave as nuclear fission did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists had just learned how to cut and paste genes — kind of like editing code, but for living things. This technique, called recombinant DNA, allows researchers to use special enzymes to slip pieces of genetic material into bacteria. Suddenly it seemed possible to rewrite the instructions inside living things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was both exciting and terrifying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It might be a new drug of tremendous value in fighting disease, or it might be a new virus terribly dangerous to man. Some scientists want the research banned, and a large number want it controlled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even molecular biologists were spooked by the possibilities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The scientific community was divided over how hazardous this potential technique was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were so worried that they called a halt to their own work – and decided to convene a meeting. In 1975, about 150 scientists gathered in California at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days they argued, negotiated, and finally agreed on a set of guidelines for doing recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the era of the Andromeda strain, this is the era of Three Mile Island, this is a a moment when overall there’s a huge amount of social concern over the impact of technology and science on the environment. and trust in the institutions of science and technology to regulate themselves is at a low ebb.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Americans had learned that the government had secretly let Black men suffer and die in the Tuskegee syphilis study. They were also just beginning to reckon with the health fallout of Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic. People worried engineered bacteria could escape the lab — through the air, water, or sewers — and make people sick. Others feared scientists were crossing an ethical line, creating new life they couldn’t control. Headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By 1975, there is a national conversation about what regulations should be placed on the use of recombinant DNA technology, and individual municipalities begin to consider whether or not they can regulate it as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Cambridge, Massachusetts, city officials considered banning the new technology altogether. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The debate over the new experiments has filled over into the streets. “We science for the people are here to try to bring the issues of this controversy to the public. To the people. Because the people are at risk and will benefit from the experiments that are being done with recombinant DNA.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The same was true in San Francisco and Berkeley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People marching down the street chanting, we will not be cloned. And so this is a concern for anybody seeking to move outside of an academic laboratory to set up a fledgling biotechnology company because these companies need laboratories, they need space to work. They want to connect to sewers, they want to have the assurance that they’re going to be able to sort of operate on a stable basis.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cue South San Francisco. It’s a community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant products. Plus, the 1970s were a time of deindustrialization and so…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The city leaders were very concerned to find a new economic base.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when a young venture capitalist came knocking with an idea that could revive South San Francisco – city leaders welcomed him.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When we return – a behemoth is born. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the 1970s, South San Francisco leaders were concerned about the dwindling industries that propped up its tax base. Little did they know the next big thing was waiting at their doorstep. KQED’s Lesley McClurg.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time Bob Swanson was an unemployed MIT graduate living in San Francisco. He’d just been laid off by the venture capital firm Kleiner and Perkins. According to his wife Judy he was living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He had no extra money, and he was really scared that what am I going to do next? I don’t want to be a failure in life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He started reading about biotechnology. And was quickly convinced this was the moment it could take off. So, he called a scruffy long haired biochemist named Herb Boyer at UCSF, who agreed to a 20 minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob showed up in his you know three piece vests outfit and and they hit it off. They decided to go get a beer afterwards. So the two of them decided to put what money they had which was five hundred dollars each to create a company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob wanted to call it Herbob. For Herb and Bob. Herb thought that was a terrible idea. His suggestion was Genentech for Genetic Engineering and Technology. They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, a case the two sides settled in 1999. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Long before the lawyers got involved, Bob looked south of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He rented the most inexpensive office space that he could rent, which was in South San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The offices were in a nondescript building off East Grand Avenue.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco was nothing then really, and they were welcoming, you know, of any idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genentech’s new office was next door to a pornography studio. Because there were so few residential areas – nobody griped about what was in their backyard. And most importantly — there were plenty of empty warehouses large enough to handle vats, pipes, and fermentation columns that are key to biotechnology.\u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, as the nation argued over the risks of genetic engineering. Scientists at Genentech were quietly at work in South San Francisco, on the verge of transforming diabetes care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NBC News clip from 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists around the country today were paying close attention to reports from California that genetic engineering in a laboratory may be able to produce an insulin gene that could have all kinds of effects.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin taken from cow and pig pancreases. It kept them alive, but it wasn’t an exact match for human insulin and could trigger immune reactions. Genentech made the first synthetic human insulin — identical to what our bodies produce, using genetically engineered bacteria. Production began in 1978. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Genetic engineering has become big business\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Within a decade, companies founded by former Genentech scientists began filling nearby warehouses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd entirely new firms have emerged solely devoted to genetic engineering.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A cluster formed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And over time, South San Francisco became one of the most valuable square miles in American science.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years that followed, work done here led to HIV drugs that changed the course of the AIDS epidemic. And cancer treatments were developed that are now standard care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While much of the country hesitated, South San Francisco made room. What had been noisy, polluted, and overlooked proved well suited for a risky new science — one that grew into a multibillion-dollar industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was KQED Health Correspondent Lesley McClurg. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This question was part of a Bay Curious voting round. Did you know we have a new one up on our website every month? This month, here’s what’s up for consideration…\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Question 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why is there truly a taco truck on every corner in San Francisco and San Mateo?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why are there huge fans over the tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s the story with the abandoned cop car in front of the airport off of 101? Everyone knows no actual cop is in it, so what’s the scoop with leaving there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voting takes just a click — no registering or drama, I promise. Do it at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. You can become a member today, and enjoy all sorts of nice benefits — the biggest one though. Those warm fuzzies you get knowing you support shows like ours. Thanks!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Katherine Monahan, and everyone on Team KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "the-eccentric-personalities-behind-sunnyside-conservatory-a-120-year-old-garden-in-san-francisco",
"title": "The Eccentric Personalities Behind Sunnyside Conservatory, a 120-Year-Old Garden in San Francisco",
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"headTitle": "The Eccentric Personalities Behind Sunnyside Conservatory, a 120-Year-Old Garden in San Francisco | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco’s \u003c/a>Sunnyside neighborhood, just west of Glen Park, isn’t actually very sunny. In fact, it’s one of the foggier places in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of its main thoroughfares, Monterey Boulevard, carries drivers west towards tonier places like St. Francis Wood, passing many houses and apartment buildings along the way. But slow down a little, and you might catch a glimpse of a building that feels out of the ordinary in this residential place — Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set back from the street and tucked behind a wrought iron gate, the octagonal redwood building has two stories of windows surrounded by a lush garden of towering palms, ferns and flowering bushes. It’s beautiful and old-world feeling, a unique Victorian gem on an otherwise busy street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Mary Balmana often uses Monterey Boulevard to get to her home in Mission Terrace. She’s seen the conservatory hundreds of times, but hasn’t noticed anyone going inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074410\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074410\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside resident and historian Amy O’Hair poses for a portrait at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, she wants answers. What is the conservatory doing here in Sunnyside, who owns it and could she rent it out?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>An inventor’s oasis\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Sunnyside Conservatory was built by William Augustus Merralls, a British inventor and eccentric. He bought a house along what is now Monterey Boulevard in 1897, when the area was mostly rural. Land was cheap, so he also bought up seven lots around his house and then set about making the grounds his own private oasis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He collected exotic plants, and he liked to have a place for them,” said Amy O’Hair, Sunnyside resident,\u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/\"> local historian\u003c/a> and author of the forthcoming book, \u003cem>History Walks in Sunnyside\u003c/em>. She’s currently writing a book about the conservatory’s history.