With the help of google maps and lots of historical references, I have been trying to draw out the original shoreline of San Francisco.
The tiny yellow square where the financial district is comprises the original 12-block area first surveyed by Jean Jacques Vigot back in 1838. Essentially, that was the town of Yerba Buena, created from the grant of the Spanish to Willam A. Richardson, an English ship captain. Clicking the image takes you to the google map I created.
The blue area represents the beginning of the landfill. Especially around the 1850-51 period in downtown San Francisco. I found more maps showing the extreme north of the peninsula, as well as further south, and I will update this when I have more time, but I started doing this when I was looking at the routes of my stairway walk tours, and wondering just where the original shoreline was.
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