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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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"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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"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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"slug": "how-south-san-francisco-became-the-birthplace-of-biotechnology",
"title": "How South San Francisco Became the Birthplace of Biotechnology",
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"headTitle": "How South San Francisco Became the Birthplace of Biotechnology | 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>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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"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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"slug": "ciao-bella-do-italians-still-live-in-san-franciscos-north-beach",
"title": "Ciao Bella: Do Italians Still Live in San Francisco’s North Beach?",
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"headTitle": "Ciao Bella: Do Italians Still Live in San Francisco’s North Beach? | 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>Grant Strother loves a good caprese sandwich from North Beach. On weekdays, he walks to Molinari Delicatessen on Columbus Avenue from his job in San Francisco’sFinancial District during his lunch break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s such an easy walk,” he said. “Not too many hills to climb.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, on a particularly meandering walk, Strother passed by Saints Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square. It still offers bilingual mass in Italian, he noticed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was intrigued. Are there still Italian speakers in the neighborhood?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed,” Strother said. Twenty years ago, he’d hear Italian spoken outside restaurants like Mario’s Bohemian Cafe and Caffe Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nowadays, aside from all the restaurants, he wondered: “How Italian is it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The history of Italians in North Beach\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Since the Gold Rush, Italian immigrants have come to San Francisco in waves. The\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\"> height\u003c/a> of the Italian population was in 1930, when the ethnic community numbered just under 60,000 and made up nine percent of the overall population of San Francisco\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\">.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern Italians, from Liguria and Tuscany, first arrived in San Francisco, making up more than half of the ethnic enclave. Later, folks from southern regions like Sicily and Calabria started emigrating. Many Italians settled in North Beach, although the Excelsior District was also a cluster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saints Peter and Paul Church, a Catholic church in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Steve Leveroni, board president of \u003ca href=\"https://www.italiancs.org/\">Italian Community Services\u003c/a> in North Beach, vice president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and an insurance businessman, has deep roots in North Beach. His great-great-grandfather, Luigi, emigrated from Genoa in Northern Italy in the 1860s. When Steve was growing up in North Beach in the 1960s, descendants of the Genovese lived on Green Street, from Mason Street to Grant Avenue, and Sts. Peter and Paul Church was their centerpoint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We all got baptized there, we all got married there, and unfortunately, our funerals are gonna be there,” Leveroni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The church still towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs and practice tai chi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around the neighborhood. Liguria Bakery, on one corner of the park, has been going strong since 1911. Bay Area residents still flock there for mushroom or raisin focaccia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After every mass, we were given a few dollars, and our duty was to pick up the focaccia to bring back to the house for lunch,” Leveroni remembered.[aside postID=news_12063643 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251008-GirlintheFishbowl-01-BL.jpg']Now, as Steve walks down Columbus Avenue, the neighborhood is much more multicultural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>Now I can walk a block or two and not know somebody that I grew up with,” he said. And today, there’s no clear line between Chinatown and North Beach anymore. “At one time, Broadway Street, down here, was kind of the line of demarcation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leveroni moved to the Richmond District on San Francisco’s West Side when he got married. While North Beach may not be where the descendants of Italian immigrants live anymore, he said, it’s where people come to celebrate and be with family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to,” he said. “Where do they go? To the restaurants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A changed neighborhood\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A look at the latest census data shows that only 4% of residents who reported ancestry in North Beach’s main ZIP code have any Italian roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Italian Americans joined many other San Franciscans in flight to the suburbs. Since then, North Beach morphed into a hangout for the Beat Generation, new residence for the Chinese community and a thriving tourist destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071064\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071064\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michele Ferrante (center) sits with friends at Stella Pastry in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find old-time Italians in North Beach, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri are two of a handful of Sicilians who gather at Stella Pastry & Cafe on Columbus Avenue every morning to drink espresso and talk sports and politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[We] come out here and bullsh–t all day long,” said Balistreri, who used to own Portofino, a North Beach Italian restaurant. He speaks a Sicilian dialect with Ferrante, who also ran an Italian restaurant in North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferrante came to San Francisco as a young adult in the 1960s. He left Palermo for New York with his parents, but went further west by himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I heard about the Fisherman’s Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others,” Ferrante said. Having learned how to cook in the Army and being Sicilian, he figured, “I can go there and get a job.”[aside postID=news_12059962 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/Jello-Biafra-of-the-Dead-Kennedys-performing-at-the-Mabuhay-Gardens-.jpg']By the late 1960s, North Beach was already transforming. Beatnik culture was well established.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those were the days of the hippie generation,” Ferrante said. “There were clubs all over Broadway. All kinds of shows, performances. You could not even walk on Broadway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beat artists and Italians \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/The_Emergence_of_the_North_Beach_Beat_Scene\">got along\u003c/a> perhaps better than expected. Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low and poets liked the cafes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of waning Italian culture in North Beach in his famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.scalponefamilytree.info/OldItaliansDyingPoem.htm\">poem\u003c/a>\u003cem> Old Italians are Dying\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old Italians in their high button shoes \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071071\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071071\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clement Hudson plays the accordion on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By the early 1980s, Ferrante said, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They all moved to Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, St. Helena, Sonoma,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t,” said Balistreri. “Now you don’t know who’s who.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Preserving history is good business\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the 1990s, the North Beach Chamber of Commerce kicked off a\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?%20Theses&accountid=13802&parentSessionId=OAtwzKcX6YzQPUr6brPkGvuKr4%2FF9YEmAoAyrh9mrIo%3D&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20\"> marketing\u003c/a> campaign called “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy t-shirts that read: “\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?accountid=13802&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses\">I’m proud to be half- Italian\u003c/a>.” After all,\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4287693/\"> research shows, \u003c/a>preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cultural groups, new and old, are coming up with new ways to keep Italian heritage alive in North Beach as well. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.sflittleitaly.us/\">San Francisco Little Italy Honor Walk\u003c/a> has installed five bronze plaques in the sidewalks around Washington Square that commemorate notable Italian immigrants in San Francisco, from Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini to former mayor George Moscone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071072\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071072\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Businesses line Green Street in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It is the first time that we have multigenerational Italian Americans here, part of one group,” said the organization’s president, Gina Von Esmarch, at a ceremony to unveil the plaques. She’s a relative of both former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto and the owners of Alioto’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Von Esmarch hopes the plaques will teach the next generation about the accomplishments of San Francisco’s early Italians. “Yes, it’s to pay homage or tribute,” she said, but the plaques will also be “a living classroom” to tourists and history buffs alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, new Italian immigrants are coming to San Francisco to work in\u003ca href=\"https://innovitsf.com/about/\"> tech\u003c/a>, and specifically to North Beach to open \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Italian-Homemade-Co-makes-S-F-s-only-piadine-6101783.php\">new\u003c/a> or take over \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/reopened-north-beach-restaurant-thriving-under-new-ownership/article_dd5fdd67-94b5-4f01-86f0-1374ef5a9181.html\">old restaurants\u003c/a>. Von Esmarch said it’s part of a “re-gentrification” of North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfiac.org/\"> San Francisco Italian Athletic Club\u003c/a> on Washington Square, open only to people with Italian heritage, said it has doubled membership in the past decade. The new crop is younger and is a mix of Italians from first to fourth generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While North Beach may not be home to as many Italians anymore, it’s still culturally at the heart of the community. Every year, people return for the Italian Heritage Parade on Columbus Avenue. But instead of living down the street, people commute here to enjoy pasta with friends and family — something everyone can enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Corbelli works at Liguria Bakery in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. The long-standing bakery specializes in traditional focaccia. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Facts in this story were sourced from historian Rose Scherini, author of The Italian American Community of San Francisco: a Descriptive Study \u003c/em>\u003cem>and many other works, as well as historians Dino Cinel and Sebastian Fichera.\u003c/em>\u003cem> Special thanks to the library at San Francisco State University.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parade sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>San Francisco’s Italian Heritage parade creates a massive public party in North Beach every October. Streets are blocked off from Fisherman’s Wharf to Washington Square Park on Columbus Day weekend. Bystanders wave mini Italian flags and eat gelato as they watch the fancy floats and trolleys go by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parade music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At Saints Peter and Paul church, people play a salami toss game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Salami toss sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Word is, this is the longest-running Italian parade in the country – started back in 1869. Our question asker this week, Grant Strother [STRUH-ther]], says, he’s not Italian, but he’s walked these streets since he was a teenager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> I do remember in high school in the early 2000s, you would still hear some Italian conversations on the street. I remember like hearing that at Mario’s and Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Now, as an adult, he works in the financial district and sometimes walks to North Beach for lunch, to grab a caprese sandwich at Molinari’s Deli. But during one of those walks, he wondered … Do Italian people still live in North Beach, or is it all just a tourist trap?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> Obviously, immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed since North Beach was populated. But I was just interested then in how Italian North Beach really is, aside from a lot of the restaurants that are still there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we’ll look at the Italian roots of North Beach, track how things have changed and learn about some of the efforts to keep this history alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Located on San Francisco’s northeast side, North Beach is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and has been home to immigrants from many backgrounds over the years. It sits right next to Chinatown and where Little Manilatown used to be. Now, it’s teeming with Italian cafes, restaurants and bakeries. KQED’s Pauline Bartolone went to find out whether any Italians still live in this neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Columbus Avenue\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around North Beach, but to spot them, it helps to have a guide. Someone like Steve Leveroni, who grew up in North Beach in the 50s and 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Way back when… home of the Genoveses lived on Green street from Green and Mason all the way up to Green and Grant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve gives me a tour of the neighborhood, his great-great-grandfather, Luigi, landed back in the 1860s. Like many Italian immigrants in North Beach, he came from Northern Italy, the Genoa region. In the decades that followed, other Italians came from Tuscany, Sicily and Calabria to escape poverty and seek new opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Sound of walking up steps)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>They settled around the Italian Cathedral, Sts. Peter and Paul Church…still a center point for later generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>So this is where you come for your baptism, you come for marriage, you also come for your funeral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The church towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs, practice tai chi and blast music. Steve says when he was growing up, Italians used to hang out here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>You’d see groups sitting down of men and women and they would be speaking in Italian. So that is probably one thing that’s not as much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>You don’t hear Italian very much because not many Italians live here anymore. At its height in 1930, the Italian community numbered about 60,000 people, almost a tenth of the population of San Francisco. But as early as the 1950s, the Italians here joined many others in the flight to the suburbs. Now, only four percent of residents in North Beach’s main ZIP code have Italian heritage, that’s according to the latest census data of people who reported ancestry. But Steve says even if younger generations moved out of the city, they still come back to the neighborhood for celebrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to. But where do they go? They come, you know, to the restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The restaurants of North Beach are now the most visible and lasting legacy of the Italian enclave here. Graffeo’s coffee on Columbus, since 1935. Molinari’s Deli, our question-asker’s spot, Italian-owned since 1896. Liguria Bakery known for its mushroom or raisin focaccia since 1911.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Restaurant sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve wraps up our tour by taking me inside one of the city’s best seafood spots: Sotto Mare, owned by his grammar school friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Their sauces are all, I can see all on the stovetop there, so we’re getting some aromas from that. And then probably one of those pots is their crab chipino, which is, which is excellent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find Italian old-timers in the neighborhood, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>People speaking Sicilian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>After weeks of looking around, I finally heard some chatter at Stella’s pastry shop on Columbus Avenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We come every morning, seven days a week. Just, you know, we just get a drink espresso and you know we talk Italian, Sicilian actually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> It’s a meeting spot. Come out here and bullshit all day long. That’s it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri both ran Italian restaurants in the neighborhood and still live here. They’re just two of the Sicilians who talk sports and politics here every morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We are known as the peccatore. We are all sinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> Give him the Academy Award, please. Make him happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>In fact, San Francisco’s Italian restaurants are what drew Michele here as a young adult in the 1960s. His parents left Palermo for New York, but Michele wanted to come further west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>I told my father, my mother says, Arrivederci, I’m going to California. I heard about the Fisherman Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others. And also because I was hearing so much about North Beach, and being Sicilian, and being a cook, so well, I can go there and get a job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the late 1960s, North Beach’s reputation was evolving beyond an Italian neighborhood. Beatnik culture was well established by then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>Those were the days of the hippie generation, you know, ‘67 was the summer of love. Everything was going on. One of my favorite hangout was at La Rocca’s Corner, which is still here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The beat culture, artists and Italians got along perhaps better than expected… Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low, and poets liked the cafes. In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of North Beach’s waning Italian culture in his famous poem “Old Italians are Dying.” Here’s a recording of him reading it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lawrence Ferlinghetti:\u003c/strong> For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old Italians in their black high button shoes\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the early 1980s, Michele says, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>They all move, Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, San Helena, Sonoma. San Francisco, not too many living here anymore, very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Sure, we saw it change. There’s still some kind of flavor, but not originally what I grew up with. The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t. Now you don’t know who’s who. So, basically, you feel like nobody’s here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>That feeling of “no Italians” – didn’t sit well with the North Beach chamber of commerce. In the 1990s, they kicked off a marketing campaign for the neighborhood, “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy “I’m proud to be half Italian” t-shirts. Afterall, research shows, preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of kids singing in Italian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Now, new initiatives are popping up to keep Italian heritage alive, like the Little Italy Honor Walk, a series of bronze sidewalk squares that memorialize notable Italians in San Francisco history. Five have been installed around Washington Square Park, and there’s more on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing fades out and sounds of Italian being spoken fade in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Back at Stella’s pastry shop, Michele and Frank say remembering North Beach’s Italian history is important, but they don’t need monuments to remind them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Times change, things change, I don’t worry about it, as long as I’m here where I want to be. Italians are no Italians, I know who I am, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>North Beach’s original Italian enclave may be long gone, but the neighborhood’s history and food will keep bringing tourists…and locals with Italians heritage… back for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That story was brought to you by KQED reporter Pauline Bartolone. Special thanks to the San Francisco State University library where Pauline researched some of North Beach’s history. Thanks also to Jim McKee of EarWax Productions for the recording of Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading “Old Italians Are Dying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s question came from Grant Strother, and you could be next! Submit your question about the Bay Area at BayCurious.org.\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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"excerpt": "San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood is known for its Italian restaurants, cafes and bakeries. But is it still an enclave for Northern California’s Italian immigrants?",
