Human settlement in the San Francisco Bay Area dates back 10,000 years to early Native American settlements. Today, the region is a teeming metropolis of 7 million people that collectively challenge the health of the region’s ecosystems. How it got this way is a story that prompts a deeper understanding of our place in the landscape.
True, there was no e-mail, snail mail, or even Pony Express, but somehow postcards from intrepid explorers of the San Mateo coast in days of yore have reached our mailbox. Take a unique trip through time and discover how the beach and marsh at Pescadero came to be the treasures we love to visit today.
Have you ever wondered what some familiar spots in San Francisco looked like 300 years ago? Environmental artist Mark Brest van Kempen did, so he went back in time and took some pictures.
San Bruno Mountain rises along the southern border of San Francisco, remnant of an ecosystem that once covered much of this peninsula. The mountain provides a tenuous refuge for some of the rare plants and endangered butterflies that have lost much of their former habitat. And it beckons to people who want a taste of the San Francisco peninsula as it was before Europeans arrived.
On Saturday, June 8, Big Basin Redwoods State Park kicks off its 100-day Centennial Celebration. Big Basin is California’s oldest state park, established under the leadership of photographer Andrew P. Hill and the Sempervirens Club as the 19th-century logging boom … Read more
Intrigued by a way of life that is “so remarkably different from that lived by the other six and a half million people in the Bay Area, one that has been passed down from one generation to the next, AND … Read more
It's small, it's restless, and it changes sex halfway through its life. Plus, the humble bay shrimp occupies a crucial niche in the complex food web of San Francisco Bay. It once played a significant role in the economy and culture of the local Chinese community. Today, both the shrimp and those who fish for it are still hanging on, but it hasn't been easy.
Numerous animals make their homes in burrows in the hills of this Santa Clara County park, but none dig as deep as the miners who hauled mercury-laden ore out of the ground for 125 years.
Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland. Trail: 33.1 mi, 524 ft elevation gain, loop
At the California Academy of Sciences’ new exhibit, “Russia’s Great Voyages to America: Science Under Sail 1728-1867,” viewers get a firsthand look at thousands of animal and plant specimens, artifacts, illustrations, and journal entries collected by the earliest explorers of … Read more
1854: U.S. coast survey map by Josh Collins.; 1897: U.S. coast survey map courtesy CA State Lands Commission; 1996: NASA infrared photo. www.stillhere.org
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
