What Lies Beneath the Marina? Robert Bardell 1922 Filbert St. San Francisco, CA 94123 (415) 931-7249
[email protected] A version of this article appeared in the Argonaut Vol. 14 No. 2, Winter 2003, and Vol. 15 No. 1, Summer 2004. What Lies Beneath the Marina? If you answered rubble from 1906, you’re certainly in the majority, but this article will prove you’re absolutely wrong. One of San Francisco’s most enduring myths is that rubble from the 1906 earthquake provided landfill for the Marina District. Extreme versions of this tale claim all the rubble was dumped there; others don’t go quite that far, but all agree the Marina was a convenient dumping ground for the “damndest finest ruins.” A large part of the Panama Pacific International Exposition would later stand on this man-made land—a triumphal symbol for a city celebrating its return from the ashes. It’s a nice story, but completely false. Indeed, the truth turns this story on its head: No significant amount of 1906 debris was dumped in the Marina, and no new land was reclaimed from the tidelands of the bay there until 1912, long after the ruins of the old city had been cleared away and a new San Francisco born. I intend to debunk the myth of earthquake rubble in the Marina with a history of Marina landfill, beginning in the years following California’s admission to the Union and ending with the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915. This history will show that the Marina on April 18, 1906 had changed radically from its virgin state, due almost entirely to the effort and capital of one man, James G.