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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>Grant Strother loves a good caprese sandwich from North Beach. On weekdays, he walks to Molinari Delicatessen on Columbus Avenue from his job in San Francisco’sFinancial District during his lunch break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s such an easy walk,” he said. “Not too many hills to climb.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, on a particularly meandering walk, Strother passed by Saints Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square. It still offers bilingual mass in Italian, he noticed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was intrigued. Are there still Italian speakers in the neighborhood?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed,” Strother said. Twenty years ago, he’d hear Italian spoken outside restaurants like Mario’s Bohemian Cafe and Caffe Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nowadays, aside from all the restaurants, he wondered: “How Italian is it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The history of Italians in North Beach\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Since the Gold Rush, Italian immigrants have come to San Francisco in waves. The\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\"> height\u003c/a> of the Italian population was in 1930, when the ethnic community numbered just under 60,000 and made up nine percent of the overall population of San Francisco\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\">.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern Italians, from Liguria and Tuscany, first arrived in San Francisco, making up more than half of the ethnic enclave. Later, folks from southern regions like Sicily and Calabria started emigrating. Many Italians settled in North Beach, although the Excelsior District was also a cluster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saints Peter and Paul Church, a Catholic church in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Steve Leveroni, board president of \u003ca href=\"https://www.italiancs.org/\">Italian Community Services\u003c/a> in North Beach, vice president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and an insurance businessman, has deep roots in North Beach. His great-great-grandfather, Luigi, emigrated from Genoa in Northern Italy in the 1860s. When Steve was growing up in North Beach in the 1960s, descendants of the Genovese lived on Green Street, from Mason Street to Grant Avenue, and Sts. Peter and Paul Church was their centerpoint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We all got baptized there, we all got married there, and unfortunately, our funerals are gonna be there,” Leveroni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The church still towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs and practice tai chi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around the neighborhood. Liguria Bakery, on one corner of the park, has been going strong since 1911. Bay Area residents still flock there for mushroom or raisin focaccia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After every mass, we were given a few dollars, and our duty was to pick up the focaccia to bring back to the house for lunch,” Leveroni remembered.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Now, as Steve walks down Columbus Avenue, the neighborhood is much more multicultural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>Now I can walk a block or two and not know somebody that I grew up with,” he said. And today, there’s no clear line between Chinatown and North Beach anymore. “At one time, Broadway Street, down here, was kind of the line of demarcation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leveroni moved to the Richmond District on San Francisco’s West Side when he got married. While North Beach may not be where the descendants of Italian immigrants live anymore, he said, it’s where people come to celebrate and be with family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to,” he said. “Where do they go? To the restaurants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A changed neighborhood\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A look at the latest census data shows that only 4% of residents who reported ancestry in North Beach’s main ZIP code have any Italian roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Italian Americans joined many other San Franciscans in flight to the suburbs. Since then, North Beach morphed into a hangout for the Beat Generation, new residence for the Chinese community and a thriving tourist destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071064\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071064\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michele Ferrante (center) sits with friends at Stella Pastry in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find old-time Italians in North Beach, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri are two of a handful of Sicilians who gather at Stella Pastry & Cafe on Columbus Avenue every morning to drink espresso and talk sports and politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[We] come out here and bullsh–t all day long,” said Balistreri, who used to own Portofino, a North Beach Italian restaurant. He speaks a Sicilian dialect with Ferrante, who also ran an Italian restaurant in North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferrante came to San Francisco as a young adult in the 1960s. He left Palermo for New York with his parents, but went further west by himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I heard about the Fisherman’s Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others,” Ferrante said. Having learned how to cook in the Army and being Sicilian, he figured, “I can go there and get a job.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>By the late 1960s, North Beach was already transforming. Beatnik culture was well established.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those were the days of the hippie generation,” Ferrante said. “There were clubs all over Broadway. All kinds of shows, performances. You could not even walk on Broadway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beat artists and Italians \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/The_Emergence_of_the_North_Beach_Beat_Scene\">got along\u003c/a> perhaps better than expected. Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low and poets liked the cafes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of waning Italian culture in North Beach in his famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.scalponefamilytree.info/OldItaliansDyingPoem.htm\">poem\u003c/a>\u003cem> Old Italians are Dying\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old Italians in their high button shoes \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071071\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071071\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clement Hudson plays the accordion on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By the early 1980s, Ferrante said, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They all moved to Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, St. Helena, Sonoma,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t,” said Balistreri. “Now you don’t know who’s who.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Preserving history is good business\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the 1990s, the North Beach Chamber of Commerce kicked off a\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?%20Theses&accountid=13802&parentSessionId=OAtwzKcX6YzQPUr6brPkGvuKr4%2FF9YEmAoAyrh9mrIo%3D&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20\"> marketing\u003c/a> campaign called “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy t-shirts that read: “\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?accountid=13802&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses\">I’m proud to be half- Italian\u003c/a>.” After all,\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4287693/\"> research shows, \u003c/a>preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cultural groups, new and old, are coming up with new ways to keep Italian heritage alive in North Beach as well. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.sflittleitaly.us/\">San Francisco Little Italy Honor Walk\u003c/a> has installed five bronze plaques in the sidewalks around Washington Square that commemorate notable Italian immigrants in San Francisco, from Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini to former mayor George Moscone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071072\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071072\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Businesses line Green Street in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It is the first time that we have multigenerational Italian Americans here, part of one group,” said the organization’s president, Gina Von Esmarch, at a ceremony to unveil the plaques. She’s a relative of both former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto and the owners of Alioto’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Von Esmarch hopes the plaques will teach the next generation about the accomplishments of San Francisco’s early Italians. “Yes, it’s to pay homage or tribute,” she said, but the plaques will also be “a living classroom” to tourists and history buffs alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, new Italian immigrants are coming to San Francisco to work in\u003ca href=\"https://innovitsf.com/about/\"> tech\u003c/a>, and specifically to North Beach to open \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Italian-Homemade-Co-makes-S-F-s-only-piadine-6101783.php\">new\u003c/a> or take over \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/reopened-north-beach-restaurant-thriving-under-new-ownership/article_dd5fdd67-94b5-4f01-86f0-1374ef5a9181.html\">old restaurants\u003c/a>. Von Esmarch said it’s part of a “re-gentrification” of North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfiac.org/\"> San Francisco Italian Athletic Club\u003c/a> on Washington Square, open only to people with Italian heritage, said it has doubled membership in the past decade. The new crop is younger and is a mix of Italians from first to fourth generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While North Beach may not be home to as many Italians anymore, it’s still culturally at the heart of the community. Every year, people return for the Italian Heritage Parade on Columbus Avenue. But instead of living down the street, people commute here to enjoy pasta with friends and family — something everyone can enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Corbelli works at Liguria Bakery in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. The long-standing bakery specializes in traditional focaccia. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Facts in this story were sourced from historian Rose Scherini, author of The Italian American Community of San Francisco: a Descriptive Study \u003c/em>\u003cem>and many other works, as well as historians Dino Cinel and Sebastian Fichera.\u003c/em>\u003cem> Special thanks to the library at San Francisco State University.\u003c/em>\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>\u003cem>Parade sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>San Francisco’s Italian Heritage parade creates a massive public party in North Beach every October. Streets are blocked off from Fisherman’s Wharf to Washington Square Park on Columbus Day weekend. Bystanders wave mini Italian flags and eat gelato as they watch the fancy floats and trolleys go by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parade music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At Saints Peter and Paul church, people play a salami toss game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Salami toss sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Word is, this is the longest-running Italian parade in the country – started back in 1869. Our question asker this week, Grant Strother [STRUH-ther]], says, he’s not Italian, but he’s walked these streets since he was a teenager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> I do remember in high school in the early 2000s, you would still hear some Italian conversations on the street. I remember like hearing that at Mario’s and Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Now, as an adult, he works in the financial district and sometimes walks to North Beach for lunch, to grab a caprese sandwich at Molinari’s Deli. But during one of those walks, he wondered … Do Italian people still live in North Beach, or is it all just a tourist trap?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> Obviously, immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed since North Beach was populated. But I was just interested then in how Italian North Beach really is, aside from a lot of the restaurants that are still there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we’ll look at the Italian roots of North Beach, track how things have changed and learn about some of the efforts to keep this history alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Located on San Francisco’s northeast side, North Beach is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and has been home to immigrants from many backgrounds over the years. It sits right next to Chinatown and where Little Manilatown used to be. Now, it’s teeming with Italian cafes, restaurants and bakeries. KQED’s Pauline Bartolone went to find out whether any Italians still live in this neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Columbus Avenue\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around North Beach, but to spot them, it helps to have a guide. Someone like Steve Leveroni, who grew up in North Beach in the 50s and 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Way back when… home of the Genoveses lived on Green street from Green and Mason all the way up to Green and Grant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve gives me a tour of the neighborhood, his great-great-grandfather, Luigi, landed back in the 1860s. Like many Italian immigrants in North Beach, he came from Northern Italy, the Genoa region. In the decades that followed, other Italians came from Tuscany, Sicily and Calabria to escape poverty and seek new opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Sound of walking up steps)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>They settled around the Italian Cathedral, Sts. Peter and Paul Church…still a center point for later generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>So this is where you come for your baptism, you come for marriage, you also come for your funeral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The church towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs, practice tai chi and blast music. Steve says when he was growing up, Italians used to hang out here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>You’d see groups sitting down of men and women and they would be speaking in Italian. So that is probably one thing that’s not as much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>You don’t hear Italian very much because not many Italians live here anymore. At its height in 1930, the Italian community numbered about 60,000 people, almost a tenth of the population of San Francisco. But as early as the 1950s, the Italians here joined many others in the flight to the suburbs. Now, only four percent of residents in North Beach’s main ZIP code have Italian heritage, that’s according to the latest census data of people who reported ancestry. But Steve says even if younger generations moved out of the city, they still come back to the neighborhood for celebrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to. But where do they go? They come, you know, to the restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The restaurants of North Beach are now the most visible and lasting legacy of the Italian enclave here. Graffeo’s coffee on Columbus, since 1935. Molinari’s Deli, our question-asker’s spot, Italian-owned since 1896. Liguria Bakery known for its mushroom or raisin focaccia since 1911.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Restaurant sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve wraps up our tour by taking me inside one of the city’s best seafood spots: Sotto Mare, owned by his grammar school friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Their sauces are all, I can see all on the stovetop there, so we’re getting some aromas from that. And then probably one of those pots is their crab chipino, which is, which is excellent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find Italian old-timers in the neighborhood, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>People speaking Sicilian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>After weeks of looking around, I finally heard some chatter at Stella’s pastry shop on Columbus Avenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We come every morning, seven days a week. Just, you know, we just get a drink espresso and you know we talk Italian, Sicilian actually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> It’s a meeting spot. Come out here and bullshit all day long. That’s it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri both ran Italian restaurants in the neighborhood and still live here. They’re just two of the Sicilians who talk sports and politics here every morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We are known as the peccatore. We are all sinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> Give him the Academy Award, please. Make him happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>In fact, San Francisco’s Italian restaurants are what drew Michele here as a young adult in the 1960s. His parents left Palermo for New York, but Michele wanted to come further west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>I told my father, my mother says, Arrivederci, I’m going to California. I heard about the Fisherman Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others. And also because I was hearing so much about North Beach, and being Sicilian, and being a cook, so well, I can go there and get a job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the late 1960s, North Beach’s reputation was evolving beyond an Italian neighborhood. Beatnik culture was well established by then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>Those were the days of the hippie generation, you know, ‘67 was the summer of love. Everything was going on. One of my favorite hangout was at La Rocca’s Corner, which is still here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The beat culture, artists and Italians got along perhaps better than expected… Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low, and poets liked the cafes. In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of North Beach’s waning Italian culture in his famous poem “Old Italians are Dying.” Here’s a recording of him reading it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lawrence Ferlinghetti:\u003c/strong> For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old Italians in their black high button shoes\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the early 1980s, Michele says, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>They all move, Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, San Helena, Sonoma. San Francisco, not too many living here anymore, very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Sure, we saw it change. There’s still some kind of flavor, but not originally what I grew up with. The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t. Now you don’t know who’s who. So, basically, you feel like nobody’s here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>That feeling of “no Italians” – didn’t sit well with the North Beach chamber of commerce. In the 1990s, they kicked off a marketing campaign for the neighborhood, “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy “I’m proud to be half Italian” t-shirts. Afterall, research shows, preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of kids singing in Italian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Now, new initiatives are popping up to keep Italian heritage alive, like the Little Italy Honor Walk, a series of bronze sidewalk squares that memorialize notable Italians in San Francisco history. Five have been installed around Washington Square Park, and there’s more on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing fades out and sounds of Italian being spoken fade in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Back at Stella’s pastry shop, Michele and Frank say remembering North Beach’s Italian history is important, but they don’t need monuments to remind them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Times change, things change, I don’t worry about it, as long as I’m here where I want to be. Italians are no Italians, I know who I am, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>North Beach’s original Italian enclave may be long gone, but the neighborhood’s history and food will keep bringing tourists…and locals with Italians heritage… back for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That story was brought to you by KQED reporter Pauline Bartolone. Special thanks to the San Francisco State University library where Pauline researched some of North Beach’s history. Thanks also to Jim McKee of EarWax Productions for the recording of Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading “Old Italians Are Dying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s question came from Grant Strother, and you could be next! Submit your question about the Bay Area at BayCurious.org.\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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"slug": "the-rise-and-fall-of-bay-area-streetcar-transit-system",
