Real estate and refuge: An environmental history of San Francisco Bay's tidal wetlands, 1846--1972 (California)

This dissertation is a history of the tidal margin of San Francisco Bay, California, between 1846 and 1972. It describes physical changes to bayshore as human societies remade the shoreline in search of greater productivity. The dissertation contributes to American history, the history of California, and environmental history by using this particular place as a window onto the changing meaning of property and of productivity.; Tidelands, the muddy area between land and sea, were among the most valuable and most contested lands in the American West. In their unmodified state, tidal areas efficiently converted sunlight into plant and animal matter, making them rich sources of food and fiber. But because they were so readily filled, dredged or drained, tidelands could become housing, wharves, irrigated farmland, and even evaporated salt production ponds. Tidelands therefore possessed great latent possibilities.; This dissertation traces human development of the tidelands over a period of 150 years, culminating with the designation of a large portion of the bay's remaining tidal habitats as the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in 1972. Over a century and a half, Americans reimagined and remade San Francisco Bay's tidal margin from real estate to refuge.