Sans Souci Valley was the name of a valley in
San Francisco, California, in the area corresponding to present day's
Lower Haight and
Duboce Triangle
The Duboce Triangle is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California, located below Buena Vista Park and between the neighborhoods of the Castro/Eureka Valley, the Mission District, and the Lower Haight.
According to the 2010 neighborhoods map of ...
neighborhoods. This valley once allowed excess storm water to flow from
Buena Vista Hill and
Lone Mountain Lone Mountain may refer to a place in the United States:
* Lone Mountain, Tennessee, an unincorporated community
* Lone Mountain (California), a hill in San Francisco, California
** Lone Mountain, San Francisco, California, the associated neighbor ...
(where the
University of San Francisco is today), through the
Panhandle
A salient (also known as a panhandle or bootheel) is an elongated protrusion of a geopolitical entity, such as a subnational entity or a sovereign state.
While similar to a peninsula in shape, a salient is most often not surrounded by water on ...
, to the area located near
Duboce Park, along the path today known to cyclists as
The Wiggle
The Wiggle is a zig-zagging bicycle route from Market Street to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, that minimizes hilly inclines for bicycle riders. Rising , The Wiggle inclines average 3% and never exceed 6%. The path general ...
. The creek was not a surface creek in the dune region except as overflow. The valley’s name, French for "without worry," comes from the
Sanssouci Palace
Sanssouci () is a historical building in Potsdam, near Berlin. Built by Prussian King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, it is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and ...
built by the Prussian monarch
Frederick the Great in
Potsdam, Germany
Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...
.
Background
Sans Souci Valley used to be the easiest walking route connecting
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
* ' ...
and
the Presidio.
Hubert Howe Bancroft's ''History of California'', evaluates an assertion by Mariano Vallejo (in Vallejo's ''Discurso Histórico'' of October 8, 1876) that the former "Lake Dolores" (or "Laguna de los Dolores") was located "in Sans Souci Valley, north of the Mission". Bancroft's conclusion is that it was not. Research by Christopher Richard has since shown that Lake Dolores was one and the same as the wide area of
Mission Creek
Mission Creek (from Spanish: ''misión'') is a river in San Francisco, California. Once navigable from the Mission Bay inland to the vicinity of Mission Dolores, where several smaller creeks converged to form it, Mission Creek has long since bee ...
. Research by Joel Pomerantz has shown that other vernal lakes did exist at the location in Sans Souci Valley described by Vallejo.
In the 19th century, the spelling was variable between Sans Souci and San Souci, with some maps including both.
See road name and claim name, which conflict
/ref>
See also
* Hydrography of the San Francisco Bay Area
The Hydrography of the San Francisco Bay Area is a complex network of watersheds, marshes, rivers, creeks, reservoirs, and bays predominantly draining into the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean.
Bays
The largest bodies of water in the Bay Ar ...
* List of watercourses in the San Francisco Bay Area
References
Landforms of San Francisco
{{SanFrancisco-geo-stub