Without the technological optimism of the 1930s and 1940s, Treasure
Island would not exist. The WPA created Treasure Island out of 29 million cubic yards
of dredged mud and fill from the bottom of the bay and the Sacramento
River delta in 1937 on the shoals of Yerba Buena Island, a natural
island roughly midway between San Francisco and Oakland. The name “Treasure Island” was a reference to the region’s Gold Rush era history:
the upper reaches of the Sacramento River and its tributaries were the
area of the state whose riches attracted a great migration to San
Francisco in the first place. The initial purpose of Treasure Island
was to attract even more people to the burgeoning city: its first use
was to host the 1939-1940 World’s Fair, named the Golden Gate
International Exposition. It was designed to be a celebration of much
of San Francisco’s other advancements in infrastructure, such as the
Golden Gate and Bay bridges. As the newsreel video below demonstrates,
these, along with the formation of the island itself, were seen as
signs of continued progress and technological advancement.
Once Treasure Island was finished hosting the Golden
Gate Exposition, it was planned to serve as San Francisco’s
International airport. However, when the Golden Gate Exposition ended
in 1940, the island became a part of plans for possible war in the
Pacific. The Navy, wanting Treasure Island’s strategic position in the
middle of the Bay, struck an agreement with the city of San Francisco
to trade Mills Field, a larger area south of San Francisco, with the
city. (Mills Field would later become San Francisco International
Airport.) Building 1, which served as the administrative headquarters
of the Golden Gate Exposition and was built to become an eventual
airport terminal, instead was transformed into the communication and command center for the Pacific theatre during World War II.
During this time, Treasure Island was host to another technology
milestone; the first commercial trans-Pacific airline service, on the
Pan-Am China Clipper seaplanes. After World War II ended, the Navy
continued to use the island as a training center and regional
headquarters until 1993, when the congressional Base Realignment and
Closure Commission slated it to be part of a wave of decommissioning.
In 1997, the Navy left, leaving 400 open acres in the center of the 6th
largest metropolitan area in the country. Since then, not much has
changed on the island. 1,500 people currently live on the island,
in the same houses and barracks that used to house Navy recruits. The
island now hosts a scattered array of uses: a Job Corps campus (a
vocational program run by the U.S. Department of Labor for 16 to
24-year-olds), low-income housing, movie studios, a field for youth
baseball and softball games, an annual weekend music festival.
As of May 2010, the city is buying Treasure Island from the Navy for
$105 million, and attempting to win final approval for redevelopment
into a sustainable urban neighborhood atop 29 million cubic yards of
fill. Once again, the government is hoping to attract people to
Treasure Island with technological innovation and the promise of wealth.
This video, from
the Prelinger Archive, shows narrated newsreel footage from the 1939 Golden Gate
Exposition.
Figure 2a and 2b: The 1939-40 Golden
Gate Exposition
Figure 2c: Building 1
Figure 2d:
Currently, many of the military barracks on Treasure Island sit
unoccupied.
Last updated: 5/7/2010
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55105 USA · 651-696-6000
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