"title": "The Rise and Fall of the Bay Area Streetcar Transit System",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the turn of the 20th century, streetcars crisscrossed the\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\"> Bay Area\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people, they were the primary way to get around town —and to San Francisco for work. People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a streetcar that would take them to a ferry and be in downtown San Francisco in about 40 minutes. Remnants of these lines can be seen in many Bay Area streetscapes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Vanessa Boehm grew up in Germany with efficient public transportation, and as she looked around her neighborhood near the UC Berkeley campus, she wondered: “What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s not the first or the last to ask questions along those lines. The history and disappearance of the Key System, which once served East Bay residents, has captured the imagination of many transit aficionados. And among the many similar questions we’ve gotten are some from people who want to know whether it would be possible to recreate the streetcar networks that have long since vanished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without knowing it, perhaps, Vanessa and other listeners have touched on a disputed piece of both East Bay and national transportation history, a conspiracy theory that involves some of the nation’s most powerful corporations and the role they played — or didn’t play — in the disappearance of streetcars in the East Bay. The story also encompasses a real-estate development scheme that shaped Oakland and Berkeley, the rise of suburban sprawl, and the dawn of the motor vehicle age.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Streetcars fundamentally shaped urban development\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Streetcars were essential to the growth of cities in the Bay Area and across the United States in the final years of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th. Electric railroads — either streetcar networks connecting neighborhoods or interurban lines connecting towns and cities — served all nine Bay Area counties in the early 20th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place where that electric streetcar legacy is most obvious is San Francisco, where several electric lines that operated in the 1920s — Muni’s J, K, L, M and N routes — are still essential parts of the city’s transportation system. Two other lines, the E and the F, feature tourist-oriented service using historic streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073776\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 990px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073776\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An electric train crossing the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.\" width=\"990\" height=\"796\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg 990w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED-160x129.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Key System “A” line train on a test run across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland in 1939. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/Key_System_and_March_of_Progress\">FoundSF.org\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the first four decades of the 20th century, the East Bay was served by two major electric streetcar systems: one run by Southern Pacific and a competitor known popularly as the Key System. Southern Pacific’s system, initially called the Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley Lines, ran transbay service using ferries that left from long causeways, or moles, in West Oakland and Alameda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was a collection of East Bay streetcar and transbay lines built or purchased and consolidated by Francis Marion Smith, known as “Borax” Smith because of his success mining and marketing the all-purpose mineral in the deserts of Nevada and southeastern California. Starting in the 1890s, Smith created a network of lines that eventually stretched from Richmond to San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But creating a transit system wasn’t Smith’s main objective. He and partner Frank Havens had purchased about 13,000 acres, more than 20 square miles, under the aegis of a separate enterprise known as The Realty Syndicate. The streetcar and transbay train system Smith created was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11925112/idora-park-and-playland-at-the-beach-bay-area-amusement-parks-of-a-bygone-era\">designed to serve the new neighborhoods\u003c/a> that would be developed on the syndicate’s properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland historian Mitchell Schwarzer said the streetcar network fundamentally changed the shape of the city. In his 2021 study of Oakland’s development, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/books/hella-town/paper\">\u003cem>Hella Town,\u003c/em>\u003c/a> he said that by 1912, property subdividers had created more than 50,000 new residential lots close to streetcar routes.[aside postID=news_12068602 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00030_TV-KQED.jpg']The effect on what had been a compact East Bay community focused on downtown was dramatic, with streetcar lines triggering a sprawl of new neighborhoods in every direction and the creation of commercial districts like Grand Lake, Rockridge, Piedmont Avenue and along stretches of San Pablo Avenue and East 14th Street, now International Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The streetcar “affected everything — it affected where the residential areas developed, it affected where the commercial areas developed, it affected where industry moved pretty much,” Schwarzer said. Alongside the automobile, streetcars shaped the form Oakland took to this day, “both where things are located, how they’re distributed, how they’re built, what’s built, where they’re built,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He adds that this early episode of sprawl also helped shape Oakland’s future demographic and class profile. The city’s vast residential expansion “allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Financial failures\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Although the Key System and other streetcar operations were useful in driving real estate development and despite the fact that they carried more than 100 million passengers a year at their peak in the 1920s, they were, for the most part, failures as money-making enterprises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was in deep financial trouble by 1913. According to the late transportation reporter and historian Harre W. Demoro, the Key’s early money troubles could be traced directly to Borax Smith’s risky and chaotic business practices. With the company deeply in debt, Smith was forced out in 1913. A series of crises ensued, with the company teetering on the edge of failure and being foreclosed on and reorganized in 1923 and 1930.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By this time, private automobiles had become a major presence in cities across the country, including those in the Bay Area. The growing popularity of car ownership is reflected in a steep decline in ridership for both the Southern Pacific and Key System after a peak recorded in the mid-1920s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers weren’t the only ones who were drawn to new motorized modes of transport. Starting before 1920, transit systems began to convert some of their train service to bus lines. By the mid-1920s, the Key System had joined in that trend, which accelerated through the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demoro found in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/bulletinnational446nati\">a 1979 study\u003c/a> of the Key System published in the National Railway Bulletin that by 1937, its buses accounted for more than half of the company’s business in terms of miles of service delivered. “From then on, the bus dominated” Key’s operation, Demoro wrote in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/embed/keyroutetransbay0000demo\">his two-volume history\u003c/a> of the transbay service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073773\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073773\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A two-car, orange-and-silver electric train shown in a car barn at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Key System Bridge Unit 187, part of the fleet that provided service across the Bay Bridge from the East Bay to San Francisco between 1939 and 1958, at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The decline accelerated after the Bay Bridge opened to drivers in November 1936. The planned railroad service on the bridge wasn’t ready when the bridge opened, creating an opportunity for East Bay residents to enjoy the ease of car travel. When train service on the bridge’s lower deck finally began in January 1939, it did little to reverse the ridership slump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s right here that the conspiracy theory mentioned earlier becomes part of the Key System story. Because as the car was becoming king, companies related to the automobile industry bought up dozens of streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. That effort was intended, the story goes, to undermine mass transit to such an extent that riders would desert it in preference for automobiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A kernel of truth to the myth\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now known as Chevron), Firestone Rubber and Phillips Petroleum really did invest in a company called National City Lines and a pair of subsidiaries that were in the business of buying mostly financially troubled streetcar systems and immediately converting them to bus systems. That happened in 46 cities across the country, including a few big ones, like Los Angeles, St. Louis, and yes, Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The government really did take National City Lines, GM, its partners and their executives to court. In 1949, a jury in Chicago really did convict them of one count of violating federal antitrust law by conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, tires and other supplies to the transit systems that National City Lines and its subsidiaries had taken over. The companies were acquitted on a second count alleging they had conspired to block competitors from doing business with the National City companies. In other words, the defendants were found guilty of trying to control the purchase of supplies that newly “motorized” transit agencies would need, not of any broader conspiracy to wreck mass transit.[aside postID=news_12065901 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251016-NIMITZHOUSE-38-BL-KQED.jpg']The penalties the judge imposed were trivial: $5,000 for each corporate defendant — about $68,000 in 2026 dollars — and $1 for each of the executives who had played a part in the conspiracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story is more complex than the National City Lines case, said Ethan Elkind, who directs the climate program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “It’s really a story of technology change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The electric streetcar systems that started appearing everywhere in the 1890s were a big leap in speed and performance compared to the horse-drawn omnibuses and cable cars they replaced. But then the next big innovation in transportation arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the early 20th century, the big, disruptive technology was the automobile, and people adopted it en masse very rapidly, and it made these streetcars for a vast majority of the population essentially obsolete,” Elkind said. Cars not only competed for riders, they also competed for space on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you throw the automobile into that, and everybody’s driving now, these streetcars are getting stuck in traffic,” Elkind said. “They’re not really enjoyable for people to ride. And people are frustrated by the poor service, high fares, and they wanted the freedom and mobility that automobiles, private automobiles, represented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The argument that GM’s National Cities gambit was chiefly responsible for the collapse of electric railways across the county has been widely criticized as little more than a myth, one that ignores other factors that made many streetcar systems vulnerable by the 1930s, including their often poor physical and financial condition and the fact that, as shown by the Key System, bus transportation was becoming steadily more popular and economical well before National City Lines appeared on the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Key System’s slow demise\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After struggling through most of the 1930s, a surge in wartime ridership had made the company profitable and by 1945, it was sitting on a sizable surplus. Although it had struggled to upgrade its cars and tracks before the war, it had begun making plans to revamp service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company began to follow through on all of these initiatives, contracting for new streetcars and moving ahead with the purchase of trolley buses to run on College Avenue and on the Arlington Avenue-Euclid Avenue service in the Berkeley Hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1020px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073797\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of people lined up to board commuter bus about 1960 in San Francisco's Transbay Terminal.\" width=\"1020\" height=\"734\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2-160x115.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1020px) 100vw, 1020px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley-bound commuter line up to board a Key System “F” bus after San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal was reconfigured for bus service in 1959. AC Transit would take over the service the following year. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then suddenly, all that work stopped. In May 1946, Key System management sold the company to National City Lines for $3 million ($52 million in 2026 dollars). By the end of the year, the company’s new owners decided to scrap all the remaining streetcar lines and replace trains with motor buses. The only trains the Key System still operated were the half-dozen transbay lines operating across the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1955, the company applied to the state Public Utilities Commission to abandon transbay service. The last trains ran over the bridge to San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal in April 1958. The Key System, now an all-bus operation, was purchased by a new public transit agency — AC Transit — in 1960.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The evolution of the Bay Area’s transit system\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Looking back on those events in 1979, Demoro speculated that without the National City Lines takeover, the East Bay’s transit system would likely have evolved into a hybrid featuring streetcars, trolley buses along with motor buses. Whether the transbay service would have survived was less clear, he said, because of the state’s interest in reconfiguring the bridge to accommodate more motor vehicles — a goal realized when the Key System tracks were removed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he also marveled that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11986396/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go\">the region managed to build BART\u003c/a>, an agency created in the 1950s as the Key System trains were in their twilight years and both California and the rest of the United States went all in on highway spending. “That accomplishment … seems astounding today, he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073772\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073772\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of 1940s streetcars and automobiles in a traffic jam in Oakland, California.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-160x84.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-1536x805.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As automobile traffic grew, streetcars — and streetcar riders — often found themselves tangled in traffic jams like this 1940s faceoff between Key System trains and cars at 47th Avenue and East 14th Street (now International Boulevard) in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But in one sense, the Key System hasn’t gone away. When AC Transit took control of the Key’s bankrupt all-bus operation in 1960, it continued an East Bay transit legacy that stretched back nearly a century. AC Transit continues to be a vital transportation link for hundreds of thousands of East Bay residents, much the way the Key System was in its peak years. And for those who travel between the East Bay and San Francisco, BART now serves the riders the way the Key System’s trains and ferries once did, although maybe a lot less romantically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still possible to ride some of the few surviving Key System trains at Solano County’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.wrm.org/\">Western Railway Museum\u003c/a>, on Highway 12 between Fairfield and Rio Vista. Muni offers \u003ca href=\"https://www.streetcar.org/rider-information-map-2/\">a daily vintage streetcar experience\u003c/a> on its F trolley car line, running along Market Street between the Castro and Steuart Street downtown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At the turn of the 20th century, streetcars crisscrossed the Bay Area. Nowadays, though, you rarely see them. So you might even be thinking to yourself, what even is a streetcar?