Nineteenth Century Shoreline of Emeryville

The position of the shoreline where Emeryville met the San Francisco Bay is shown here on this map overlay from 1878. The coastline ran roughly along existing Shellmound Street. This entire area along the street was covered with a beautiful willow grove that was considered one of the finest recreation areas in the East Bay at the turn of the Twentieth Century. The willow trees were also an important part of why the Ohlone settled in the area — the branches of the trees were how they framed their homes, as they provided both strength and flexibility.

After the the dam was added upstream to create Lake Temescal to provide water for the growing region, the stream stopped delivering silt — a major constituent of soil — to the shoreline, and there began to be costal erosion in the area. Silt deposits at the mouth of streams provide a great deal of nutrients and ground for plants, building a wetland ecosystem. The destruction of such ecosystems is a regular byproduct of damming waterways.