[aside postID=news_12074121 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-06-BL-KQED.jpg']Merralls made his money designing and patenting mining equipment. He had more than 20 different patents, mostly for machines that helped extract ever smaller amounts of gold from rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He did well, but whatever he got he spent on his projects,” O’Hair said. “He had a restless mind, always wanting to invent new things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of his inventions were practical, others less so. He invented an automobile starter, a refrigerator and a “deep breathing developer,” a contraption for his wife, Temperance Laura, who was fascinated by alternative medicine. The details of how it actually worked have been lost to time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1902, he built the conservatory, a building beautifully crafted out of redwood in Victorian style. In addition to collecting exotic plants, Merralls also loved astronomy. He built himself an observatory on the back of his house. And he loved luxury items; his house had two grand pianos and a private bowling alley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He apparently didn’t need to live amongst his peers,” O’Hair said. “He was a very independent-minded man, and he was happy out here in his own enclave with all of his toys in the house and all of those plants out here in the conservatory and a wife he loved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and his wife, Temperance Laura, lived in Sunnyside, enjoying their house and its grounds until 1914, when Merralls tragically died in a train accident while visiting a friend in Alameda. By that point, he had sunk all his money into various pursuits that hadn’t paid off, and when he died, Temperance Laura couldn’t afford to keep living on their estate in Sunnyside. The bank repossessed the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Second act as swindler’s hideout\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The property sat empty and neglected for three years before another odd couple, Ernest and Angele Van Beckh, came along and \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">bought it in 1919\u003c/a>. Ernest Van Beckh was a con man, a member of the \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">“Big Five” \u003c/a>whose exploits selling worthless mining shares to unsuspecting people and stealing their money were splashed across the newspapers in 1916.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the district attorney brought charges against Van Beckh, he got off when witnesses the prosecution had lined up to testify “just kind of went away,” as Amy put it. One went back to Montana. Another decided not to press charges. And Ernest avoided jail time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074414\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074414\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1341\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-1536x1030.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory circa 1975, when it had fallen into disrepair. Here, the east wing still stands, but it was later knocked down. \u003ccite>(Greg Gaar/San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They made millions of dollars in the 1910s,” O’Hair said. “And some of that money went towards buying this property. This was their hideout.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Van Beckhs would live here for decades. Ernest died in 1951, but Angele stayed on through the early ‘60s, although she too started to have money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The neighbors were friends who built their own house on the other side of the conservatory — what is now 234 Monterey Boulevard. While Angele was living there, the two families enjoyed the conservatory and its grounds as one shared yard. But when they moved away, the property lines became a problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Saving the conservatory again and again\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1974, Angele’s friends sold their house at 234 Monterey Boulevard and the property with the conservatory on it to a man named Robert Anderson. He started delineating the different lots with an eye to \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/04/18/saving-sunnyside-conservatory/\">developing the property\u003c/a> further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, neighbors started getting interested in preserving the conservatory as a historic landmark. The \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysideassociation.org/\">Sunnyside Neighborhood Association\u003c/a> had just formed, and its members started researching the conservatory’s history with a goal to get it landmarked by the city.[aside postID=news_11958380 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/BlueHouse_Flickr.png']“They wanted to save it from demolition,” O’Hair said. After World War II, \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/12/07/sunnyside-upzoned/\">Sunnyside was rezoned \u003c/a>to allow for more apartment buildings, which started popping up along Monterey Boulevard throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “And they didn’t want to see this property go for apartment buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighbors were successful in getting the \u003ca href=\"https://default.sfplanning.org/Preservation/bulletins/HistPres_Bulletin_09.PDF\">conservatory landmarked in 1975\u003c/a>, which theoretically should have preserved it. However, the owner, Robert Anderson, still managed to get a permit to demolish it. Neighbors had no idea about his plan until they spotted construction equipment at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard,” neighbor \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v70K3B-inOg\">Greg Garr said in an interview with Amy O’Hair\u003c/a>. “I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory, and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, ‘What the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it?’ I knew it was a registered historic landmark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called his representative and City Hall, clamoring to stop the demolition. Those efforts were successful, but the damage had been done. The structure was damaged, and almost all the windows had been knocked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an emergency now,” O’Hair said. “The city needed to buy the property. What good is a landmark if you don’t own the property under it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074238\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A stock certificate of William Merralls, who built Sunnyside Conservatory, is shown by Amy O’Hair at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1980, the city bought the land from Robert Anderson using the \u003ca href=\"https://generalplan.sfplanning.org/I3_Recreation_and_Open_Space.htm#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20values%20its%20recreation,the%20combination%20of%20the%20two.\">Open Space Fund\u003c/a>. And for many years after, the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association did its best to look after the building, but it fell into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All those years in the 90s when it had no glass, and you could climb right over [the fence], there was always graffiti and beer bottles,” O’Hair remembered. “And Rec and Park didn’t really take care of the grounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, it was another neighbor, \u003ca href=\"https://calhortsociety.org/2020/01/29/ted-kipping/\">Ted Kipping\u003c/a>, who tended the beautiful trees and plants William Merralls had planted all those years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One time, when I was talking to him, he said, ‘I spent $1,000 a month on water,’” O’Hair said. “I don’t know if it’s true. But he was very important to preserving some of the specialness of the grounds, for which I’m thankful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Renovating the conservatory\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1999, another neighborhood group formed — \u003ca href=\"https://www.sunnysideconservatory.org/about\">Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory\u003c/a>. They set ambitious fundraising goals and worked with San Francisco Rec and Park to execute a multimillion-dollar renovation of the building that would restore it to its original glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the building was under renovation, yet another neighbor came forward with a piece of history to share. When the building and grounds were sold in 1974, and it looked like the old place might be demolished by Robert Anderson, this neighbor had saved the wooden spire from the top of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074241\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074241\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory contains a sign indicating that it is a city landmark in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He kept it in his garage for 30 years, bringing it out and offering it to the builders as they renovated. Unfortunately, by then it was rotting, but the builders made an exact replica and covered it in copper. That spire sits on top of the building to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a community-led effort, top to bottom,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conservatory has since become a symbol for Sunnyside residents. It was the first campaign that brought neighbors together, fighting for something that makes their corner of San Francisco special and unique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Rec and Park now maintains the building and grounds, but \u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/665/Sunnyside-Conservatory\">they do rent it out\u003c/a>. Sunnyside neighborhood groups get a bit of a deal, but there have been plenty of weddings, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> If you’ve been listening to the show for a while you may have intuited by now, but San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is one of my absolute favorite places. I love all its nooks and crannies, the unique playgrounds, those long undulating pathways. But I’d argue the crown jewel of the park is the Conservatory of Flowers, partly because of the incredible and rare plants housed inside…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>News Clip: \u003c/strong>The rare corpse flower at the Conservatory of flowers is now open to view and smell.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Like the corpse flower, which only blooms for 48 hours every 3-5 years! And stands more than 6 feet tall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Conservatory of Flowers is also renowned for its architecture. A Victorian glass building – delicate, intricate – topped with a stately domed roof. It’s like nothing else in the city! Or so I thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out San Francisco has \u003cem>another\u003c/em> conservatory across town near Glen Park. It’s much smaller, only a quarter the size, but still lovely. I’m talking about Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mary Balmana: \u003c/strong>My name is Mary Balmana. I live in the Mission Terrace area of San Francisco, and I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Mary drives by Sunnyside Conservatory on Monterey Boulevard often, but never sees anyone going in or out. She wants to know its history – and how such a curious building ended up in what is otherwise a very residential area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz is here to tell us all about it. Hi, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Hi Olivia\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Maybe you could start by just painting a picture of the conservatory as it looks now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Sunnyside Conservatory is set back from the street a little ways and is surrounded by a lush garden with huge palm trees, ferns and beautiful flowering bushes. It kind of feels like a cloud forest right in the middle of a residential neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What about the building itself?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The building is made of redwood and features a two story octagonal center that dominates the senses. Two levels of windows that let in beautiful amounts of light…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What kind of fabulous plants are inside? Anything to rival the corpse flower?