In 1850 San Francisco, it wasn’t easy to get out of town, or even to get fresh air.
Hemmed in by towering sand dunes, steep hills and the bay, the infant city was squeezed into a congested area of not much more than half a square mile, bounded roughly by Union Street on the north, Market Street on the south, Powell Street on the west and Montgomery Street on the east. There were no parks of any size, and the only nearby places to stretch one’s legs were Long Wharf at the foot of Sacramento Street, and the summits of Telegraph and Rincon hills.
However, there was one place out in the country that had already gained a reputation as a pleasant escape: Mission Dolores. The old mission, which had fallen into decay after being secularized in 1834, was a picturesque, crumbling ruin, favored for Sunday outings.
The cluster of a few dozen houses around the mission complex also had its own unique flavor: For about 10 years this ad hoc settlement, called “Dolores,” had been home to about 100 Californios, mostly members of five or six well-known families, including the de Haros, Bernals, Valencias and Sanchezes, as well as a dwindling number of American Indians who had once lived at the mission.
This mostly Spanish-speaking settlement was distinct from Yerba Buena (later San Francisco), which was known as “the place where the Yankees lived.” The Californios still held fandangos (dances) every Saturday night, and frequented a nearby bullring.
But the residents of Yerba Buena/San Francisco were beginning to take over the Dolores settlement. In 1850, a hard-drinking Cockney and longtime Yerba Buena character named Robert Ridley opened a bar in one of the mission’s decaying outbuildings, which he whimsically called the Mansion House and which was famous for its milk punches. Other businesses that would have made the pious padres roll in their graves soon followed.
When a young German named Frederick Gerstacker lived at Dolores in 1850, the mission and its outbuildings housed two taverns, a German-run brewery, a drinking and gambling saloon, and what appears to have been a brothel. “Nearly every week new drinking booths and tents ... sprung up near the mission,” Gerstacker wrote, and “on Sundays there was an influx of a gay crowd from San Francisco.”
Mission Dolores was ripe to become San Francisco’s pleasure suburb. But the only way to get there from town was via an old Spanish horse trail, which started near Portsmouth Square, went through Saint Anne’s Valley (near today’s Eddy and Powell) and meandered laboriously for more than 2 sandy, boggy miles roughly along the route of today’s Mission and Valencia streets. Part of the trail was plagued by so many low-hanging branches that riders had to duck their heads.
Alternatively, one could travel by boat, starting from what is now around Eighth and Townsend (itself a trek to get to), then along the sinuous, shallow waterways of Mission Creek to a landing near present-day 17th and Folsom. If the mission could be made more accessible, its popularity would soar.
There was also a practical reason to build a road. The mission was surrounded by farmland, which produced much of the hay consumed by San Francisco’s horses. But because it was so hard to drive a team and wagon through the deep sand and boggy terrain, a wagonload of hay cost $15-$20 — a prohibitive expense.
Enter an entrepreneur named Col. Charles Wilson. Wilson and his partners realized that if they built a road out to the old mission and charged tolls, they could make a fortune. In November 1850, Wilson proposed building a plank road from San Francisco to Mission Dolores at his own expense. (There was no other option: The city had no money.) In return, the city would grant him a franchise to operate a toll road for 10 years, at rates to be agreed upon. The town council agreed, but stipulated that Wilson would turn over the ownership of the road to the city in seven years, not 10. It would be San Francisco’s first major transportation project.
Wilson’s crew immediately began working on the Mission Plank Road, cutting through a huge sand dune at Third and Market and laying down 4-inch-thick planks of Oregon fir. (Chris Carlsson gives a detailed account of the building of the road in “Mission Plank Road” on the website FoundSF.org.)
Construction was proceeding smoothly westward along the line of today’s Mission Street until workers reached an area near what is now Seventh Street, where they ran into the northernmost reaches of the Mission Bay wetlands. Workers began driving 40-foot piles to serve as the foundation for a 100-yard bridge across the swamp. But to their dismay, when they drove the first pile into the ground, it vanished. A second pile driven directly on top of the first also disappeared. They were forced to abandon the pilings, instead building cribs of logs as a foundation for the bridge. It worked, but when heavy teams crossed the bridge it shook, and it gradually sank into the swamp until its middle was 5 feet lower than its original level.
Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiya’s Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco’s extraordinary history — from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond. His column appears every other Saturday.
Wilson completed the 40-foot-wide road in the stipulated five months, on the last allowed day, March 18, 1851. A horse rider was charged 25 cents; a wagon with two horses, 75 cents; a four-horse team, $1. In 1852, omnibuses — large, enclosed carriages — began running hourly from the Plaza to Mission Dolores at a cost of 50 cents — a mass-transit innovation characterized in 1918 by Chronicle columnist Edward Morphy as “a perishing outrage on the fond seclusion of the hidalgos.”
The Mission Plank Road cost $96,000 to build and was an enormous financial success: Investors received an 8% return per month. The pleasure resorts around Mission Dolores boomed and more ambitious ones soon joined them, including two racetracks. Property values along the right-of-way soared. The road also became a popular promenade, where swells would show off their horses and carriages.
The Mission Plank Road was so popular that demand stretched its carrying capacity. Less than two years after it opened, Wilson built a second plank road on Folsom, which also ended at the mission and was completed in late 1853. The area around the mission was still almost entirely farmland, but lots began to be sold for development, and the city began to expand. The days when San Francisco was squeezed into a tiny area on the shores of Yerba Buena cove were gone forever.
Gary Kamiya is the author of “Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City.” All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier columns, go to sfchronicle.com/portals. Email: email@example.com