Shellmound Memorial - Ohlone Memorial Walkway -- Ohlone settlement

The Ohlone people made their home in this area tor thousands of years, living, fishing, and hunting along the shores of Temescal Creek where it flowed into San Francisco Bay. Ohlone shellmounds were massive mounds of shells, tools, bowls, animal bones, and sacred burials. The shellmounds tell the rich history of the daily life of the Ohlone people as they demonstrate the diet, size, population, and function of the village. When out on the bay, the Ohlone used the shellmounds as navigational points. They also used the mounds to communicate with other tribes; fires were lit a top the mounds to warn others when red tide entered the bay. The Emeryville shellmound was over three stories high and 350 feet in diameter.

The top was first sheared in the late 1800’s to create a dance pavilion where people literally danced on Ohlone graves. An amusement park was then built at the base of the mound. Decades later, the city of Emeryville agreed to level the shellmound to make way for a paint factory. Today, an outdoor shopping center sits on what used to be the biggest shellmound in the region. Residents of the area used the rich soil from above-ground shellmounds to pave roads, fill in parts of the bay, and fertilize gardens. This kind of destruction occurred all over the San Francisco Bay Area.