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Think of those old trolleys like the F line on Market Street in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley dinging\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It’s not a cable car, it’s not modern light rail. It’s an old-fashioned train, usually one or two cars, that runs above ground on a track, often with electric wires overhead to provide power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Electric streetcars were big in the East Bay before the automobile took off. For many people, they were the primary way to get around town – and to San Francisco for work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Geared to the needs and dedicated to the service of the East Bay, Key System became one of the largest single businesses in the area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a slick orange and silver Key System streetcar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Transportation to San Francisco was by ferry, a convivial mode of travel that, particularly in the evening, had elements of fantasy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was the daily commute of many for decades. Our question asker this week, Vanessa Bohm, grew up in Germany and has seen some remnants of the Key system all around the East bay. She’s wondered…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Bohm: \u003c/strong>What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Vanessa is not alone. We get questions about what happened to the key system a lot. Some people even wonder if those old streetcar lines could be put to use again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here to help us understand the rise and fall of Bay Area streetcarts is the man, the myth, the legend, recently retired, but back, because he just can’t quit, KQED’s transportation editor emeritus, Dan Brekke. Hi Dan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Hi, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Can you start by painting a picture for us at its height? What would the East Bay have looked like during the streetcar era?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, you would have had dozens of streetcar lines, either running from neighborhood to neighborhood or from neighborhoods to downtowns, and you would’ve had a collection of trains that were starting at various nodes in the East Bay, like North Berkeley or Downtown Berkeley, University of California, Downtown Oakland, East Oakland, running to a little rail line that ran out into the middle of the bay where people would climb off their trains and catch ferries into the city. And those trains would get you from point A to point B in 35 or 40 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We know electric streetcars became common across the country and in all nine counties of the Bay Area starting in the 1890s, but tell us more about how the key system in particular got started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Early in the 20th century, in the very first years, real estate investors, led by somebody named Francis Marion Smith, whose nickname was Borax Smith, because he’d made a fortune in borax mining in the southwest. He was part of what was called the Realty Syndicate. And they owned something like 20 square miles of East Bay real estate. And it would make this property so much more valuable if there was an easy way for people to get to and from these areas that would then be ripe for development. And pretty much that’s what happened. These streetcar lines got built, and if you see a route map, there are tendrils stretching throughout what we think of as East Oakland today and north into Berkeley, with many lines that were both neighborhood lines where people could ride, say, from their neighborhood to downtown Oakland, and many lines that were traveling from the East Bay to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So sort of a situation where if you build it, they will come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>They built it and they did come and much of the streetscape and the way neighborhoods are put together in Berkeley and Oakland really comes from that early streetcar development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One thing I find interesting is that these were not public works projects in the sense that the public owned them or they were, you know, done with tax dollars. These were private companies running these these streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s right. Those streetcar lines we’re talking about and wherever we’re talking about them, you know, it would be hard to go to a town of any size in the early 20th century and find no street railroad, right? And, of course, Los Angeles was one of the places where they were most prevalent. But all of this was done through private capital that had some kind of investment goal in mind. And often it had to do with developing real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>They didn’t own the street, so logistically, how did that even work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, they would get a license from the cities where they wanted to operate and part of the license would be access to the street and also some agreement about who would take care of the tracks in the street because as you know, if you’ve been anywhere where there’s a railroad track in a street, there are usually some kind of pavement problems and so that would be part of the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Tell me about the experience of actually riding one of these cars. What would it have been like as a commuter to step foot on one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>If you want to experience what these trains were like, you don’t have to rely on imagination. If you go out to the Western Railway Museum, which is near Rio Vista, there’s an amazing collection of streetcars from all different eras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke in scene: \u003c/strong>This is so cool. This one used to run in Oakland, going to the ballpark. And this is a Key System one too, this one that says E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>When they heard what I was up to, what I was interested in finding out about, they said, well, we can take one of those bridge units out and run it for you. Unbelievable. They roll out this retro, streamlined, two-car, orange and silver train, which is instantly a throwback to what people would have experienced their first day riding on the Bay Bridge in 1939. So then you know we’re on the platform waiting for this train to start up, we climb aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor:\u003c/strong> Welcome aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>First thing I notice is the windows don’t open, but that’s okay. There’s ventilation through a front door and we roll out down this, kind of beautifully recreated streetcar line, electrified streetcar line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley bell\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>In the middle of nowhere, but here’s this train going through this kind of pristine-looking ranch environment, and you come to a little crossroad, you have to slow to a stop, sound the horn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Horn blares\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Hey, we’ve got a car for once!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Because you don’t want to interfere with any crossing ranch traffic, and then you proceed to a little stop really out in the middle of nowhere. And get off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Okay, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The motorman changes ends of the car and then you head back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That sounds pretty fun. We’re going to take a quick break here, but we’ll get into why this system started to fall apart when we come back. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So, Dan, the scene that you’ve painted so far, it’s very idyllic with all these streetcars whisking people from Berkeley and Oakland to Ferries and maybe taking them into the city. And that goes on for what, 40 odd years? When does it all start to change and what factors were behind the changes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, the 1930s were a very rough decade for streetcar companies in general. You had the Great Depression, of course, that started in 1929 and deepened throughout the first half of the decade. The transit industry itself either recovered very slowly or not at all. A lot of that was because they were private companies that were locked into pretty disadvantageous contracts with the cities they served. Right? They could only raise fares so much. And they didn’t receive public subsidies. There was a big shift going on toward private automobiles that was also taking away some of their customers. In the Bay Area itself, you know, the relationship between the East Bay and the city of San Francisco changed dramatically in 1936 with the opening of the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>A six-lane double deck bridge, eight miles long, connecting San Francisco with the Oakland-Berkeley area, spanning the largest major navigable body of water ever bridged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I mean, there was an incredible influx of traffic across the bridge into San Francisco, basically as soon as the bridge opened, and it just didn’t slow down. And one of the unfortunate things that happened at the same time was that while part of developing the Bay Bridge was to build railroad tracks across it so that these interurban trains could come in from the East Bay, but it wasn’t ready to use until early 1939. One of the factors that people point to in the demise of the key system, is that delay of more than two years where people got to experience that it was much easier to drive into the city and faster, perhaps, than it had been to take the train. Their habits changed, and the key systems never really recovered. And we also had this phenomenon of the slow transition in the key-system itself away from streetcars for their local service to buses. And by the late 1930s, buses were carrying most of the ridership. So all of those things together really started to dim the outlook for the streetcar companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One narrative that I’ve heard over and over is that a big reason that streetcars failed was that essentially car companies bought the key system and then would intentionally run the company into the ground so people would be forced to buy more cars. Is there any truth to that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>There’s a kernel of truth to it. You know, when I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley, you know, he talked about the effect of one particular movie in the 1980s on this view of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, in L.A., the conspiracy was really put on steroids by the movie who framed Roger Rabbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Judge Doom from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”: \u003c/strong>I see a place where people get off and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, it’s so great to hear Christopher Lloyd in that. He was so good! And the character he was playing was Judge Doom and his masterplan was to destroy Toon Town, where Roger Rabbit lived, and a key part of the plot is to kill the streetcar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who Framed Roger Rabbit clip: \u003c/strong>C’mon, Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the red car for a nickel. Well, they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the red car so I could dismantle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Not an exaggeration that, you know, this 1989 semi-cartoon really fed this idea that it was highway interests that gobbled up the streetcar lines. And the story is much more complex than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The complexity people are talking about and the grain of truth to Roger Rabbit is because of a lawsuit that was filed against a company that was called National City Lines and some of its investors in the 1940s. And National City Lines was a company that went around the country buying up streetcar systems and they would convert those to bus systems, basically. That’s the long and the short of it. And by doing that, they were really helping out their investors who were General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Rubber, Phillips 66, companies like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National City Lines showed up in Oakland in 1946 and took control of the Key System. And while the Key system had laid plans to sort of keep streetcars going and also keep them running into San Francisco. Across the Bay Bridge, the national city lines scrapped most of these development plans, let’s call them, right away. So within a very short amount of time, the streetcar lines in the East Bay turned into bus lines. The streetcar lines were abandoned. The exception was the inter-urban line into San Francisco. That continued running until the late 1950s, but it ran at a loss. It ran with fewer and fewer passengers every year, and the last key system cars ran across the Bay Bridge in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>When we start talking about public transportation, I’ve noticed that people are often very nostalgic for the past, and it can, you know, sort of become a little idealized, you know, oh, dreaming about riding across the Bay Bridge and the train, but there were some realities to the Key System that people forget about. Can you tell us about some of the drawbacks of the Key System, even when it was sort of at its height?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>So there’s very definitely a paradise lost tone to the way people discuss the Key system. If we only hadn’t abandoned this beautiful streetcar system, just think how much better our world would be. I think that ignores the reality that they had huge power plants to supply the electricity for their systems. In the case of the Key System, they had a huge powerhouse in Emeryville. Kind of close to where Ikea is today. There was a gigantic smokestack there and they were burning coal. Sure, electric trains were much cleaner in terms of the environment around the lines themselves, but they still had an environmental footprint as all of our transportation choices do. And I talked to Mitchell Schwarzer, who’s a professor of architectural and urban history at the California College of the Arts about the social effects of the streetcar system. He wrote a book a few years ago called \u003cem>Hella Oakland\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mitchell Schwartzer: \u003c/strong>What the technology allowed for was a vast residential expansion outside of the inner areas of Oakland. And that allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I will say also that there was some outrage about the lack of safety for streetcars. The years I’ve looked at were between 1906 and 1910. It’s absolutely hair-raising to see how many people were getting killed in streetcar accidents. The newspapers relished these stories. I mean, they were told in sometimes excruciating detail what happened to the victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Definitely not insignificant safety and environmental concerns that you’ve brought up. But I do wanna say times are different now, right? We know how to run trains on green energy. We know to put safety protocols in place that will keep people more safe. One of our question askers wanted to know, could the old Key System sort of be a model for public transportation of the future?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley Law School about this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, I think you run into the same problems that the streetcars were running into in the old days, which is that a lot of them ran down highway medians. They would get stuck in traffic. They would hit red lights. They would have to wait for cars to pass. And they weren’t necessarily that fast. You need to have a dedicated separate right of way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You have to deal with all the other street traffic. That’s a real problem in imagining streetcar lines flourishing again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>And then to really make transit make sense, you have to be able to serve dense concentrations of jobs and housing where people can easily walk or bike to the rail station. And unfortunately, what we’ve seen too often, especially in the higher income areas in the Bay area, they don’t allow new development. They don’t wanna see new apartment buildings come into their neighborhoods. And that’s what you would need to have to have the ridership really make sense. And so that these streetcar lines could actually have enough ridership where they wouldn’t require as much public subsidy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The other thing is they’re really damn expensive to build. Lots of transportation experts say that the workaround is right in front of us if we only had the political will to do it. And that is to dedicate more street space as bus only space, right? Mostly we’re talking about bus rapid transit where you have dedicated lanes for buses. You have signals that are set so they prioritize the bus traffic. Those are much, much less expensive to build, but they take a lot of planning, and there is an upfront investment that sometimes is difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dan Brekke, thank you so much, as always, for reporting on this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You’re very welcome. And as I conclude here, I want to make a couple of acknowledgements. One is, there’s kind of an amazing community of transit historians in the Bay Area, including some who are very painstakingly documenting some of this history of the key system. So that’s one acknowledgement. The other one is, thanks to you and Katrina. You guys are wonderful to work with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Listeners should know that Dan was one of my first editors here at KQED when I started out as a wee baby reporter. And, he’s reported some of my favorite Bay Curious episodes over the years. Like those mysterious East Bay walls, why there are so many crows in the bay area and he’s answered dozens of your transportation questions over the years. We’ll link to a few of his stories in our show notes, so go check those out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dan, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the best. I hope you have a happy retirement, but also, I have a feeling you’ll be back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you value what you hear on our show, consider becoming a KQED member. You can choose the level of support that works for your budget by going to \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">kqed.org/donate\u003c/a>. Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and the whole KQED team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: 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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"excerpt": "All nine counties of the Bay Area had robust streetcar systems at the start of the 20th century. In the East Bay, rumors swirl about how and why the Key System failed.",