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Sadly, this conservatory no longer has plants inside at all. It’s now used as an events space. But when it was first built in 1902, it was the pride of its owner – who was just the first of a line of quirky residents the property has had over its 100 or so years. Let’s meet some of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It was built by an eccentric and unique man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Amy O’Hair runs the Sunnyside History Project and lives nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He was an inventor, William Augustus Merralls, he moved here to Sunnyside when there was very little on Monterey Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Even though Sunnyside is part of San Francisco now, back then the area was rural. Picture a smattering of houses and dairy farms. Merralls bought a big house here in 1897 and then several adjoining plots of land over the next few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He accumulated seven lots, and then built his conservatory in 1902. He collected exotic plants and he liked to have a place for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Merralls made his money engineering mining equipment — but his true heart’s desire was invention. Over the years he invented dozens of things, some useful stuff, and some less so. Amy actually met his great grandson, who had some of Merralls’ old papers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>I thought I’d show you some stuff. Things that belonged to William Merrill’s like his patents. So I have all the patents for things that he made. This is a stamp mill. That’s a thing that crushes rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Look at those seals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Yes, they’re very fancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This is a letter he wrote while he was in New York City raising money for the automobile starters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Will you read a little bit of it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Darling, you should see the Merralls starter at work on that big engine. You would be tickled to pieces. It is a dandy. And when you come on for Thanksgiving, you shall be the first lady to ride in an automobile that has the only commercial, perfect self-starter in the world, and that one is a Merralls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>He’s like promoting himself to his wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>To his wife, for God’s sake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The thing is, Merralls probably had his hand in one too many projects. He had a tendency to move on before things were finished and he was sued a number of times. By the time of his death in 1914, he was having money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Mmm. Unfortunately, you can’t just create the thing, but you have to sell it too…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes, and unfortunately that meant that when he died, the bank repossessed the whole property, including the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What happened to it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The house and its grounds sat empty for three years and then another couple bought it. The next in the line of curious owners…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>The name of this couple was Ernest and Angel Van Beck. They were very strange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Ernest Van Bech was essentially a scam artist. He made a boatload of money selling worthless mining bonds to people…basically swindling them out of their money. The district attorney even brought charges, but when the witnesses didn’t show up to testify, they had to let Ernest go. And he lived out his life on the property with the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Ernest would not show his face. There were a lot of rumors about him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Kind of the Boo Radley of Sunnyside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> He really was. The neighborhood kids were all afraid of him. But after decades living in the house next to the conservatory he died in 1951. His wife, Angele, kept living there, but she needed money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors were friends of hers. They built a house on the other side of the conservatory — the east wing of the building was actually in their backyard. At the time, that wasn’t a big deal because Angele and her friends basically shared the conservatory and its grounds like one big yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But eventually Angele moved away and her friends sold their home – and they leave behind the conservatory, which now straddles two properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Is this foreshadowing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This is foreshadowing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We’ll find out what happened after this quick break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Alright, Katrina, you were telling us what happened to the conservatory after Angele Van Beck and her friends next door moved away and sold the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The bulk of the conservatory and its grounds ended up in the hands of a man named Robert Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It’s 1975 by now, and there’s a lot of local interest in the conservatory as a historic structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>People who live nearby had grown attached to the conservatory. They view it as a symbol of the neighborhood. A group called the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association forms and they start researching the history of the conservatory in order to get it landmarked as a historic building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>They wanted to save it from demolition because in the 50s and 60s and 70s, along Monterey Boulevard, we’d had so many empty lots, and it was rezoned after the war, that apartment buildings were growing up all the way along it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors succeeded in getting the building landmarked, but that didn’t keep it safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>But then Robert Anderson decided he actually would build some apartment buildings and he got a permit to demolish the conservatory, which he attempted to do at the end of 1978. And it was only saved because of two people who had their eye on the conservatory. Greg Gaar is one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Greg Garr: \u003c/strong>Well, I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard. I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, what the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it? I knew it was a registered historic landmark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Greg Garr and other neighbors started frantically calling city hall and they got the demolition halted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>When they were done, the glass was knocked out of most of the windows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> This seems like an impasse. Robert Anderson can’t knock the conservatory down and build anything new – but he owns it. So what happens?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, the city buys the land from him. But there wasn’t any money to renovate the building then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Sunnyside Neighborhood Association tried to get it renovated and they looked after it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They scraped graffiti off the building and boarded up all the broken windows to keep rain out. But unfortunately the whole thing was falling into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some point in the 1980s, the east wing of the conservatory – the part that crossed over onto another property – it gets knocked down, leaving the building looking kind of lopsided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>And it is a loss, because it’s no longer, it’s whole, whole self.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Wait, after saving it from being knocked down by the developer…part of it was still demolished?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Yes, sadly. Amy says the circumstances are a bit mysterious, but that eastern wing is in photos of the conservatory through early 1980 and then it’s just gone. If you go there now, there’s a fence right up against the main part of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Sounds like these neighbors really had to be vigilant to keep this thing from being torn down completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> You know, they did their best. And there was a man who lived behind the conservatory…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Whose name was Ted Kipping. And he was a professional botanist, arborist, and plant collector, and photographer, speaker. Very ambitious, very dedicated. He took care of the grounds in the 90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The conservatory becomes something of a pet project for him. A very expensive one…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>One time, when I was talking to him, he said, I spent $1,000 a month on water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> How does it turn into the beautiful building it is today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A group called the Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory forms in 1999 and spend about 10 years raising money and getting San Francisco Rec and Park on board. They did a big multimillion dollar renovation in the 2000s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>We’re here at the Sunnyside’s Conservatory that’s re-opening and this has been a long fought community effort to make this happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>There was a big party at the conservatory to celebrate its reopening in 2009. Then mayor Gavin Newsom was there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gavin Newsom: \u003c/strong>In a hundred years they’ll be talking about, in 2009…\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Everyone was so excited that this neighborhood gem had been restored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>Here’s the original spire. It was somewhere up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The conservatory has a spire?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes — the original 1902 building that William Merralls built had a redwood spire on top. And a neighbor kept that spire in his garage for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This man volunteered this finial, redwood finial from the original building and said, well, here it is. You know, you can put it back on the new building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And did they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, by then it was fairly rotten. So, instead they made an exact replica, covered it in copper and that’s what’s now on top of the current building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> A bit of a cherry on top, if you will. So now the neighborhood has this pretty special place for everyone to enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Not only that, but working to preserve the conservatory brought the community together\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Thanks for sharing this history with us, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> My pleasure. And if you haven’t been to the Sunnyside Conservatory, you should really check it out!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> One thing I love about the Bay Area is that most neighborhoods have little gems like this one. They’re usually not things people would go out of their way to visit…but they do make each little corner of this area special. If you’ve got a spot near you that you’ve always wondered about, head on over to bay curious dot org and submit a question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested to know more about Sunnyside, Amy O’Hair has a book called \u003cem>History Walks of Sunnyside\u003c/em> coming out very soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been enjoying the double dose of Bay Curious we’ve been putting out this month, consider making a donation to KQED to support our work. Every little bit helps, just head over to KQED dot or slash donate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco’s \u003c/a>Sunnyside neighborhood, just west of Glen Park, isn’t actually very sunny. In fact, it’s one of the foggier places in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of its main thoroughfares, Monterey Boulevard, carries drivers west towards tonier places like St. Francis Wood, passing many houses and apartment buildings along the way. But slow down a little, and you might catch a glimpse of a building that feels out of the ordinary in this residential place — Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set back from the street and tucked behind a wrought iron gate, the octagonal redwood building has two stories of windows surrounded by a lush garden of towering palms, ferns and flowering bushes. It’s beautiful and old-world feeling, a unique Victorian gem on an otherwise busy street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Mary Balmana often uses Monterey Boulevard to get to her home in Mission Terrace. She’s seen the conservatory hundreds of times, but hasn’t noticed anyone going inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074410\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074410\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside resident and historian Amy O’Hair poses for a portrait at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, she wants answers. What is the conservatory doing here in Sunnyside, who owns it and could she rent it out?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>An inventor’s oasis\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Sunnyside Conservatory was built by William Augustus Merralls, a British inventor and eccentric. He bought a house along what is now Monterey Boulevard in 1897, when the area was mostly rural. Land was cheap, so he also bought up seven lots around his house and then set about making the grounds his own private oasis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He collected exotic plants, and he liked to have a place for them,” said Amy O’Hair, Sunnyside resident,\u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/\"> local historian\u003c/a> and author of the forthcoming book, \u003cem>History Walks in Sunnyside\u003c/em>. She’s currently writing a book about the conservatory’s history.