
Excavation below 424 Clay Street |
When gold and
silver made a boomtown of San Francisco in the mid-1800s, the Barbary
Coast was born. While other districts attracted more legitimate enterprises,
the port area roughly bordered by Pacific Avenue and Stockton Street between
Jackson and Montgomery Streets became the center of sex, violence, hard
drinking and gambling by rough-and-tumble seamen and would-be prospectors
hoping to cash in by other than legal means. The notorious Barbary Coast
was the home of Killer's Corner (Jackson & Kearny), Deadman's Alley,
and Murder Point, all aptly named for the debauchery that pervaded the
neighborhood. In Howard Hawks' 1935 cinematic telling of a Barbary Coast
tale, Miriam Hopkins plays new arrival Mary Rutledge, who finds her fiance
dead then takes a job with snarling bad guy Edward G. Robinson at the Bella
Donna casino. Mayhem ensues. Harry Carey, Walter Brennan, and Joel McCrea
also star. Today, many ships from the Barbary Coast era are buried under
the Financial District. One such ship, the General Harrison, is seen here
as it was excavated after 150 years by Oakland's Archeo-Tec at a construction
site at Battery and Clay Streets in September, 2001.
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about Barbary Coast |