Mission Creek (from Spanish: ''misión'') is a river in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the mo ...

. Once navigable from the Mission Bay inland to the vicinity of

Mission Dolores Dolores, Spanish for "pain; grief", most commonly refers to: * Our Lady of Sorrows or La Virgen María de los Dolores * Dolores (given name) Dolores may also refer to: Film * ''Dolores'' (2017 film), an American documentary by Peter Bratt * ' ...

, where several smaller creeks converged to form it, Mission Creek has long since been largely

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

ed. Its only remaining portion above-ground is the Mission Creek Channel which drains into China Basin.Museum of California
Watershed map, access date December 31, 2008 The two

Ramaytush The Ramaytush or Rammay-tuš people are a linguistic subdivision of the Ohlone people of Northern California. The term Ramaytush was first applied to them in the 1970s, but the modern Ohlone people of the peninsula have claimed it as their et ...

Indian villages of Chutchui and Sitlintac were located on Mission Creek.

Background

Declared by the state legislature in 1854 to be a navigable stream, it retains the designation today, even though most of it was vacated for use by boats in 1874 and later filled in.

Soil liquefaction Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, ...

, such as that which killed numerous people in the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity ...

, has been known to occur along buried portions of the creek. The China Basin Building was erected on the creek's north bank in the 1920s and used for off-loading and processing bananas through the 1950s. In the 1970s it was known as the Del Monte Building and used as a food distribution site by the Hearst family in response to the demands of the SLA. Mission Creek houseboats and ramps

A community of house boats has existed along the creek's south bank since 1960 when the state of California moved the houseboat community there from Islais Creek to make way for merchant ship trading. The mouth of Mission Creek has been known to

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL ...

fans as

McCovey Cove McCovey Cove is the unofficial name of a section of San Francisco Bay beyond the right field wall of Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, named after famed Giants first baseman Willie McCovey. The proper name for the cove is China Bas ...

ever since the year 2000 when the

San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New Yo ...

relocated from their former home at

Candlestick Park Candlestick Park was an outdoor stadium on the West Coast of the United States, located in San Francisco's Bayview Heights area. The stadium was originally the home of Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants, who played there from 1960 unt ...

Oracle Park Oracle Park is a Major League Baseball stadium in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, San Francisco, California. Since 2000, it has been the home of the San Francisco Giants. Previously named Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park, and AT&T Park, the s ...

on the creek's north bank. Balls hit over the right field wall splash-land in the water there.

Lake Dolores

The ''Laguna Dolores'' was fed by the creek. It was the site of the original

, and probably stretched between

Mission Street Mission Street is a north-south arterial thoroughfare in Daly City and San Francisco, California that runs from Daly City's southern border to San Francisco's northeast waterfront. The street and San Francisco's Mission District through which it ...

and Valencia, and 20th and 16th streets before being filled in with sand.

References

Bibliography

* *{{cite book , first1 = Nancy , last1 = Olmsted , first2 =Chris , last2 = Carlsson, first3 = Bob , last3 = Isaacson , edition =2nd , title = Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco's Mission Bay , location = San Francisco , publisher = Mission Creek Conservancy , date = 2010

External links

''Vanished Waters of Southeastern San Francisco'' by William Crittenden Sharpsteen''Water Water'' by Chris Carlsson''Mission Creek'' by Chris Carlsson
Rivers of San Francisco Mission District, San Francisco Subterranean rivers of the United States Rivers of Northern California Tributaries of San Francisco Bay