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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>At the turn of the 20th century, streetcars crisscrossed the\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\"> Bay Area\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people, they were the primary way to get around town —and to San Francisco for work. People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a streetcar that would take them to a ferry and be in downtown San Francisco in about 40 minutes. Remnants of these lines can be seen in many Bay Area streetscapes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Vanessa Boehm grew up in Germany with efficient public transportation, and as she looked around her neighborhood near the UC Berkeley campus, she wondered: “What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s not the first or the last to ask questions along those lines. The history and disappearance of the Key System, which once served East Bay residents, has captured the imagination of many transit aficionados. And among the many similar questions we’ve gotten are some from people who want to know whether it would be possible to recreate the streetcar networks that have long since vanished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without knowing it, perhaps, Vanessa and other listeners have touched on a disputed piece of both East Bay and national transportation history, a conspiracy theory that involves some of the nation’s most powerful corporations and the role they played — or didn’t play — in the disappearance of streetcars in the East Bay. The story also encompasses a real-estate development scheme that shaped Oakland and Berkeley, the rise of suburban sprawl, and the dawn of the motor vehicle age.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Streetcars fundamentally shaped urban development\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Streetcars were essential to the growth of cities in the Bay Area and across the United States in the final years of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th. Electric railroads — either streetcar networks connecting neighborhoods or interurban lines connecting towns and cities — served all nine Bay Area counties in the early 20th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place where that electric streetcar legacy is most obvious is San Francisco, where several electric lines that operated in the 1920s — Muni’s J, K, L, M and N routes — are still essential parts of the city’s transportation system. Two other lines, the E and the F, feature tourist-oriented service using historic streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073776\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 990px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073776\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An electric train crossing the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.\" width=\"990\" height=\"796\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg 990w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED-160x129.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Key System “A” line train on a test run across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland in 1939. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/Key_System_and_March_of_Progress\">FoundSF.org\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the first four decades of the 20th century, the East Bay was served by two major electric streetcar systems: one run by Southern Pacific and a competitor known popularly as the Key System. Southern Pacific’s system, initially called the Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley Lines, ran transbay service using ferries that left from long causeways, or moles, in West Oakland and Alameda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was a collection of East Bay streetcar and transbay lines built or purchased and consolidated by Francis Marion Smith, known as “Borax” Smith because of his success mining and marketing the all-purpose mineral in the deserts of Nevada and southeastern California. Starting in the 1890s, Smith created a network of lines that eventually stretched from Richmond to San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But creating a transit system wasn’t Smith’s main objective. He and partner Frank Havens had purchased about 13,000 acres, more than 20 square miles, under the aegis of a separate enterprise known as The Realty Syndicate. The streetcar and transbay train system Smith created was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11925112/idora-park-and-playland-at-the-beach-bay-area-amusement-parks-of-a-bygone-era\">designed to serve the new neighborhoods\u003c/a> that would be developed on the syndicate’s properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland historian Mitchell Schwarzer said the streetcar network fundamentally changed the shape of the city. In his 2021 study of Oakland’s development, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/books/hella-town/paper\">\u003cem>Hella Town,\u003c/em>\u003c/a> he said that by 1912, property subdividers had created more than 50,000 new residential lots close to streetcar routes.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The effect on what had been a compact East Bay community focused on downtown was dramatic, with streetcar lines triggering a sprawl of new neighborhoods in every direction and the creation of commercial districts like Grand Lake, Rockridge, Piedmont Avenue and along stretches of San Pablo Avenue and East 14th Street, now International Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The streetcar “affected everything — it affected where the residential areas developed, it affected where the commercial areas developed, it affected where industry moved pretty much,” Schwarzer said. Alongside the automobile, streetcars shaped the form Oakland took to this day, “both where things are located, how they’re distributed, how they’re built, what’s built, where they’re built,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He adds that this early episode of sprawl also helped shape Oakland’s future demographic and class profile. The city’s vast residential expansion “allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Financial failures\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Although the Key System and other streetcar operations were useful in driving real estate development and despite the fact that they carried more than 100 million passengers a year at their peak in the 1920s, they were, for the most part, failures as money-making enterprises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was in deep financial trouble by 1913. According to the late transportation reporter and historian Harre W. Demoro, the Key’s early money troubles could be traced directly to Borax Smith’s risky and chaotic business practices. With the company deeply in debt, Smith was forced out in 1913. A series of crises ensued, with the company teetering on the edge of failure and being foreclosed on and reorganized in 1923 and 1930.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By this time, private automobiles had become a major presence in cities across the country, including those in the Bay Area. The growing popularity of car ownership is reflected in a steep decline in ridership for both the Southern Pacific and Key System after a peak recorded in the mid-1920s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers weren’t the only ones who were drawn to new motorized modes of transport. Starting before 1920, transit systems began to convert some of their train service to bus lines. By the mid-1920s, the Key System had joined in that trend, which accelerated through the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demoro found in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/bulletinnational446nati\">a 1979 study\u003c/a> of the Key System published in the National Railway Bulletin that by 1937, its buses accounted for more than half of the company’s business in terms of miles of service delivered. “From then on, the bus dominated” Key’s operation, Demoro wrote in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/embed/keyroutetransbay0000demo\">his two-volume history\u003c/a> of the transbay service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073773\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073773\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A two-car, orange-and-silver electric train shown in a car barn at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Key System Bridge Unit 187, part of the fleet that provided service across the Bay Bridge from the East Bay to San Francisco between 1939 and 1958, at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The decline accelerated after the Bay Bridge opened to drivers in November 1936. The planned railroad service on the bridge wasn’t ready when the bridge opened, creating an opportunity for East Bay residents to enjoy the ease of car travel. When train service on the bridge’s lower deck finally began in January 1939, it did little to reverse the ridership slump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s right here that the conspiracy theory mentioned earlier becomes part of the Key System story. Because as the car was becoming king, companies related to the automobile industry bought up dozens of streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. That effort was intended, the story goes, to undermine mass transit to such an extent that riders would desert it in preference for automobiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A kernel of truth to the myth\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now known as Chevron), Firestone Rubber and Phillips Petroleum really did invest in a company called National City Lines and a pair of subsidiaries that were in the business of buying mostly financially troubled streetcar systems and immediately converting them to bus systems. That happened in 46 cities across the country, including a few big ones, like Los Angeles, St. Louis, and yes, Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The government really did take National City Lines, GM, its partners and their executives to court. In 1949, a jury in Chicago really did convict them of one count of violating federal antitrust law by conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, tires and other supplies to the transit systems that National City Lines and its subsidiaries had taken over. The companies were acquitted on a second count alleging they had conspired to block competitors from doing business with the National City companies. In other words, the defendants were found guilty of trying to control the purchase of supplies that newly “motorized” transit agencies would need, not of any broader conspiracy to wreck mass transit.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The penalties the judge imposed were trivial: $5,000 for each corporate defendant — about $68,000 in 2026 dollars — and $1 for each of the executives who had played a part in the conspiracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story is more complex than the National City Lines case, said Ethan Elkind, who directs the climate program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “It’s really a story of technology change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The electric streetcar systems that started appearing everywhere in the 1890s were a big leap in speed and performance compared to the horse-drawn omnibuses and cable cars they replaced. But then the next big innovation in transportation arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the early 20th century, the big, disruptive technology was the automobile, and people adopted it en masse very rapidly, and it made these streetcars for a vast majority of the population essentially obsolete,” Elkind said. Cars not only competed for riders, they also competed for space on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you throw the automobile into that, and everybody’s driving now, these streetcars are getting stuck in traffic,” Elkind said. “They’re not really enjoyable for people to ride. And people are frustrated by the poor service, high fares, and they wanted the freedom and mobility that automobiles, private automobiles, represented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The argument that GM’s National Cities gambit was chiefly responsible for the collapse of electric railways across the county has been widely criticized as little more than a myth, one that ignores other factors that made many streetcar systems vulnerable by the 1930s, including their often poor physical and financial condition and the fact that, as shown by the Key System, bus transportation was becoming steadily more popular and economical well before National City Lines appeared on the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Key System’s slow demise\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After struggling through most of the 1930s, a surge in wartime ridership had made the company profitable and by 1945, it was sitting on a sizable surplus. Although it had struggled to upgrade its cars and tracks before the war, it had begun making plans to revamp service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company began to follow through on all of these initiatives, contracting for new streetcars and moving ahead with the purchase of trolley buses to run on College Avenue and on the Arlington Avenue-Euclid Avenue service in the Berkeley Hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1020px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073797\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of people lined up to board commuter bus about 1960 in San Francisco's Transbay Terminal.\" width=\"1020\" height=\"734\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2-160x115.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1020px) 100vw, 1020px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley-bound commuter line up to board a Key System “F” bus after San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal was reconfigured for bus service in 1959. AC Transit would take over the service the following year. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then suddenly, all that work stopped. In May 1946, Key System management sold the company to National City Lines for $3 million ($52 million in 2026 dollars). By the end of the year, the company’s new owners decided to scrap all the remaining streetcar lines and replace trains with motor buses. The only trains the Key System still operated were the half-dozen transbay lines operating across the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1955, the company applied to the state Public Utilities Commission to abandon transbay service. The last trains ran over the bridge to San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal in April 1958. The Key System, now an all-bus operation, was purchased by a new public transit agency — AC Transit — in 1960.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The evolution of the Bay Area’s transit system\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Looking back on those events in 1979, Demoro speculated that without the National City Lines takeover, the East Bay’s transit system would likely have evolved into a hybrid featuring streetcars, trolley buses along with motor buses. Whether the transbay service would have survived was less clear, he said, because of the state’s interest in reconfiguring the bridge to accommodate more motor vehicles — a goal realized when the Key System tracks were removed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he also marveled that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11986396/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go\">the region managed to build BART\u003c/a>, an agency created in the 1950s as the Key System trains were in their twilight years and both California and the rest of the United States went all in on highway spending. “That accomplishment … seems astounding today, he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073772\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073772\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of 1940s streetcars and automobiles in a traffic jam in Oakland, California.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-160x84.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-1536x805.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As automobile traffic grew, streetcars — and streetcar riders — often found themselves tangled in traffic jams like this 1940s faceoff between Key System trains and cars at 47th Avenue and East 14th Street (now International Boulevard) in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But in one sense, the Key System hasn’t gone away. When AC Transit took control of the Key’s bankrupt all-bus operation in 1960, it continued an East Bay transit legacy that stretched back nearly a century. AC Transit continues to be a vital transportation link for hundreds of thousands of East Bay residents, much the way the Key System was in its peak years. And for those who travel between the East Bay and San Francisco, BART now serves the riders the way the Key System’s trains and ferries once did, although maybe a lot less romantically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still possible to ride some of the few surviving Key System trains at Solano County’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.wrm.org/\">Western Railway Museum\u003c/a>, on Highway 12 between Fairfield and Rio Vista. Muni offers \u003ca href=\"https://www.streetcar.org/rider-information-map-2/\">a daily vintage streetcar experience\u003c/a> on its F trolley car line, running along Market Street between the Castro and Steuart Street downtown.\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>At the turn of the 20th century, streetcars crisscrossed the Bay Area. Nowadays, though, you rarely see them. So you might even be thinking to yourself, what even is a streetcar?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Think of those old trolleys like the F line on Market Street in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley dinging\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It’s not a cable car, it’s not modern light rail. It’s an old-fashioned train, usually one or two cars, that runs above ground on a track, often with electric wires overhead to provide power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Electric streetcars were big in the East Bay before the automobile took off. For many people, they were the primary way to get around town – and to San Francisco for work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Geared to the needs and dedicated to the service of the East Bay, Key System became one of the largest single businesses in the area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a slick orange and silver Key System streetcar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Transportation to San Francisco was by ferry, a convivial mode of travel that, particularly in the evening, had elements of fantasy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was the daily commute of many for decades. Our question asker this week, Vanessa Bohm, grew up in Germany and has seen some remnants of the Key system all around the East bay. She’s wondered…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Bohm: \u003c/strong>What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Vanessa is not alone. We get questions about what happened to the key system a lot. Some people even wonder if those old streetcar lines could be put to use again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here to help us understand the rise and fall of Bay Area streetcarts is the man, the myth, the legend, recently retired, but back, because he just can’t quit, KQED’s transportation editor emeritus, Dan Brekke. Hi Dan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Hi, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Can you start by painting a picture for us at its height? What would the East Bay have looked like during the streetcar era?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, you would have had dozens of streetcar lines, either running from neighborhood to neighborhood or from neighborhoods to downtowns, and you would’ve had a collection of trains that were starting at various nodes in the East Bay, like North Berkeley or Downtown Berkeley, University of California, Downtown Oakland, East Oakland, running to a little rail line that ran out into the middle of the bay where people would climb off their trains and catch ferries into the city. And those trains would get you from point A to point B in 35 or 40 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We know electric streetcars became common across the country and in all nine counties of the Bay Area starting in the 1890s, but tell us more about how the key system in particular got started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Early in the 20th century, in the very first years, real estate investors, led by somebody named Francis Marion Smith, whose nickname was Borax Smith, because he’d made a fortune in borax mining in the southwest. He was part of what was called the Realty Syndicate. And they owned something like 20 square miles of East Bay real estate. And it would make this property so much more valuable if there was an easy way for people to get to and from these areas that would then be ripe for development. And pretty much that’s what happened. These streetcar lines got built, and if you see a route map, there are tendrils stretching throughout what we think of as East Oakland today and north into Berkeley, with many lines that were both neighborhood lines where people could ride, say, from their neighborhood to downtown Oakland, and many lines that were traveling from the East Bay to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So sort of a situation where if you build it, they will come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>They built it and they did come and much of the streetscape and the way neighborhoods are put together in Berkeley and Oakland really comes from that early streetcar development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One thing I find interesting is that these were not public works projects in the sense that the public owned them or they were, you know, done with tax dollars. These were private companies running these these streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s right. Those streetcar lines we’re talking about and wherever we’re talking about them, you know, it would be hard to go to a town of any size in the early 20th century and find no street railroad, right? And, of course, Los Angeles was one of the places where they were most prevalent. But all of this was done through private capital that had some kind of investment goal in mind. And often it had to do with developing real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>They didn’t own the street, so logistically, how did that even work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, they would get a license from the cities where they wanted to operate and part of the license would be access to the street and also some agreement about who would take care of the tracks in the street because as you know, if you’ve been anywhere where there’s a railroad track in a street, there are usually some kind of pavement problems and so that would be part of the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Tell me about the experience of actually riding one of these cars. What would it have been like as a commuter to step foot on one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>If you want to experience what these trains were like, you don’t have to rely on imagination. If you go out to the Western Railway Museum, which is near Rio Vista, there’s an amazing collection of streetcars from all different eras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke in scene: \u003c/strong>This is so cool. This one used to run in Oakland, going to the ballpark. And this is a Key System one too, this one that says E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>When they heard what I was up to, what I was interested in finding out about, they said, well, we can take one of those bridge units out and run it for you. Unbelievable. They roll out this retro, streamlined, two-car, orange and silver train, which is instantly a throwback to what people would have experienced their first day riding on the Bay Bridge in 1939. So then you know we’re on the platform waiting for this train to start up, we climb aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor:\u003c/strong> Welcome aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>First thing I notice is the windows don’t open, but that’s okay. There’s ventilation through a front door and we roll out down this, kind of beautifully recreated streetcar line, electrified streetcar line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley bell\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>In the middle of nowhere, but here’s this train going through this kind of pristine-looking ranch environment, and you come to a little crossroad, you have to slow to a stop, sound the horn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Horn blares\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Hey, we’ve got a car for once!