Farallon Islands - History

History

The islands were long known to the American Indians who lived in the Bay Area prior to the arrival of Europeans, but they are not thought to have travelled to them.

The first European to record the islands was the English privateer Sir Francis Drake, who landed on the islands on 24 July 1579, in order to collect seal meat and bird eggs for his ship. He named them the Islands of Saint James because he was there on St. James' Day. The name now applies to only one of the rocky islets of the North Farallones.

The islands were given the name "Farallones" (literally, "rocks out of the sea") by Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno, who first charted them in 1603. In the years following their discovery, during the Maritime Fur Trade era, the islands were exploited by seal hunters, first from New England and later from Russia. The Russians maintained a sealing station in the Farallones from 1812 to 1840, taking 1,200 to 1,500 fur seals annually, though American ships had already exploited the islands. The Albatross, captained by Nathan Winship, and the O'Cain, captained by his brother Jonathan Winship, were the first American ships sent from Boston in 1809 to establish a settlement on the Columbia River. In 1810, they met up with two other American ships at the Farallon Islands, the Mercury and the Isabella, and at least 30,000 seal skins were taken. By 1818 the seals diminished rapidly until only about 500 could be taken annually and within the next few years, the fur seal was extirpated from the islands. It is not known whether the Northern Fur Seal or the Guadalupe Fur Seal were the islands' native fur seal, although the Northern Fur Seal is the species that began to recolonize the islands in 1996.

On 17 July 1827, the French sea captain Auguste Duhaut-Cilly, sailed by the southernmost Farallon Island and counted the "crude dwellings of about a hundred Kodiaks stationed there by the Russians of Bodega...the Kodiaks, in their light boats, slip into San Francisco Bay by night, moving along the coast opposite the fort, and once inside this great basin they station themselves temporarily on some of the inner islands, from where they catch the sea otter without hindrance."

After Alta California was ceded by Mexico to the US in 1848, the islands' environment became linked to the growth of the city of San Francisco. Beginning in 1853, a lighthouse was constructed on SEFI. As the city grew, the seabird colonies came under severe threat as eggs were collected in the millions for San Francisco markets. The trade, which in its heyday could yield 500,000 eggs a month, was the source of conflict between the egg collecting companies and the lighthouse keepers. This conflict turned violent in a confrontation between rival companies in 1863. The clash between two rival companies, known as the Egg War, left two men dead and marked the end of private companies on the islands, although the lighthouse keepers continued egging. This activity, combined with the threat of oil spills from San Francisco's shipping lanes, prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to sign Executive Order No. 1043 in 1909, creating the Farallon Reservation to protect the chain's northern islands. This was expanded to the other islands in 1969 when it became a National Wildlife Refuge.

The islands are the site of many shipwrecks, including the liberty ship SS Henry Bergh, a converted troop carrier that hit West End in 1944, pieces of which can still be seen from the island today (all hands were saved). The islands have also been mentioned in connection with the schooner Malahat as one possible site for Rum Row during Prohibition . The United States Coast Guard maintained a manned lighthouse until 1972, when it was automated. The islands are currently managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with the Marin-based PRBO Conservation Science (formerly Point Reyes Bird Observatory - PRBO). The islands are currently the subject of long term ecological research. Today, the Farallones are closed to the public, although birders and wildlife enthusiasts can approach them on whale watching boats and the sail-training vessel Seaward out of Sausalito.

From 1902 to 1913, the former U.S. Weather Bureau maintained a weather station on the southeast island, which was connected with the mainland by cable. The results of the meteorological study were later published in a book on California's climate. Temperatures during those years never exceeded 90 °F (32 °C) or dropped to 32 °F (0 °C). Years later, the National Weather Service provided some weather observations from the lighthouse on its local radio station.