RON HENGGELER

A homeless man in San Francisco, panhandling at the onramp of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

A view from Yerba Buena Island of the new eastern span of the Bay Bay Bridge, with a glimpse the old span behind it.

A glimpsed view between eucalyptus trees of the new Bay Bridge’s tower, and the old cantilevered span of the Bay Bridge being deconstructed

The western span of the Bay Bridge as seen from the summit of Yerba Buena Island

The old and new eastern spans of the Bay Bridge as seen from the summit of Yerba Buena Island

The roadway of the western span with traffic flowing into San Francisco

A view of the old cantilevered span of the Bay Bridge being deconstructed as seen from the near the shoreline of Yerba Buena Island

A view of the old cantilevered span of the Bay Bridge being deconstructed as seen from the near the shoreline of Yerba Buena Island

A view of the old cantilevered span of the Bay Bridge being deconstructed as seen from the near the shoreline of Yerba Buena Island

A view of the old cantilevered span of the Bay Bridge being deconstructed as seen from the entrance onto the bridge from Yerba Buena Island

A glimpsed view of San Francisco across the bay as seen as seen with a 300mm lens, from the Old World Rose Garden inside the Berkeley Botanical Gardens

The entrance to San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz Island, as seen with a 300mm lens from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
San Francisco Bay covers somewhere between 400 and 1,600 square miles, depending on which sub-bays (such as San Pablo Bay), estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement. The main part of the Bay measures 3 to 12 miles wide east-to-west and somewhere between 48 miles and 60 miles north-to-south. It is the largest Pacific estuary in the Americas.

Sunset at the Golden Gate with storm clouds as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
The first recorded European discovery of San Francisco Bay was on November 4, 1769 when Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolà, unable to find the port of Monterey, California, continued north close to what is now Pacifica and reached the summit of the 1,200-foot high Sweeney Ridge, now marked as the place where he first sighted San Francisco Bay. Portolá and his party did not realize what they had discovered, thinking they had arrived at a large arm of what is now called Drakes Bay. At the time, Drakes Bay went by the name Bahia de San Francisco and thus both bodies of water became associated with the name. Eventually, the larger, more important body of water fully appropriated the name San Francisco Bay.

Sunset at the Golden Gate with storm clouds as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
The first European to enter the bay is believed to have been the Spanish explorer Juan de Ayala, who passed through the Golden Gate on August 5, 1775 in his ship the San Carlos, and moored in a bay of Angel Island now known as Ayala Cove. Ayala continued to explore the Bay area and the expedition's cartographer, José de Cañizares, gathered the information necessary to produce the first map of the San Francisco Bay area. A number of place names survive (anglicized) from that first map, including Point Reyes, Angel Island, Farallon Islands and Alcatraz Island.

The United States seized the region from Mexico during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). On February 2, 1848 California was annexed to the U.S. with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A year and a half later, California requested to join the United States on December 3, 1849 and was accepted as the 31st State of the union on September 9, 1850.

The bay became the center of American settlement and commerce in the Far West through most of the remainder of the 19th century. During the California Gold Rush (1848-1855), San Francisco Bay suddenly became one of the world's great seaports, dominating shipping in the American West until the last years of the 19th century. The bay's regional importance increased further when the First Transcontinental Railroad was connected to its western terminus at Alameda on September 6, 1869. The terminus was switched to the Oakland Long Wharf two months later on November 8, 1869.

Storm clouds over Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
San Francisco Bay continues to support some of the densest industrial production and urban settlement in the United States. The San Francisco Bay Area is the American West's second-largest urban area with approximately 8 million residents.

Storm clouds over San Francisco at sundown, as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
Despite its urban and industrial character, San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta remain perhaps California's most important ecological habitats. California's Dungeness crab, California halibut, and Pacific salmon fisheries rely on the bay as a nursery. The few remaining salt marshes now represent most of California's remaining salt marsh, supporting a number of endangered species and providing key ecosystem services such as filtering pollutants and sediments from the rivers. San Francisco Bay is recognized for protection by the California Bays and Estuaries Policy, with oversight provided by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership.

Storm clouds over the Golden Gate Bridge at sundown, as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
Most famously, the bay is a key link in the Pacific Flyway. Millions of waterfowl annually use the bay shallows as a refuge. Two endangered species of birds are found here: the California least tern and the California clapper rail. Exposed bay muds provide important feeding areas for shorebirds. San Francisco Bay provided the nation's first wildlife refuge, Oakland's artificial Lake Merritt, constructed in the 1860s, and America's first urban National Wildlife Refuge, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge (SFBNWR) in 1972.

Storm clouds over the San Francisco Bay Area at sunset, as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
The seasonal range of water temperature in the Bay is from January's 53 °F (12 °C) to September's 60 °F (16 °C) when measured at Fort Point, which is near the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge and at the entrance to San Francisco Bay.

The setting sun and storm clouds over the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands, seen with a 300mm lens.
Large ships transiting the bay must follow deep underwater channels that are maintained by frequent dredging as the average depth of the Bay is only as deep as a swimming pool—approximately 12 to 15 ft. Between Hayward and San Mateo to San Jose it is 12 to 36 in. The deepest part of the bay is under and out of the Golden Gate Bridge, at 372 ft.

The setting sun and storm clouds over the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands, as seen from the Grizzly Peak Road high atop the Berkeley Hills.
San Francisco Bay is thought to represent a down-warping of the Earth's crust between the San Andreas Fault to the west and the Hayward Fault to the east, though the precise nature of this remains under study. During the last ice age, the basin now filled by the bay was a large linear valley with small hills, similar to most of the valleys of the Coast Ranges. The rivers of the Central Valley ran out to sea through a canyon that is now the Golden Gate. As the great ice sheets melted, sea level rose 300 feet over 4,000 years, and the valley filled with water from the Pacific, becoming a bay. The small hills became islands.

For a fleeing moment, the storm clouds break to reveal the setting sun at the Gate.

Crossing the new Bay Bridge at night on the way back home to San Francisco.

Sunrise on Tuesday morning, from my window