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Because you don’t want to interfere with any crossing ranch traffic, and then you proceed to a little stop really out in the middle of nowhere. And get off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Okay, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The motorman changes ends of the car and then you head back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That sounds pretty fun. We’re going to take a quick break here, but we’ll get into why this system started to fall apart when we come back. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So, Dan, the scene that you’ve painted so far, it’s very idyllic with all these streetcars whisking people from Berkeley and Oakland to Ferries and maybe taking them into the city. And that goes on for what, 40 odd years? When does it all start to change and what factors were behind the changes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, the 1930s were a very rough decade for streetcar companies in general. You had the Great Depression, of course, that started in 1929 and deepened throughout the first half of the decade. The transit industry itself either recovered very slowly or not at all. A lot of that was because they were private companies that were locked into pretty disadvantageous contracts with the cities they served. Right? They could only raise fares so much. And they didn’t receive public subsidies. There was a big shift going on toward private automobiles that was also taking away some of their customers. In the Bay Area itself, you know, the relationship between the East Bay and the city of San Francisco changed dramatically in 1936 with the opening of the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>A six-lane double deck bridge, eight miles long, connecting San Francisco with the Oakland-Berkeley area, spanning the largest major navigable body of water ever bridged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I mean, there was an incredible influx of traffic across the bridge into San Francisco, basically as soon as the bridge opened, and it just didn’t slow down. And one of the unfortunate things that happened at the same time was that while part of developing the Bay Bridge was to build railroad tracks across it so that these interurban trains could come in from the East Bay, but it wasn’t ready to use until early 1939. One of the factors that people point to in the demise of the key system, is that delay of more than two years where people got to experience that it was much easier to drive into the city and faster, perhaps, than it had been to take the train. Their habits changed, and the key systems never really recovered. And we also had this phenomenon of the slow transition in the key-system itself away from streetcars for their local service to buses. And by the late 1930s, buses were carrying most of the ridership. So all of those things together really started to dim the outlook for the streetcar companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One narrative that I’ve heard over and over is that a big reason that streetcars failed was that essentially car companies bought the key system and then would intentionally run the company into the ground so people would be forced to buy more cars. Is there any truth to that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>There’s a kernel of truth to it. You know, when I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley, you know, he talked about the effect of one particular movie in the 1980s on this view of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, in L.A., the conspiracy was really put on steroids by the movie who framed Roger Rabbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Judge Doom from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”: \u003c/strong>I see a place where people get off and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, it’s so great to hear Christopher Lloyd in that. He was so good! And the character he was playing was Judge Doom and his masterplan was to destroy Toon Town, where Roger Rabbit lived, and a key part of the plot is to kill the streetcar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who Framed Roger Rabbit clip: \u003c/strong>C’mon, Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the red car for a nickel. Well, they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the red car so I could dismantle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Not an exaggeration that, you know, this 1989 semi-cartoon really fed this idea that it was highway interests that gobbled up the streetcar lines. And the story is much more complex than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The complexity people are talking about and the grain of truth to Roger Rabbit is because of a lawsuit that was filed against a company that was called National City Lines and some of its investors in the 1940s. And National City Lines was a company that went around the country buying up streetcar systems and they would convert those to bus systems, basically. That’s the long and the short of it. And by doing that, they were really helping out their investors who were General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Rubber, Phillips 66, companies like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National City Lines showed up in Oakland in 1946 and took control of the Key System. And while the Key system had laid plans to sort of keep streetcars going and also keep them running into San Francisco. Across the Bay Bridge, the national city lines scrapped most of these development plans, let’s call them, right away. So within a very short amount of time, the streetcar lines in the East Bay turned into bus lines. The streetcar lines were abandoned. The exception was the inter-urban line into San Francisco. That continued running until the late 1950s, but it ran at a loss. It ran with fewer and fewer passengers every year, and the last key system cars ran across the Bay Bridge in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>When we start talking about public transportation, I’ve noticed that people are often very nostalgic for the past, and it can, you know, sort of become a little idealized, you know, oh, dreaming about riding across the Bay Bridge and the train, but there were some realities to the Key System that people forget about. Can you tell us about some of the drawbacks of the Key System, even when it was sort of at its height?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>So there’s very definitely a paradise lost tone to the way people discuss the Key system. If we only hadn’t abandoned this beautiful streetcar system, just think how much better our world would be. I think that ignores the reality that they had huge power plants to supply the electricity for their systems. In the case of the Key System, they had a huge powerhouse in Emeryville. Kind of close to where Ikea is today. There was a gigantic smokestack there and they were burning coal. Sure, electric trains were much cleaner in terms of the environment around the lines themselves, but they still had an environmental footprint as all of our transportation choices do. And I talked to Mitchell Schwarzer, who’s a professor of architectural and urban history at the California College of the Arts about the social effects of the streetcar system. He wrote a book a few years ago called \u003cem>Hella Oakland\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mitchell Schwartzer: \u003c/strong>What the technology allowed for was a vast residential expansion outside of the inner areas of Oakland. And that allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I will say also that there was some outrage about the lack of safety for streetcars. The years I’ve looked at were between 1906 and 1910. It’s absolutely hair-raising to see how many people were getting killed in streetcar accidents. The newspapers relished these stories. I mean, they were told in sometimes excruciating detail what happened to the victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Definitely not insignificant safety and environmental concerns that you’ve brought up. But I do wanna say times are different now, right? We know how to run trains on green energy. We know to put safety protocols in place that will keep people more safe. One of our question askers wanted to know, could the old Key System sort of be a model for public transportation of the future?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley Law School about this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, I think you run into the same problems that the streetcars were running into in the old days, which is that a lot of them ran down highway medians. They would get stuck in traffic. They would hit red lights. They would have to wait for cars to pass. And they weren’t necessarily that fast. You need to have a dedicated separate right of way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You have to deal with all the other street traffic. That’s a real problem in imagining streetcar lines flourishing again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>And then to really make transit make sense, you have to be able to serve dense concentrations of jobs and housing where people can easily walk or bike to the rail station. And unfortunately, what we’ve seen too often, especially in the higher income areas in the Bay area, they don’t allow new development. They don’t wanna see new apartment buildings come into their neighborhoods. And that’s what you would need to have to have the ridership really make sense. And so that these streetcar lines could actually have enough ridership where they wouldn’t require as much public subsidy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The other thing is they’re really damn expensive to build. Lots of transportation experts say that the workaround is right in front of us if we only had the political will to do it. And that is to dedicate more street space as bus only space, right? Mostly we’re talking about bus rapid transit where you have dedicated lanes for buses. You have signals that are set so they prioritize the bus traffic. Those are much, much less expensive to build, but they take a lot of planning, and there is an upfront investment that sometimes is difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dan Brekke, thank you so much, as always, for reporting on this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You’re very welcome. And as I conclude here, I want to make a couple of acknowledgements. One is, there’s kind of an amazing community of transit historians in the Bay Area, including some who are very painstakingly documenting some of this history of the key system. So that’s one acknowledgement. The other one is, thanks to you and Katrina. You guys are wonderful to work with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Listeners should know that Dan was one of my first editors here at KQED when I started out as a wee baby reporter. And, he’s reported some of my favorite Bay Curious episodes over the years. Like those mysterious East Bay walls, why there are so many crows in the bay area and he’s answered dozens of your transportation questions over the years. We’ll link to a few of his stories in our show notes, so go check those out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dan, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the best. I hope you have a happy retirement, but also, I have a feeling you’ll be back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you value what you hear on our show, consider becoming a KQED member. You can choose the level of support that works for your budget by going to \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">kqed.org/donate\u003c/a>. Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and the whole KQED team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: 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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"slug": "is-it-crow-maggedon-why-crows-are-flocking-to-bay-area-cities-each-winter",
"title": "Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter",
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"headTitle": "Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter | 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>Around sunset on winter evenings, hordes of crows choke the night sky over the Bay Area, often flocking to the same favorite spots night after night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Matteo Clark-Hurley asked: “Is there a crow-maggedon happening in downtown areas of Oakland and San Francisco? Hundreds come out at dusk. Sections of streets with trees are covered in bird poop. Are there more crows now?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Clark-Hurley’s not the only one — many Bay Curious fans have written to ask why there are so many crows, where they’re going and why they’ve chosen to congregate in certain locations in Oakland and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The short answer is yes, there are more crows now. The crow population in the Bay Area has been on a steady increase since about 1975, but really exploded after 2000 or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every December, \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/birding-resources/birding-information/christmas-bird-counts/\">volunteers \u003c/a>head out on one particular day and count as many birds as they can to get an approximation of the winter population. In 2025, populations in San Francisco and Oakland both doubled. Volunteers counted \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/crow-populations-san-francisco-21316117.php\">more than 3,000 crows in San Francisco alone\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2090px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg\" alt=\"Three black birds perch on a concrete wall looking at the ocean.\" width=\"2090\" height=\"1434\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg 2090w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2000x1372.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-1536x1054.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2048x1405.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2090px) 100vw, 2090px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three crows at perch on a wall at Ocean Beach. Crows used to live more rurally, but have increasingly been flocking to urban areas where food is plentiful. \u003ccite>(Auseklis/iStock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s been basically logarithmic growth, which is sort of what you would expect in an unchecked system,” said Glenn Phillips, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/\">Golden Gate Bird Alliance\u003c/a>, which runs the count.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why so many more crows, you ask? Well, many bird experts think that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">their range has shifted\u003c/a>. Crows used to be found in more rural areas, where they could have a damaging effect on crops. Even though it’s illegal to kill crows — the Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects them — farmers can get a special permit to hunt them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Crows are not only very smart, they have amazing memory,” Phillips said. “So crows learn who is trouble … and they can share that information with their peers and their offspring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows have learned to stay away from rural areas where they’re being hunted and have instead discovered that cities are \u003cem>great\u003c/em> places to find food. Because crows will eat almost anything — from bugs to roadkill, baby birds and cherries — the backyards and streets of the Bay Area offer abundant food for them. They also don’t have many predators, which is why their numbers have grown so steadily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are susceptible to some diseases, though.[aside postID=news_12072333 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/Milan-Cortina-Olympics-cropped-2000x1125.jpg']“All the crows and their relatives are really susceptible to West Nile,” Phillips said. “The crow populations have some years where they crash and other years when they keep booming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, while we \u003cem>are\u003c/em> seeing more crows in the Bay Area, overall, the crow population is not dramatically increasing in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, onto the dramatic roosting behavior people have noticed in December, January and February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter,” Phillips said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists believe it happens for two reasons. First, there is protection in numbers. Any bigger bird that wants to attack a crow will be overwhelmed by its brethren. Second, crows gather and share information about where to find food, which can be harder to forage in the wintertime. And, after they gather and share information, they sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of us think of birds and nests, assuming the nest is a bird’s home. But Phillips said that’s a common misperception.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11752335\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11752335\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1246\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A power trio of crows hanging out in Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The nest is only used during the breeding season for the vast majority of birds,” he said. “They don’t use it when they’re not raising their young. It’s the nursery, not the home. And so most birds sleep in trees, on cliffs, on buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those big gatherings of crows people have seen near Lake Merritt in Oakland or by the East Cut in San Francisco, or even out by San Francisco International Airport, are where the crows roost and sleep for the night in winter. They’re usually looking for a place with good perches, that has vantage points to spot predators and that’s protected from wind and rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could almost set your watch by it,” Phillips said. “They’re really consistent when they come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Always at sunset, no matter when sunset is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Kevin Branch has another question we hear a lot about crows: “There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird?”[aside postID=news_12071437 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250919-UKRAINIANFARM_01564_TV-KQED.jpg']Crows are opportunistic eaters and there’s no doubt that they will raid nests of other birds and eat their young. But they don’t target other birds intentionally. Phillips said so far, there’s no evidence that the increased number of crows is responsible for declines in other species. Crows also aren’t the only critters that raid nests — squirrels, gulls and cats do a lot of damage too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s part of the cycle,” Phillips said. He often reminds folks worried about songbirds that certain species adapt to being prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[For example], robins can lay six to eight eggs and they can have two or three clutches a year. So if every robin grew up to be an adult, we would be up to our eyeballs in robins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows also behave differently in the spring and summer when it’s time to breed. Rather than large roosts, they’ll split into smaller groups, dividing up territory so that each bird can feed its young. Come springtime, you’ll be far less likely to see a horde of crows darkening the sky at sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have more questions about why the crow population has increased and what scientists say we should do about it? Check out this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">excellent feature from KQED’s Dan Brekke\u003c/a>.\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;\">Bay Curious in your feed on a Monday? It’s true. We’re dropping two episodes each week for a while — and experimenting with some new things along the way. Let us know what you think! Our email is \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;\">Now on to the episode…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of crows\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chances are good, that is a familiar sound.