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Merralls made his money designing and patenting mining equipment. He had more than 20 different patents, mostly for machines that helped extract ever smaller amounts of gold from rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He did well, but whatever he got he spent on his projects,” O’Hair said. “He had a restless mind, always wanting to invent new things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of his inventions were practical, others less so. He invented an automobile starter, a refrigerator and a “deep breathing developer,” a contraption for his wife, Temperance Laura, who was fascinated by alternative medicine. The details of how it actually worked have been lost to time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1902, he built the conservatory, a building beautifully crafted out of redwood in Victorian style. In addition to collecting exotic plants, Merralls also loved astronomy. He built himself an observatory on the back of his house. And he loved luxury items; his house had two grand pianos and a private bowling alley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He apparently didn’t need to live amongst his peers,” O’Hair said. “He was a very independent-minded man, and he was happy out here in his own enclave with all of his toys in the house and all of those plants out here in the conservatory and a wife he loved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and his wife, Temperance Laura, lived in Sunnyside, enjoying their house and its grounds until 1914, when Merralls tragically died in a train accident while visiting a friend in Alameda. By that point, he had sunk all his money into various pursuits that hadn’t paid off, and when he died, Temperance Laura couldn’t afford to keep living on their estate in Sunnyside. The bank repossessed the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Second act as swindler’s hideout\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The property sat empty and neglected for three years before another odd couple, Ernest and Angele Van Beckh, came along and \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">bought it in 1919\u003c/a>. Ernest Van Beckh was a con man, a member of the \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">“Big Five” \u003c/a>whose exploits selling worthless mining shares to unsuspecting people and stealing their money were splashed across the newspapers in 1916.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the district attorney brought charges against Van Beckh, he got off when witnesses the prosecution had lined up to testify “just kind of went away,” as Amy put it. One went back to Montana. Another decided not to press charges. And Ernest avoided jail time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074414\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074414\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1341\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-1536x1030.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory circa 1975, when it had fallen into disrepair. Here, the east wing still stands, but it was later knocked down. \u003ccite>(Greg Gaar/San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They made millions of dollars in the 1910s,” O’Hair said. “And some of that money went towards buying this property. This was their hideout.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Van Beckhs would live here for decades. Ernest died in 1951, but Angele stayed on through the early ‘60s, although she too started to have money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The neighbors were friends who built their own house on the other side of the conservatory — what is now 234 Monterey Boulevard. While Angele was living there, the two families enjoyed the conservatory and its grounds as one shared yard. But when they moved away, the property lines became a problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Saving the conservatory again and again\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1974, Angele’s friends sold their house at 234 Monterey Boulevard and the property with the conservatory on it to a man named Robert Anderson. He started delineating the different lots with an eye to \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/04/18/saving-sunnyside-conservatory/\">developing the property\u003c/a> further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, neighbors started getting interested in preserving the conservatory as a historic landmark. The \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysideassociation.org/\">Sunnyside Neighborhood Association\u003c/a> had just formed, and its members started researching the conservatory’s history with a goal to get it landmarked by the city.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“They wanted to save it from demolition,” O’Hair said. After World War II, \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/12/07/sunnyside-upzoned/\">Sunnyside was rezoned \u003c/a>to allow for more apartment buildings, which started popping up along Monterey Boulevard throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “And they didn’t want to see this property go for apartment buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighbors were successful in getting the \u003ca href=\"https://default.sfplanning.org/Preservation/bulletins/HistPres_Bulletin_09.PDF\">conservatory landmarked in 1975\u003c/a>, which theoretically should have preserved it. However, the owner, Robert Anderson, still managed to get a permit to demolish it. Neighbors had no idea about his plan until they spotted construction equipment at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard,” neighbor \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v70K3B-inOg\">Greg Garr said in an interview with Amy O’Hair\u003c/a>. “I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory, and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, ‘What the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it?’ I knew it was a registered historic landmark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called his representative and City Hall, clamoring to stop the demolition. Those efforts were successful, but the damage had been done. The structure was damaged, and almost all the windows had been knocked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an emergency now,” O’Hair said. “The city needed to buy the property. What good is a landmark if you don’t own the property under it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074238\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A stock certificate of William Merralls, who built Sunnyside Conservatory, is shown by Amy O’Hair at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1980, the city bought the land from Robert Anderson using the \u003ca href=\"https://generalplan.sfplanning.org/I3_Recreation_and_Open_Space.htm#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20values%20its%20recreation,the%20combination%20of%20the%20two.\">Open Space Fund\u003c/a>. And for many years after, the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association did its best to look after the building, but it fell into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All those years in the 90s when it had no glass, and you could climb right over [the fence], there was always graffiti and beer bottles,” O’Hair remembered. “And Rec and Park didn’t really take care of the grounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, it was another neighbor, \u003ca href=\"https://calhortsociety.org/2020/01/29/ted-kipping/\">Ted Kipping\u003c/a>, who tended the beautiful trees and plants William Merralls had planted all those years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One time, when I was talking to him, he said, ‘I spent $1,000 a month on water,’” O’Hair said. “I don’t know if it’s true. But he was very important to preserving some of the specialness of the grounds, for which I’m thankful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Renovating the conservatory\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1999, another neighborhood group formed — \u003ca href=\"https://www.sunnysideconservatory.org/about\">Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory\u003c/a>. They set ambitious fundraising goals and worked with San Francisco Rec and Park to execute a multimillion-dollar renovation of the building that would restore it to its original glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the building was under renovation, yet another neighbor came forward with a piece of history to share. When the building and grounds were sold in 1974, and it looked like the old place might be demolished by Robert Anderson, this neighbor had saved the wooden spire from the top of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074241\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074241\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory contains a sign indicating that it is a city landmark in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He kept it in his garage for 30 years, bringing it out and offering it to the builders as they renovated. Unfortunately, by then it was rotting, but the builders made an exact replica and covered it in copper. That spire sits on top of the building to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a community-led effort, top to bottom,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conservatory has since become a symbol for Sunnyside residents. It was the first campaign that brought neighbors together, fighting for something that makes their corner of San Francisco special and unique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Rec and Park now maintains the building and grounds, but \u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/665/Sunnyside-Conservatory\">they do rent it out\u003c/a>. Sunnyside neighborhood groups get a bit of a deal, but there have been plenty of weddings, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> If you’ve been listening to the show for a while you may have intuited by now, but San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is one of my absolute favorite places. I love all its nooks and crannies, the unique playgrounds, those long undulating pathways. But I’d argue the crown jewel of the park is the Conservatory of Flowers, partly because of the incredible and rare plants housed inside…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>News Clip: \u003c/strong>The rare corpse flower at the Conservatory of flowers is now open to view and smell.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Like the corpse flower, which only blooms for 48 hours every 3-5 years! And stands more than 6 feet tall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Conservatory of Flowers is also renowned for its architecture. A Victorian glass building – delicate, intricate – topped with a stately domed roof. It’s like nothing else in the city! Or so I thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out San Francisco has \u003cem>another\u003c/em> conservatory across town near Glen Park. It’s much smaller, only a quarter the size, but still lovely. I’m talking about Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mary Balmana: \u003c/strong>My name is Mary Balmana. I live in the Mission Terrace area of San Francisco, and I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Mary drives by Sunnyside Conservatory on Monterey Boulevard often, but never sees anyone going in or out. She wants to know its history – and how such a curious building ended up in what is otherwise a very residential area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz is here to tell us all about it. Hi, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Hi Olivia\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Maybe you could start by just painting a picture of the conservatory as it looks now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Sunnyside Conservatory is set back from the street a little ways and is surrounded by a lush garden with huge palm trees, ferns and beautiful flowering bushes. It kind of feels like a cloud forest right in the middle of a residential neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What about the building itself?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The building is made of redwood and features a two story octagonal center that dominates the senses. Two levels of windows that let in beautiful amounts of light…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What kind of fabulous plants are inside? Anything to rival the corpse flower?