Point San Quentin, later known as

Potrero Point Potrero Point is an area in San Francisco, California, east of San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood. Potrero Point was an early San Francisco industrial area. The Point started as small natural land feature that extends into Mission Bay ...

, was the land projecting into

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...

that marked the southern extremity of Mission Bay (now filled in), in

San Francisco, California 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 17th ...

.Nancy Olmsted, Mission Bay Gazeteer of Historic Places, foldout at the end of "Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco's Mission Bay" published by the Mission Creek Conservancy
and republished by foundsf.org with their permission. From foundsf.org accessed 3/29/2015.

History

Originally named by Spanish settlers in the 18th century, it retained the name ''Point San Quentin'' on U.S. Coastal survey maps as late as 1869. By 1882, the land projecting from the southern tip of Mission Bay is shown on maps as Potrero Point, and commonly called ''The Potrero'', for the former

Rancho Potrero de San Francisco Rancho Potrero de San Francisco or Rancho Potrero Nuevo was approximately Mexican land grant in the present day Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The rancho included the land from the bay at Point San Quentin, (later called ...

that had included the point within its boundaries. In the early 1850s the site of the

Tubbs Tubbs is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:: * Alfred L. Tubbs, American businessman * Billy Tubbs, American college basketball coach. * F. Eugene Tubbs, American politician. * Greg Tubbs, American Major League Baseball player. * H ...

and Company

ropewalk A ropewalk is a long straight narrow lane, or a covered pathway, where long strands of material are laid before being twisted into rope. Due to the length of some ropewalks, workers may use bicycles to get from one end to the other. Many ropew ...

, in the mid-1860s it became the major shipbuilding site for San Francisco. Subsequently, the shoreline of the point along Mission Bay and San Francisco Bay was filled in. By 1880, Potrero Point had become the San Francisco center for heavy industry companies like the Atlas Iron Works,

Bethlehem Shipyard Bethlehem Steel Corporation Shipbuilding Division was created in 1905 when the Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, acquired the San Francisco shipyard Union Iron Works. In 1917 it was incorporated as Bethlehem Shipbuilding Co ...

, California Sugar Refinery, Pacific Rolling Mill, and the

Union Iron Works Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. ...

. These industries continued there through World War I. The

Dogpatch Dogpatch was the fictional setting of cartoonist Al Capp's classic comic strip ''Li'l Abner'' (1934–1977). ''Li'l Abner'' comic strip The inhabitants of Dogpatch were mostly lazy hillbillies, who usually wanted nothing to do with progress. ...

neighborhood is located on Potrero Point.

References

External links

1852 Coastal Survey Map showing Mission Bay and surrounds
About Mission Bay/Mission Creek from sfsailtours.com accessed March 29, 2015.
1857 Coastal Survey Map showing Mission Bay and surrounds, with additions to 1852 map to up to 1857
About Mission Bay/Mission Creek from sfsailtours.com accessed March 29, 2015. Headlands of California Landforms of San Francisco Landforms of the San Francisco Bay Area Point San Quentin {{SanFrancisco-geo-stub