\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;\">Crow sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those would be “Corvus brachyrhynchos” aka crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our often \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unwanted\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> urban neighbors. Crows are thought to be loud, pesky, aggressive — even sinister. No matter what you think of them, they’re hard not to notice. They really demand our attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. This is Bay Curious and recently several listeners have written to us observing there’s a “crow-maggedon” happening in downtown Oakland and San Francisco. Listeners are seeing huge flocks of crows flying across the sky around sunset, congregating in the same locations night after night after night. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Glenn Phillips is the executive director of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance. They count the crows every winter. The most recent count happened in December 2025 and in Oakland and San Francisco, the crow population basically doubled from the year before.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One reason for roosting in large numbers is that there’s safety in numbers. Any predator that would be wanting to take out a crow is gonna have to deal with not just one crow but thousands.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But also, crows are social animals. They share information about where to find food when they gather to sleep at night. And they certainly have some favorite places to sleep.\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;\">They’re looking for good places to perch, with views of predators, shelter from wind and rain…\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;\">A place they can let their metaphorical hair down – or, in a crow’s world, let their claws tighten.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you relax your hand, it’s loose. When a bird relaxes its claw, it is firm and tight. So that they actually have to actively open their feet in order to let go of something. So when they’re sleeping, they aren’t gonna fall off because that grip is tight.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pretty wild! \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;\">So that answers some of your questions about crows. But for the rest of today’s episode we’ll focus on this one sent in from San Mateo listener Kevin Branch in 2019. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird — the birds I used to grow up listening to in the morning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kevin also wanted to know if there\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is a plan to,\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ahem,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reduce their populations. We asked KQED’s Dan Brekke, who has a fascination with just about everything including the natural world, to take a stab at answering them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Dan, what have you got for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Let’s just say Kevin isn’t imagining things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of birds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I visited him at work — a theatrical rigging company down in Redwood City —\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and he says it’s the same thing every day — crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin Branch: I see ‘em in the morning, I see ‘em in the afternoon, I see ‘em up in trees, I see ‘em on top of buildings. They’re everywhere. I kind of feel like the crow has taken over big time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And after hearing all those crows, Kevin has a pretty good crow caw himself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> CAW CAW!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin’s right — we’re seeing more crows these days. How many more? The numbers are surprising. I spoke with Bob Lewis, who helps run the Golden Gate Audubon Society’s Annual Christmas Bird Count. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I just took a look at the count today, and starting with 2000, year 2000, there were 167 crows in our circle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That ‘circle’ covers Oakland and a large part of the East Bay shoreline and hills. Around Christmastime, 300 volunteers canvas the area and tally the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the biggest count in the U.S. Actually, it’s the biggest count in the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, we started in 2000 with 167 crows. And since then?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2002, there were 250, it went up significantly. In 2005 there were 400. At 2010, there was over a thousand. 2015 almost fifteen hundred. And in 2018, there were almost twenty-five hundred crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From 167 crows to twenty-five hundred in less than 20 years. That’s fifteen times as many!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not everywhere in the Bay Area has seen that kind of spike. For instance, South Bay crow populations have fallen in the Christmas Bird Count over the last decade, apparently because of a spike in West Nile virus that killed many of the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But John Marzluff, a University of Washington wildlife biologist, says the pattern of increasing crow populations is a familiar one.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s a common trend for a lot of corvids across the western U.S., for sure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That word he said is “corvids.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s a family of birds that includes crows and ravens — another species whose Bay Area population has soared in recent decades. \u003c/span>\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;\"> OK, so we clearly have more crows, at least in most parts of the Bay Area. Kevin also wanted to know why?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The people who watch the birds point to an equation with two major parts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first part has to do with where crows are not very welcome. Here’s Bob Lewis again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One argument, which may be true, is that crows are smart birds, and crows have historically inhabited the countryside. Farmers put up scarecrows and crows eat corn. But in the country, crows get shot, too, and crows have perhaps discovered in the cities and towns that it’s a much safer place to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of a hunting video sneak up\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s sound from one of the many, many crow hunt videos you can find online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can’t really blame crows for feeling like they’re not wanted out there in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shotgun sound in the clear\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One hundred years ago this year a company in the ammunition industry launched a “national crow shoot,” ostensibly to get rid of a threat to crops and other birds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And this wasn’t just a “country activity.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park employed a hunter — usually a city cop — to shoot crows and other unwanted animals, like jays and coyotes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Crow shoot with hunter voices: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Take him,” (laughter) “I think you hit him that one.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And here in California, crows are fair game in most rural areas from December 1st to the beginning of April. In 2015, California hunters reported killing about 35,000 crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hunting video: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nice! There you go!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But unfriendly humans are just one factor that has led to more crows becoming city dwellers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think it’s kind of simple myself. Basically, we’ve provided more food for them. Now, the reasons for that may be more complex, because it includes things like garbage, like fast-food restaurant waste, like road kill, so there are a lot of ways we provide them food. But that’s the bottom line. That’s why they’re more abundant.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But haven’t we city dwellers have always been pretty messy. Look at the giant open garbage dumps that used to be on the edge of every big city. If garbage is attracting crows — where were they before?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You don’t have to have a dump. I mean, I think actually in terms of territoriality and increasing the breeding population, it’s better to have food more uniformly distributed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our urbanized area is much, much larger than it used to be. And we’re providing rich, dependable sources of food — from lawns to leftovers. More food allows crow populations to become more dense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They only defend enough space that’s necessary to get enough food to raise their young and survive. So as more food is available, they can live in tighter and tighter quarters and you can fit more of them into the place.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we return, we get to the bloody truth. Are these crows killing other birds? 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;\">So now we know that we do have more crows, and we have some ideas about why. The next question is: Are they killing other species of birds? Like those songbirds Kevin remembers?\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;\">Songbird sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One of the “crow people” I talked to is named Kaeli Swift, a wildlife scientist who has done lots of research on crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She said there are limited instances where crows — abetted by humans, typically — can pose an unusual threat to endangered species like snowy plovers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But your standard suburban backyard like L.A. or Seattle or New York or anywhere else in the country — not so much. Most people that contact me feeling like crows wiped away all of the birds in their neighborhood — and just have this perception that if you see a flock of crows it means none of your songbirds aren’t going to reproduce, that everything is doomed — the science just does not back that up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So research does not show that crows are remorseless killers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And if there are in fact fewer songbirds than when Kevin grew up, it could be for many reasons — loss of habitat, those pesky squirrels or even our domestic cats. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swift points to a long list of the birds’ winning qualities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There’s a lot of qualities that I don’t think you can help but find really attractive — like their ability to learn our faces and be pretty excited to see us when you’ve built up a positive relationship with them by feeding them, for example. They play, so you can watch them play games, particularly the young birds. And they’re just kind of charismatic and goofy in the way that a dog with a really strong personality is. For me, crows have the same sort of quality where if you watch them you just see them do all these things that are so interesting that you just kind of can’t help falling in love with them if you just open yourself up to that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They sound like humans.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kaeli Swift says many of our problems with crows may stem from how much we share in common with them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’re clever, so they’re able to outsmart some of the ways we try to keep them out of our garbage or out of our property. They are social, so they are really noisy. They are protective parents, so they can be aggressive around their babies when they feel like they’re being a threat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I keep coming back to this thing John Marzluff said, that it’s important to remember crows are “sentient beings,” like us, and that we ought to learn to use our big human brains to discover and address the problems we have with a growing crow population. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I do end every one of my talks about crows with a slide that’s like, ‘OK, these things can get under our skin. Why? And what should we do?’ And my take-home is that we should celebrate them for being successful, and if we need to control them in places, we need to think hard about it. Like they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them and come up with strategies that will have meaningful effects on their populations — not just kill a bunch of them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Things like better managing our waste and being faster about removing roadkill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But mostly, it sounds like we need to just learn to co-exist with crows. And see the good in them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Exactly. While I was doing research for this story I came across a poetry collection about crows.\u003c/span>\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;\"> Sounds good. We will listen to one of those poems on the way out. But first, thank you — reporter Dan Brekke — for your reporting this week.\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’re welcome\u003c/span>\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;\">And also a big thanks to our question asker, Kevin Branch. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. \u003c/span>\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;\">This episode was produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Special thanks this week to Pauline Bartolone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And now the poem we promised you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha reads “Early Morning Crow” by Jim Natal: \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Crows have no shame. They caw at 6 a.m., \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expect a response from the windows reflecting\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">overcast skies, wait for an echo\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to return across the canyon, for the bottle \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to wash up on shore, the telephone\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to ring, the empty half of the bed to fill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You cannot throw\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a boot at them like sex-struck cartoon cats\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yowling backlit by the moon, cannot\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shoo them like pie-faced pasture cows ruminating\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with the intensity of low-watt bulbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The crows wake you\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">too early. And there you are, an overdue \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">bill, over-ripe melon, alone with your thoughts sluicing\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">back through the gates you had to lower by hand\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the night before, cranking rusty cogs and wheels\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">so you could get some sleep.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bed floods\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and you rise, afloat with black wings spread\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">like oil upon the surface, a near-fatality\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the cold almost got, wet through and hearing \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a solitary crow that croaks: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">then flies away before you can form \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a suitable answer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\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. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Have you seen the huge gatherings of crows near Oakland’s Lake Merritt or in downtown San Francisco? There’s an explanation for their behavior.",
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"title": "Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter | KQED",
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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>Around sunset on winter evenings, hordes of crows choke the night sky over the Bay Area, often flocking to the same favorite spots night after night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Matteo Clark-Hurley asked: “Is there a crow-maggedon happening in downtown areas of Oakland and San Francisco? Hundreds come out at dusk. Sections of streets with trees are covered in bird poop. Are there more crows now?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Clark-Hurley’s not the only one — many Bay Curious fans have written to ask why there are so many crows, where they’re going and why they’ve chosen to congregate in certain locations in Oakland and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The short answer is yes, there are more crows now. The crow population in the Bay Area has been on a steady increase since about 1975, but really exploded after 2000 or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every December, \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/birding-resources/birding-information/christmas-bird-counts/\">volunteers \u003c/a>head out on one particular day and count as many birds as they can to get an approximation of the winter population. In 2025, populations in San Francisco and Oakland both doubled. Volunteers counted \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/crow-populations-san-francisco-21316117.php\">more than 3,000 crows in San Francisco alone\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2090px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg\" alt=\"Three black birds perch on a concrete wall looking at the ocean.\" width=\"2090\" height=\"1434\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg 2090w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2000x1372.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-1536x1054.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2048x1405.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2090px) 100vw, 2090px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three crows at perch on a wall at Ocean Beach. Crows used to live more rurally, but have increasingly been flocking to urban areas where food is plentiful. \u003ccite>(Auseklis/iStock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s been basically logarithmic growth, which is sort of what you would expect in an unchecked system,” said Glenn Phillips, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/\">Golden Gate Bird Alliance\u003c/a>, which runs the count.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why so many more crows, you ask? Well, many bird experts think that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">their range has shifted\u003c/a>. Crows used to be found in more rural areas, where they could have a damaging effect on crops. Even though it’s illegal to kill crows — the Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects them — farmers can get a special permit to hunt them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Crows are not only very smart, they have amazing memory,” Phillips said. “So crows learn who is trouble … and they can share that information with their peers and their offspring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows have learned to stay away from rural areas where they’re being hunted and have instead discovered that cities are \u003cem>great\u003c/em> places to find food. Because crows will eat almost anything — from bugs to roadkill, baby birds and cherries — the backyards and streets of the Bay Area offer abundant food for them. They also don’t have many predators, which is why their numbers have grown so steadily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are susceptible to some diseases, though.