Port of San Francisco - Modern Developments

Modern Developments

According to port historian Edward Morphy, the achievement of building a great port, "was rendered possible solely by the fact that its harbor commissioners, through the succeeding of generations, not only had behind them the credit of the state of California but also were in a position to rise superior to the narrow influences of local politics... The development of the waterfront itself, the Embarcadero, the seawall and piers, the Belt Railroad and the seawall lots, could not have been carried out under private or municipal auspices in the manner so beneficial, so efficient, and so economical as is now apparent."

With the fire after the 1906 earthquake, a new era of port development began on the San Francisco waterfront. In 1909, the San Francisco Harbor Improvement Act was passed. A total of $9 million was allocated by the state legislature and in 1913, Islais Creek and India Basin lands were purchased. The Board of State Harbor Commissioners began extensive development along the waterfront, always meeting expenses from the revenues of the busy port.

Upon completion of the modern piers, odd-numbered to the north of the Ferry Building and even-numbered to the south, the port of San Francisco became the only port in the United States under a single control. The piers were leased to tenants. By the early 1920s, the port's assets were valued at $50 million and $8 to $9 million tons of merchandise and raw goods were handled yearly.

In the 1920s and 30s, numerous old piers on both sides of Market Street were razed and a smaller number of concrete piers with wider slips between them were constructed. The port also built the six-story China Basin Warehouse to bring together ships, rail, and truck for the handling of products. At India Basin, it built a plant to handle vegetable oils.

The federal government in 1922 began dredging a forty-foot channel through the Bay's outer bar in at the entrance to the harbor after 1922 and the dredging of Islais Creek with the so-called reclamation of 30 acres (120,000 m2) of adjacent creek tidelands.

Two graving docks at Hunter's Point that could accommodate the largest ocean-going vessels, five floating drydocks, eight marine railways, four shearleg derricks and ten floating boom derricks were available.

In the 1920s, the emergence of Los Angeles as the West Coast's largest city—and in particular, as its major industrial center—relegated the Port of San Francisco to a secondary role. For the next few decades, the port steadily but inexorably lost market share to the twins ports of Los Angeles and -Long Beach, as well as its crossbay rival Port of Oakland. The advent of containerization in the 1960s effectively sounded the death knell for the Port of San Francisco as a major marine terminal, as it had no room to expand to build a large new container handling facility like the Seventh Street Terminal at the Port of Oakland. A few piers added container handling equipment, but heavy traffic congestion in the area and poor rail access have long militated against the large-scale development of the container trade at the port. Insufficient clearances of rail tunnels and overpasses have also prevented the development of roll-on/roll-off capability at the port. With limited ability to expand physically as a result of environmentalist opposition to further reclamation and the soaring cost of real estate in San Francisco, the Port of San Francisco has instead become a niche player, specializing in break bulk and dry bulk cargo, ship repair, and ferry services.