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Sadly, this conservatory no longer has plants inside at all. It’s now used as an events space. But when it was first built in 1902, it was the pride of its owner – who was just the first of a line of quirky residents the property has had over its 100 or so years. Let’s meet some of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It was built by an eccentric and unique man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Amy O’Hair runs the Sunnyside History Project and lives nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He was an inventor, William Augustus Merralls, he moved here to Sunnyside when there was very little on Monterey Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Even though Sunnyside is part of San Francisco now, back then the area was rural. Picture a smattering of houses and dairy farms. Merralls bought a big house here in 1897 and then several adjoining plots of land over the next few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He accumulated seven lots, and then built his conservatory in 1902. He collected exotic plants and he liked to have a place for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Merralls made his money engineering mining equipment — but his true heart’s desire was invention. Over the years he invented dozens of things, some useful stuff, and some less so. Amy actually met his great grandson, who had some of Merralls’ old papers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>I thought I’d show you some stuff. Things that belonged to William Merrill’s like his patents. So I have all the patents for things that he made. This is a stamp mill. That’s a thing that crushes rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Look at those seals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Yes, they’re very fancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This is a letter he wrote while he was in New York City raising money for the automobile starters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Will you read a little bit of it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Darling, you should see the Merralls starter at work on that big engine. You would be tickled to pieces. It is a dandy. And when you come on for Thanksgiving, you shall be the first lady to ride in an automobile that has the only commercial, perfect self-starter in the world, and that one is a Merralls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>He’s like promoting himself to his wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>To his wife, for God’s sake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The thing is, Merralls probably had his hand in one too many projects. He had a tendency to move on before things were finished and he was sued a number of times. By the time of his death in 1914, he was having money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Mmm. Unfortunately, you can’t just create the thing, but you have to sell it too…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes, and unfortunately that meant that when he died, the bank repossessed the whole property, including the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What happened to it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The house and its grounds sat empty for three years and then another couple bought it. The next in the line of curious owners…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>The name of this couple was Ernest and Angel Van Beck. They were very strange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Ernest Van Bech was essentially a scam artist. He made a boatload of money selling worthless mining bonds to people…basically swindling them out of their money. The district attorney even brought charges, but when the witnesses didn’t show up to testify, they had to let Ernest go. And he lived out his life on the property with the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Ernest would not show his face. There were a lot of rumors about him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Kind of the Boo Radley of Sunnyside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> He really was. The neighborhood kids were all afraid of him. But after decades living in the house next to the conservatory he died in 1951. His wife, Angele, kept living there, but she needed money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors were friends of hers. They built a house on the other side of the conservatory — the east wing of the building was actually in their backyard. At the time, that wasn’t a big deal because Angele and her friends basically shared the conservatory and its grounds like one big yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But eventually Angele moved away and her friends sold their home – and they leave behind the conservatory, which now straddles two properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Is this foreshadowing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This is foreshadowing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We’ll find out what happened after this quick break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Alright, Katrina, you were telling us what happened to the conservatory after Angele Van Beck and her friends next door moved away and sold the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The bulk of the conservatory and its grounds ended up in the hands of a man named Robert Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It’s 1975 by now, and there’s a lot of local interest in the conservatory as a historic structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>People who live nearby had grown attached to the conservatory. They view it as a symbol of the neighborhood. A group called the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association forms and they start researching the history of the conservatory in order to get it landmarked as a historic building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>They wanted to save it from demolition because in the 50s and 60s and 70s, along Monterey Boulevard, we’d had so many empty lots, and it was rezoned after the war, that apartment buildings were growing up all the way along it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors succeeded in getting the building landmarked, but that didn’t keep it safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>But then Robert Anderson decided he actually would build some apartment buildings and he got a permit to demolish the conservatory, which he attempted to do at the end of 1978. And it was only saved because of two people who had their eye on the conservatory. Greg Gaar is one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Greg Garr: \u003c/strong>Well, I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard. I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, what the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it? I knew it was a registered historic landmark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Greg Garr and other neighbors started frantically calling city hall and they got the demolition halted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>When they were done, the glass was knocked out of most of the windows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> This seems like an impasse. Robert Anderson can’t knock the conservatory down and build anything new – but he owns it. So what happens?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, the city buys the land from him. But there wasn’t any money to renovate the building then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Sunnyside Neighborhood Association tried to get it renovated and they looked after it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They scraped graffiti off the building and boarded up all the broken windows to keep rain out. But unfortunately the whole thing was falling into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some point in the 1980s, the east wing of the conservatory – the part that crossed over onto another property – it gets knocked down, leaving the building looking kind of lopsided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>And it is a loss, because it’s no longer, it’s whole, whole self.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Wait, after saving it from being knocked down by the developer…part of it was still demolished?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Yes, sadly. Amy says the circumstances are a bit mysterious, but that eastern wing is in photos of the conservatory through early 1980 and then it’s just gone. If you go there now, there’s a fence right up against the main part of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Sounds like these neighbors really had to be vigilant to keep this thing from being torn down completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> You know, they did their best. And there was a man who lived behind the conservatory…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Whose name was Ted Kipping. And he was a professional botanist, arborist, and plant collector, and photographer, speaker. Very ambitious, very dedicated. He took care of the grounds in the 90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The conservatory becomes something of a pet project for him. A very expensive one…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>One time, when I was talking to him, he said, I spent $1,000 a month on water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> How does it turn into the beautiful building it is today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A group called the Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory forms in 1999 and spend about 10 years raising money and getting San Francisco Rec and Park on board. They did a big multimillion dollar renovation in the 2000s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>We’re here at the Sunnyside’s Conservatory that’s re-opening and this has been a long fought community effort to make this happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>There was a big party at the conservatory to celebrate its reopening in 2009. Then mayor Gavin Newsom was there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gavin Newsom: \u003c/strong>In a hundred years they’ll be talking about, in 2009…\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Everyone was so excited that this neighborhood gem had been restored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>Here’s the original spire. It was somewhere up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The conservatory has a spire?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes — the original 1902 building that William Merralls built had a redwood spire on top. And a neighbor kept that spire in his garage for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This man volunteered this finial, redwood finial from the original building and said, well, here it is. You know, you can put it back on the new building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And did they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, by then it was fairly rotten. So, instead they made an exact replica, covered it in copper and that’s what’s now on top of the current building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> A bit of a cherry on top, if you will. So now the neighborhood has this pretty special place for everyone to enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Not only that, but working to preserve the conservatory brought the community together\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Thanks for sharing this history with us, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> My pleasure. And if you haven’t been to the Sunnyside Conservatory, you should really check it out!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> One thing I love about the Bay Area is that most neighborhoods have little gems like this one. They’re usually not things people would go out of their way to visit…but they do make each little corner of this area special. If you’ve got a spot near you that you’ve always wondered about, head on over to bay curious dot org and submit a question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested to know more about Sunnyside, Amy O’Hair has a book called \u003cem>History Walks of Sunnyside\u003c/em> coming out very soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been enjoying the double dose of Bay Curious we’ve been putting out this month, consider making a donation to KQED to support our work. Every little bit helps, just head over to KQED dot or slash donate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "a-south-bay-mystery-what-happened-to-all-the-tree-frogs",
"title": "A South Bay Mystery: What Happened to All the Tree Frogs?",
"publishDate": 1772103651,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "A South Bay Mystery: What Happened to All the Tree Frogs? | KQED",
"labelTerm": {},