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“All the crows and their relatives are really susceptible to West Nile,” Phillips said. “The crow populations have some years where they crash and other years when they keep booming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, while we \u003cem>are\u003c/em> seeing more crows in the Bay Area, overall, the crow population is not dramatically increasing in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, onto the dramatic roosting behavior people have noticed in December, January and February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter,” Phillips said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists believe it happens for two reasons. First, there is protection in numbers. Any bigger bird that wants to attack a crow will be overwhelmed by its brethren. Second, crows gather and share information about where to find food, which can be harder to forage in the wintertime. And, after they gather and share information, they sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of us think of birds and nests, assuming the nest is a bird’s home. But Phillips said that’s a common misperception.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11752335\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11752335\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1246\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A power trio of crows hanging out in Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The nest is only used during the breeding season for the vast majority of birds,” he said. “They don’t use it when they’re not raising their young. It’s the nursery, not the home. And so most birds sleep in trees, on cliffs, on buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those big gatherings of crows people have seen near Lake Merritt in Oakland or by the East Cut in San Francisco, or even out by San Francisco International Airport, are where the crows roost and sleep for the night in winter. They’re usually looking for a place with good perches, that has vantage points to spot predators and that’s protected from wind and rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could almost set your watch by it,” Phillips said. “They’re really consistent when they come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Always at sunset, no matter when sunset is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Kevin Branch has another question we hear a lot about crows: “There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird?”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Crows are opportunistic eaters and there’s no doubt that they will raid nests of other birds and eat their young. But they don’t target other birds intentionally. Phillips said so far, there’s no evidence that the increased number of crows is responsible for declines in other species. Crows also aren’t the only critters that raid nests — squirrels, gulls and cats do a lot of damage too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s part of the cycle,” Phillips said. He often reminds folks worried about songbirds that certain species adapt to being prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[For example], robins can lay six to eight eggs and they can have two or three clutches a year. So if every robin grew up to be an adult, we would be up to our eyeballs in robins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows also behave differently in the spring and summer when it’s time to breed. Rather than large roosts, they’ll split into smaller groups, dividing up territory so that each bird can feed its young. Come springtime, you’ll be far less likely to see a horde of crows darkening the sky at sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have more questions about why the crow population has increased and what scientists say we should do about it? Check out this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">excellent feature from KQED’s Dan Brekke\u003c/a>.\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;\">Bay Curious in your feed on a Monday? It’s true. We’re dropping two episodes each week for a while — and experimenting with some new things along the way. Let us know what you think! Our email is \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;\">Now on to the episode…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of crows\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chances are good, that is a familiar sound.\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;\">Crow sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those would be “Corvus brachyrhynchos” aka crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our often \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unwanted\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> urban neighbors. Crows are thought to be loud, pesky, aggressive — even sinister. No matter what you think of them, they’re hard not to notice. They really demand our attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. This is Bay Curious and recently several listeners have written to us observing there’s a “crow-maggedon” happening in downtown Oakland and San Francisco. Listeners are seeing huge flocks of crows flying across the sky around sunset, congregating in the same locations night after night after night. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Glenn Phillips is the executive director of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance. They count the crows every winter. The most recent count happened in December 2025 and in Oakland and San Francisco, the crow population basically doubled from the year before.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One reason for roosting in large numbers is that there’s safety in numbers. Any predator that would be wanting to take out a crow is gonna have to deal with not just one crow but thousands.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But also, crows are social animals. They share information about where to find food when they gather to sleep at night. And they certainly have some favorite places to sleep.\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;\">They’re looking for good places to perch, with views of predators, shelter from wind and rain…\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;\">A place they can let their metaphorical hair down – or, in a crow’s world, let their claws tighten.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you relax your hand, it’s loose. When a bird relaxes its claw, it is firm and tight. So that they actually have to actively open their feet in order to let go of something. So when they’re sleeping, they aren’t gonna fall off because that grip is tight.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pretty wild! \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;\">So that answers some of your questions about crows. But for the rest of today’s episode we’ll focus on this one sent in from San Mateo listener Kevin Branch in 2019. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird — the birds I used to grow up listening to in the morning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kevin also wanted to know if there\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is a plan to,\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ahem,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reduce their populations. We asked KQED’s Dan Brekke, who has a fascination with just about everything including the natural world, to take a stab at answering them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Dan, what have you got for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Let’s just say Kevin isn’t imagining things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of birds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I visited him at work — a theatrical rigging company down in Redwood City —\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and he says it’s the same thing every day — crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin Branch: I see ‘em in the morning, I see ‘em in the afternoon, I see ‘em up in trees, I see ‘em on top of buildings. They’re everywhere. I kind of feel like the crow has taken over big time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And after hearing all those crows, Kevin has a pretty good crow caw himself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> CAW CAW!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin’s right — we’re seeing more crows these days. How many more? The numbers are surprising. I spoke with Bob Lewis, who helps run the Golden Gate Audubon Society’s Annual Christmas Bird Count. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I just took a look at the count today, and starting with 2000, year 2000, there were 167 crows in our circle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That ‘circle’ covers Oakland and a large part of the East Bay shoreline and hills. Around Christmastime, 300 volunteers canvas the area and tally the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the biggest count in the U.S. Actually, it’s the biggest count in the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, we started in 2000 with 167 crows. And since then?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2002, there were 250, it went up significantly. In 2005 there were 400. At 2010, there was over a thousand. 2015 almost fifteen hundred. And in 2018, there were almost twenty-five hundred crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From 167 crows to twenty-five hundred in less than 20 years. That’s fifteen times as many!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not everywhere in the Bay Area has seen that kind of spike. For instance, South Bay crow populations have fallen in the Christmas Bird Count over the last decade, apparently because of a spike in West Nile virus that killed many of the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But John Marzluff, a University of Washington wildlife biologist, says the pattern of increasing crow populations is a familiar one.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s a common trend for a lot of corvids across the western U.S., for sure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That word he said is “corvids.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s a family of birds that includes crows and ravens — another species whose Bay Area population has soared in recent decades. \u003c/span>\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;\"> OK, so we clearly have more crows, at least in most parts of the Bay Area. Kevin also wanted to know why?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The people who watch the birds point to an equation with two major parts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first part has to do with where crows are not very welcome. Here’s Bob Lewis again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One argument, which may be true, is that crows are smart birds, and crows have historically inhabited the countryside. Farmers put up scarecrows and crows eat corn. But in the country, crows get shot, too, and crows have perhaps discovered in the cities and towns that it’s a much safer place to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of a hunting video sneak up\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s sound from one of the many, many crow hunt videos you can find online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can’t really blame crows for feeling like they’re not wanted out there in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shotgun sound in the clear\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One hundred years ago this year a company in the ammunition industry launched a “national crow shoot,” ostensibly to get rid of a threat to crops and other birds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And this wasn’t just a “country activity.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park employed a hunter — usually a city cop — to shoot crows and other unwanted animals, like jays and coyotes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Crow shoot with hunter voices: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Take him,” (laughter) “I think you hit him that one.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And here in California, crows are fair game in most rural areas from December 1st to the beginning of April. In 2015, California hunters reported killing about 35,000 crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hunting video: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nice! There you go!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But unfriendly humans are just one factor that has led to more crows becoming city dwellers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think it’s kind of simple myself. Basically, we’ve provided more food for them. Now, the reasons for that may be more complex, because it includes things like garbage, like fast-food restaurant waste, like road kill, so there are a lot of ways we provide them food. But that’s the bottom line. That’s why they’re more abundant.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But haven’t we city dwellers have always been pretty messy. Look at the giant open garbage dumps that used to be on the edge of every big city. If garbage is attracting crows — where were they before?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You don’t have to have a dump. I mean, I think actually in terms of territoriality and increasing the breeding population, it’s better to have food more uniformly distributed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our urbanized area is much, much larger than it used to be. And we’re providing rich, dependable sources of food — from lawns to leftovers. More food allows crow populations to become more dense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They only defend enough space that’s necessary to get enough food to raise their young and survive. So as more food is available, they can live in tighter and tighter quarters and you can fit more of them into the place.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we return, we get to the bloody truth. Are these crows killing other birds? 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;\">So now we know that we do have more crows, and we have some ideas about why. The next question is: Are they killing other species of birds? Like those songbirds Kevin remembers?\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;\">Songbird sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One of the “crow people” I talked to is named Kaeli Swift, a wildlife scientist who has done lots of research on crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She said there are limited instances where crows — abetted by humans, typically — can pose an unusual threat to endangered species like snowy plovers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But your standard suburban backyard like L.A. or Seattle or New York or anywhere else in the country — not so much. Most people that contact me feeling like crows wiped away all of the birds in their neighborhood — and just have this perception that if you see a flock of crows it means none of your songbirds aren’t going to reproduce, that everything is doomed — the science just does not back that up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So research does not show that crows are remorseless killers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And if there are in fact fewer songbirds than when Kevin grew up, it could be for many reasons — loss of habitat, those pesky squirrels or even our domestic cats. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swift points to a long list of the birds’ winning qualities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There’s a lot of qualities that I don’t think you can help but find really attractive — like their ability to learn our faces and be pretty excited to see us when you’ve built up a positive relationship with them by feeding them, for example. They play, so you can watch them play games, particularly the young birds. And they’re just kind of charismatic and goofy in the way that a dog with a really strong personality is. For me, crows have the same sort of quality where if you watch them you just see them do all these things that are so interesting that you just kind of can’t help falling in love with them if you just open yourself up to that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They sound like humans.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kaeli Swift says many of our problems with crows may stem from how much we share in common with them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’re clever, so they’re able to outsmart some of the ways we try to keep them out of our garbage or out of our property. They are social, so they are really noisy. They are protective parents, so they can be aggressive around their babies when they feel like they’re being a threat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I keep coming back to this thing John Marzluff said, that it’s important to remember crows are “sentient beings,” like us, and that we ought to learn to use our big human brains to discover and address the problems we have with a growing crow population. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I do end every one of my talks about crows with a slide that’s like, ‘OK, these things can get under our skin. Why? And what should we do?’ And my take-home is that we should celebrate them for being successful, and if we need to control them in places, we need to think hard about it. Like they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them and come up with strategies that will have meaningful effects on their populations — not just kill a bunch of them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Things like better managing our waste and being faster about removing roadkill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But mostly, it sounds like we need to just learn to co-exist with crows. And see the good in them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Exactly. While I was doing research for this story I came across a poetry collection about crows.\u003c/span>\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;\"> Sounds good. We will listen to one of those poems on the way out. But first, thank you — reporter Dan Brekke — for your reporting this week.\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’re welcome\u003c/span>\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;\">And also a big thanks to our question asker, Kevin Branch. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. \u003c/span>\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;\">This episode was produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Special thanks this week to Pauline Bartolone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And now the poem we promised you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha reads “Early Morning Crow” by Jim Natal: \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Crows have no shame. They caw at 6 a.m., \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expect a response from the windows reflecting\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">overcast skies, wait for an echo\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to return across the canyon, for the bottle \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to wash up on shore, the telephone\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to ring, the empty half of the bed to fill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You cannot throw\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a boot at them like sex-struck cartoon cats\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yowling backlit by the moon, cannot\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shoo them like pie-faced pasture cows ruminating\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with the intensity of low-watt bulbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The crows wake you\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">too early. And there you are, an overdue \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">bill, over-ripe melon, alone with your thoughts sluicing\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">back through the gates you had to lower by hand\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the night before, cranking rusty cogs and wheels\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">so you could get some sleep.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bed floods\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and you rise, afloat with black wings spread\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">like oil upon the surface, a near-fatality\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the cold almost got, wet through and hearing \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a solitary crow that croaks: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">then flies away before you can form \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a suitable answer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\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. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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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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"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.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"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.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
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"source": "Possible"
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"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"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.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"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",
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