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Springtime in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> brings with it lush green landscapes, vibrant wildflowers and buds breaking open on trees. And in some places, the soundtrack to all that visual beauty is the chorusing of tree frogs, which can be incredibly loud in the spring when they mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our local frog is the Pacific tree frog. They may sound mighty, but they’re not your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs, just a couple of inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud,” said Bay Curious listener Dave Ellis, who grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave grew up a quarter mile from a creek, which runs through West Valley College. He said he used to be able to hear the loud chorus of frogs all the way from his house, and would sometimes venture to the creek in search of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, even though he still lives nearby, he never hears them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074229\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leticia Gallardo, a biology professor at West Valley College, points out fungi growing on bark to student Galen Ventresca during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent,” he said. “All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, now Dave’s wondering, what happened to the tree frogs?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The decline of amphibians\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There are many possible explanations for the disappearance of the tree frogs in Dave’s neighborhood, making it hard to pinpoint an exact cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One is the use of pesticides on the West Valley College campus, through which the creek runs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12055329 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250811-WILD-BOAR-OSA-03-KQED.jpg']“West Valley College uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary,” a spokesperson for the college wrote in an email. “All applications are performed by licensed professionals and in accordance with California state regulations and safety guidelines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pesticides could inflict direct harm on frogs, or they could kill the insects the frogs rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another possible contributor could be changes in habitat over time. For example, perhaps West Valley College has paved over certain parts of the creekbed, or disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians,” said Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly who specializes in reptiles and amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frogs are particularly vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to many toxins and diseases. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California, as well as globally, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06578-4\">amphibians are on the decline\u003c/a>, in large part due to habitat destruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, have this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands,” Taylor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074233\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074233\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Pacific tree frog sits inside a sprinkler box on campus after West Valley College student Galen Ventresca discovered it during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, much of that habitat has been paved over for interstate freeways and housing developments, or cultivated for farmland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that time, the climate has also changed a lot, which has led to more drought. Frogs need wet environments to survive, and drought poses real danger to them over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up as well, including one caused by the \u003ca href=\"https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/chytrid-fungus\">chytrid fungus\u003c/a>, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake. The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world, as well as here in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered,” Taylor said. “It’s really dire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A resilient species\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Interestingly, though, that global trend doesn’t apply to the Pacific tree frog species, the one that Dave grew up hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, statewide, the population is thriving.[aside postID=news_12052988 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250804-BC-BIODIVERSITY-01-KQED.jpg']“They are known for being very resilient,” Taylor said. “So whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their propensity for living in urban areas, including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features and small creeks, has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which means the fact that Dave isn’t hearing those specific frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have,” Taylor said. “So if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, Taylor said, the solution to bringing them back is quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the best thing people can do to encourage a thriving tree frog population in their neighborhoods is avoid pesticide use, have a water feature and plant native plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: If you grew up here in the Bay Area … or if you’ve lived here a long time … I bet this sound is familiar to you:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Pacific tree frogs chorusing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Tree frogs. A quintessential soundtrack to the Bay Area. These aren’t your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs just a couple inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re especially noisy during the springtime, which is their mating season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud. It was really cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave Ellis grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>We live about a quarter mile from the creek, and you could hear the tree frogs that far away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: When he was a kid, he used to go to the creek, which ran through a community college campus, to try to see the frogs for himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> We used to go to West Valley College and we used to catch them in the creek there um because they had like a little bridge you could climb down it was really easy to get into the creek um and you could hear lots of them there too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave still lives in Saratoga, not too far from that creek. But now, come springtime, it’s silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent. All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: He says he has hardly heard a single frog sound for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> So I was wondering what happened. I mean, it could be pesticides. It could be climate change. It could mean, who knows, but it’s such a dramatic change because for years and years and probably before we moved here when I was a kid, even there was tree frogs and now there’s like literally none. There’s not a single one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave’s question won a public voting round at BayCurious.org. Which reminds me, head over to Bay Curious dot org to cast your vote in this month’s contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious theme music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we look into the mystery of the disappearing tree frogs. We’ll visit that creek on the West Valley College campus … and enlist the help of some students … all to find out what happened to the tree frogs. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: This week, we’re looking into the odd lack of tree frog choruses that one Bay Curious listener has noticed. We sent Bay Curious reporter Dana Cronin on a hunt to find out what’s going on with the tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin:\u003c/strong> I can totally relate to Dave’s nostalgia for the sound of frogs in the springtime. I, too, grew up across the street from some frogs. I’m not sure how many of them there were, but boy, were they loud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I figured the best way to find out what happened to Dave’s frogs was to go straight to the source.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I headed to the West Valley College campus — the one in the neighborhood where Dave grew up, with the creek running through it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> So this is the creek?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>This is the Creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I met up with West Valley College biology professor Leticia Gallardo … who has agreed to go on this frog hunt with me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought we’d walk up a little bit farther up … We have a little, bit of a wetland. I’m hoping we might have some luck looking for some frogs up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>That sounds great!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>So, we set off. It’s early fall, which isn’t the best time of year to be looking for them since it’s so dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nonetheless, Professor Gallardo tells me we’re looking for the Pacific tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Their characteristic look is this black stripe over their eye. So if you see a little frog, maybe about two inches or so, with a black almost mask. Over their face, you’re probably looking at a tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Pacific tree frogs like living in cool, wet environments. In creekbeds … but even underneath a drip from a garden hose, or in a fountain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we’re keeping our ears — as well as our eyes — peeled. Because even though these frogs are small, their sound is mighty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> In fact, it’s the frog that Hollywood records right in the hills. And so they call it sometimes the Hollywood frog because when you hear frogs in the background of a movie or a TV show, is oftentimes that Pacific tree frog. That’s the one chorusing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We walk along the creek, which winds through campus. We pass by classrooms, walk through a mini golf course, all the while looking for frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo spots a utility box, makes a beeline for it, and turns it over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> They sometimes hang out in the nice little cozy, moist utility box. They like those.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But not today. So, we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Do you hear that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We think we hear one. So we start to follow the sound back down to the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> I was trying to find a spot that doesn’t have as much poison oak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But someone — ahem, me — wasn’t willing to brave the poison oak. So we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo has one more spot in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>The next spot where there’s water, we might get lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Sure, let’s do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of running water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We start walking back downstream, and get to a part of the creek where there’s a slow, steady drip – IDEAL frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought I heard one. Were you recording?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> I was, I didn’t hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> You didn’t hear it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> No. Now we’re imagining frogs. (laughs)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We wait in silence, hoping for just one croak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Well dang, it might be a strikeout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>No frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I’m bummed. But Professor Gallardo is more than bummed; she seems disturbed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> It just seems that there should be something in here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>After all, this little creek is perfect habitat for tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, where are they all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Dave’s right. What was once a booming tree frog population at West Valley College seems to have been nearly erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to this particular population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But still, I tried by asking Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly, who specializes in amphibians and reptiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>So my guess would be that they could be declining in some areas due to a combination of increased pesticide use, possibly. Which could be directly harming them, or it could be killing the insects that they rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Indeed, there was a noticeable lack of bugs along the creekbed at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And sure enough, when I asked, a West Valley spokesperson said the college quote “uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Taylor said the decline could also be due to habitat changes in the creek bed where these frogs used to live. Like, maybe the college has paved over certain parts of it or has disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed to manage the watersheds, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Frogs in general are especially vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to certain types of toxins and also disease. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California and globally, amphibians are on the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because think about how much things have changed here for frogs over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, like pre-Gold Rush era, have just this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We’ve destroyed a lot of that habitat over time to make room for interstate freeways, housing developments and farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in that time, our climate has also changed a lot, leading to more drought, which — as we’ve learned — is not good for frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up over time as well, including one caused by the chytrid fungus, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world and here in California, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered. It’s really dire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But interestingly, Pacific tree frogs — the ones that Dave asked about — are not threatened or endangered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, their population is thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> They are known for being very resilient. So, whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Taylor says their propensity for living in urban areas … including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features, and small creeks has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the fact that Dave’s not hearing his neighborhood frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have. And so if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>The good news is that the solution is also pretty hyperlocal. Dave doesn’t need to solve climate change or cure any diseases to bring his neighborhood frogs back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution is actually quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> The best thing people can do, really, is to plant native plants in your yard, have a water feature, and really avoid pesticide use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of flowing water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Which is exactly what Leticia Gallardo has done at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> This little plant right in here, this big-leafed, low-growing plant, is called yerba mansa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Gallardo and her students have been working on installing native gardens for the past few years. They want to create habitat for all kinds of native critters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’re starting to see results! Just this year, a monarch butterfly caterpillar affixed its chrysalis to a big metal pole right outside their classroom. It’s the first time they’ve seen a monarch on campus, and they’re very protective of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Student Melanie Zarza reads me a sign that students pinned up next to the chrysalis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> “This is a monarch butterfly chrysalis. He is cooking. Don’t bug him If you hurt this little creature the entire biology department will have beef with you and you and will release the curse of Ra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>As Melanie and I are admiring the chrysalis, Professor Gallardo is examining the native milkweed they have planted in the garden nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s more caterpillars!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>Really?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>There are more of them, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s an itty bitty tiny one right here. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>There’s one right there, under you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>You see another one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Oh my God, oh my God! There’s more!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We fan out and start peeking under leaves and closely examining stalks — and we keep seeing more and more caterpillars, with vibrant yellow, black and white stripes lining their chunky bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>So, how many do we have now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I think we should count them. Oh, look, there’s another one. Oh my god, that’s so exciting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>It’s amazing when you like, spend so much time planting and like waiting for the critters to come and then they come. It makes it all worth it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Do you think this could be? I mean, not that it has to be all about the frogs, but do you think that this could be an indication that the frog species here on campus could start to really come back?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Well, I think if you restore the habitat, you make a home for them, you make space for them. Yeah. If we can have less contaminants going into that creek, it’s totally hospitable. They are really adaptable, generalized little critters, And so I think they totally could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Fingers crossed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Sure enough, a couple months after my visit to West Valley College, I got an email from Professor Gallardo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that winter rains brought out some frogs and that they’re now consistently hearing a few frogs in the gardens and the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a huge chorus yet, she said, not like the one that Dave remembers. But it’s a step in that direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: That was KQED’s Dana Cronin. Thanks to Dave Ellis for asking this week’s question, which won a public voting round on Bay Curious dot org. There’s still time left to vote in February’s contest, so head on over and cast your vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Springtime in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> brings with it lush green landscapes, vibrant wildflowers and buds breaking open on trees. And in some places, the soundtrack to all that visual beauty is the chorusing of tree frogs, which can be incredibly loud in the spring when they mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our local frog is the Pacific tree frog. They may sound mighty, but they’re not your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs, just a couple of inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud,” said Bay Curious listener Dave Ellis, who grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave grew up a quarter mile from a creek, which runs through West Valley College. He said he used to be able to hear the loud chorus of frogs all the way from his house, and would sometimes venture to the creek in search of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, even though he still lives nearby, he never hears them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074229\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leticia Gallardo, a biology professor at West Valley College, points out fungi growing on bark to student Galen Ventresca during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent,” he said. “All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, now Dave’s wondering, what happened to the tree frogs?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The decline of amphibians\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There are many possible explanations for the disappearance of the tree frogs in Dave’s neighborhood, making it hard to pinpoint an exact cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One is the use of pesticides on the West Valley College campus, through which the creek runs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“West Valley College uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary,” a spokesperson for the college wrote in an email. “All applications are performed by licensed professionals and in accordance with California state regulations and safety guidelines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pesticides could inflict direct harm on frogs, or they could kill the insects the frogs rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another possible contributor could be changes in habitat over time. For example, perhaps West Valley College has paved over certain parts of the creekbed, or disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians,” said Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly who specializes in reptiles and amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frogs are particularly vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to many toxins and diseases. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California, as well as globally, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06578-4\">amphibians are on the decline\u003c/a>, in large part due to habitat destruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, have this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands,” Taylor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074233\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074233\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Pacific tree frog sits inside a sprinkler box on campus after West Valley College student Galen Ventresca discovered it during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, much of that habitat has been paved over for interstate freeways and housing developments, or cultivated for farmland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that time, the climate has also changed a lot, which has led to more drought. Frogs need wet environments to survive, and drought poses real danger to them over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up as well, including one caused by the \u003ca href=\"https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/chytrid-fungus\">chytrid fungus\u003c/a>, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake. The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world, as well as here in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered,” Taylor said. “It’s really dire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A resilient species\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Interestingly, though, that global trend doesn’t apply to the Pacific tree frog species, the one that Dave grew up hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, statewide, the population is thriving.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“They are known for being very resilient,” Taylor said. “So whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their propensity for living in urban areas, including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features and small creeks, has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which means the fact that Dave isn’t hearing those specific frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have,” Taylor said. “So if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, Taylor said, the solution to bringing them back is quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the best thing people can do to encourage a thriving tree frog population in their neighborhoods is avoid pesticide use, have a water feature and plant native plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: If you grew up here in the Bay Area … or if you’ve lived here a long time … I bet this sound is familiar to you:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Pacific tree frogs chorusing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Tree frogs. A quintessential soundtrack to the Bay Area. These aren’t your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs just a couple inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re especially noisy during the springtime, which is their mating season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud. It was really cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave Ellis grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>We live about a quarter mile from the creek, and you could hear the tree frogs that far away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: When he was a kid, he used to go to the creek, which ran through a community college campus, to try to see the frogs for himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> We used to go to West Valley College and we used to catch them in the creek there um because they had like a little bridge you could climb down it was really easy to get into the creek um and you could hear lots of them there too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave still lives in Saratoga, not too far from that creek. But now, come springtime, it’s silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent. All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: He says he has hardly heard a single frog sound for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> So I was wondering what happened. I mean, it could be pesticides. It could be climate change. It could mean, who knows, but it’s such a dramatic change because for years and years and probably before we moved here when I was a kid, even there was tree frogs and now there’s like literally none. There’s not a single one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave’s question won a public voting round at BayCurious.org. Which reminds me, head over to Bay Curious dot org to cast your vote in this month’s contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious theme music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we look into the mystery of the disappearing tree frogs. We’ll visit that creek on the West Valley College campus … and enlist the help of some students … all to find out what happened to the tree frogs. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: This week, we’re looking into the odd lack of tree frog choruses that one Bay Curious listener has noticed. We sent Bay Curious reporter Dana Cronin on a hunt to find out what’s going on with the tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin:\u003c/strong> I can totally relate to Dave’s nostalgia for the sound of frogs in the springtime. I, too, grew up across the street from some frogs. I’m not sure how many of them there were, but boy, were they loud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I figured the best way to find out what happened to Dave’s frogs was to go straight to the source.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I headed to the West Valley College campus — the one in the neighborhood where Dave grew up, with the creek running through it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> So this is the creek?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>This is the Creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I met up with West Valley College biology professor Leticia Gallardo … who has agreed to go on this frog hunt with me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought we’d walk up a little bit farther up … We have a little, bit of a wetland. I’m hoping we might have some luck looking for some frogs up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>That sounds great!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>So, we set off. It’s early fall, which isn’t the best time of year to be looking for them since it’s so dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nonetheless, Professor Gallardo tells me we’re looking for the Pacific tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Their characteristic look is this black stripe over their eye. So if you see a little frog, maybe about two inches or so, with a black almost mask. Over their face, you’re probably looking at a tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Pacific tree frogs like living in cool, wet environments. In creekbeds … but even underneath a drip from a garden hose, or in a fountain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we’re keeping our ears — as well as our eyes — peeled. Because even though these frogs are small, their sound is mighty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> In fact, it’s the frog that Hollywood records right in the hills. And so they call it sometimes the Hollywood frog because when you hear frogs in the background of a movie or a TV show, is oftentimes that Pacific tree frog. That’s the one chorusing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We walk along the creek, which winds through campus. We pass by classrooms, walk through a mini golf course, all the while looking for frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo spots a utility box, makes a beeline for it, and turns it over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> They sometimes hang out in the nice little cozy, moist utility box. They like those.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But not today. So, we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Do you hear that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We think we hear one. So we start to follow the sound back down to the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> I was trying to find a spot that doesn’t have as much poison oak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But someone — ahem, me — wasn’t willing to brave the poison oak. So we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo has one more spot in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>The next spot where there’s water, we might get lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Sure, let’s do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of running water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We start walking back downstream, and get to a part of the creek where there’s a slow, steady drip – IDEAL frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought I heard one. Were you recording?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> I was, I didn’t hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> You didn’t hear it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> No. Now we’re imagining frogs. (laughs)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We wait in silence, hoping for just one croak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Well dang, it might be a strikeout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>No frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I’m bummed. But Professor Gallardo is more than bummed; she seems disturbed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> It just seems that there should be something in here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>After all, this little creek is perfect habitat for tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, where are they all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Dave’s right. What was once a booming tree frog population at West Valley College seems to have been nearly erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to this particular population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But still, I tried by asking Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly, who specializes in amphibians and reptiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>So my guess would be that they could be declining in some areas due to a combination of increased pesticide use, possibly. Which could be directly harming them, or it could be killing the insects that they rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Indeed, there was a noticeable lack of bugs along the creekbed at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And sure enough, when I asked, a West Valley spokesperson said the college quote “uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Taylor said the decline could also be due to habitat changes in the creek bed where these frogs used to live. Like, maybe the college has paved over certain parts of it or has disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed to manage the watersheds, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Frogs in general are especially vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to certain types of toxins and also disease. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California and globally, amphibians are on the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because think about how much things have changed here for frogs over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, like pre-Gold Rush era, have just this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We’ve destroyed a lot of that habitat over time to make room for interstate freeways, housing developments and farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in that time, our climate has also changed a lot, leading to more drought, which — as we’ve learned — is not good for frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up over time as well, including one caused by the chytrid fungus, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world and here in California, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered. It’s really dire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But interestingly, Pacific tree frogs — the ones that Dave asked about — are not threatened or endangered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, their population is thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> They are known for being very resilient. So, whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Taylor says their propensity for living in urban areas … including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features, and small creeks has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the fact that Dave’s not hearing his neighborhood frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have. And so if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>The good news is that the solution is also pretty hyperlocal. Dave doesn’t need to solve climate change or cure any diseases to bring his neighborhood frogs back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution is actually quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> The best thing people can do, really, is to plant native plants in your yard, have a water feature, and really avoid pesticide use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of flowing water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Which is exactly what Leticia Gallardo has done at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> This little plant right in here, this big-leafed, low-growing plant, is called yerba mansa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Gallardo and her students have been working on installing native gardens for the past few years. They want to create habitat for all kinds of native critters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’re starting to see results! Just this year, a monarch butterfly caterpillar affixed its chrysalis to a big metal pole right outside their classroom. It’s the first time they’ve seen a monarch on campus, and they’re very protective of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Student Melanie Zarza reads me a sign that students pinned up next to the chrysalis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> “This is a monarch butterfly chrysalis. He is cooking. Don’t bug him If you hurt this little creature the entire biology department will have beef with you and you and will release the curse of Ra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>As Melanie and I are admiring the chrysalis, Professor Gallardo is examining the native milkweed they have planted in the garden nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s more caterpillars!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>Really?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>There are more of them, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s an itty bitty tiny one right here. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>There’s one right there, under you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>You see another one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Oh my God, oh my God! There’s more!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We fan out and start peeking under leaves and closely examining stalks — and we keep seeing more and more caterpillars, with vibrant yellow, black and white stripes lining their chunky bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>So, how many do we have now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I think we should count them. Oh, look, there’s another one. Oh my god, that’s so exciting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>It’s amazing when you like, spend so much time planting and like waiting for the critters to come and then they come. It makes it all worth it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Do you think this could be? I mean, not that it has to be all about the frogs, but do you think that this could be an indication that the frog species here on campus could start to really come back?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Well, I think if you restore the habitat, you make a home for them, you make space for them. Yeah. If we can have less contaminants going into that creek, it’s totally hospitable. They are really adaptable, generalized little critters, And so I think they totally could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Fingers crossed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Sure enough, a couple months after my visit to West Valley College, I got an email from Professor Gallardo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that winter rains brought out some frogs and that they’re now consistently hearing a few frogs in the gardens and the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a huge chorus yet, she said, not like the one that Dave remembers. But it’s a step in that direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: That was KQED’s Dana Cronin. Thanks to Dave Ellis for asking this week’s question, which won a public voting round on Bay Curious dot org. There’s still time left to vote in February’s contest, so head on over and cast your vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/reveal300px.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
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