1894 Britton / Rey Map of San Francisco Water System

A scarce and important 1894 Britton and Rey map of San Francisco highlighting the water system owned by the Spring Valley Water Works, arguably the most powerful monopoly in California at the time of publication. However, it was also facing public criticism and an insufficient supply of water for the city, prompting extremely ambitious plans in the following years.

A Closer Look

This map displays the reservoir, aqueduct, and pump network of the Spring Valley Water Works, which controlled most of the water supply for San Francisco. The company's reservoirs, with the exception of Lake Merced, are listed in a table at the top left. The larger reservoirs seen here (Laguna Honda, College Hill, University Mound, the Lombard St. Reservoir, here as Upper Russian Hill Reservoir) are still active and remain an important part of the city water supply, though in some cases they have been covered with concrete or greenspace (parks). Others have been converted to other uses, such as the Lower Russian Hill Reservoir, which was redeveloped as Francisco Park and opened in 2022. Lake Merced is currently used as recreational space but remains part of the city's emergency non-drinking water supply.

San Francisco's firefighting infrastructure is also referred to, with symbols for firehouses, water towers, and the like indicated at the top-left. The 'Fire Boat' referred to at the Ferry Building is the Governor Irwin, which was one of two fireboats to fight (rather feebly) the conflagration of 1906. The map is also notable for indicating elevation using contour lines throughout, giving a sense of the rapid changes in elevation across San Francisco's hills and valleys.

Much of the development in the southern and western parts of the city is speculative; in fact, at the time, there were only a smattering of structures in places such as the Sunset District. Still, the ultimate street grid largely corresponded with that planned out here. The map includes a very early appearance of the 'Affiliated Colleges' (the medical, pharmacy, and dentistry programs of the University of California) at Parnassus in the Inner Sunset. The land had been donated by local millionaire (and mayor of the city in the mid-1890s), Adolph Sutro. However, Sutro did not donate this land until July 1895 (the schools did not fully relocate there until 1898), suggesting that this map was actually printed a bit later than the given date of 1894.

How Long Does It Take to Build Housing in San Francisco?

One curious feature of the map is the large red block along Ocean Avenue towards the bottom left. This land was purchased by the Spring Valley Water Works in 1894 to build a reservoir, but the company realized that it would be more profitable to lease instead. In the following decades, it housed a dog racing track and an aviation field and was used as suburban farmland. In 1933, in tandem with the Hetch Hetchy Project (discussed below), the city bought the land with the intention of building a reservoir. However, the Great Depression and World War II intervened, and the military used a partially dug reservoir as a training ground instead. After the war, the lot was divided, with part going to the adjacent City College of San Francisco (CCSF) and the rest made into a turnaround for the city's MUNI public transportation system. In the late 1950s, San Francisco reclaimed the land and tried again to build the reservoir, but the project was abandoned after construction was mostly complete. Instead, the paved depression was used as a parking lot by CCSF.

The site's future has been debated ever since. In the early 1980s, a large housing development was proposed to ease the lack of housing, but CCSF decried the loss of hundreds of parking spots, and voters rejected the idea. Since then, CCSF and the city have worked to build some housing and retail space on the former reservoir site, though most of it has continued to be used for parking. In the 2010s, momentum built again for a large mixed-income housing development called the Balboa Reservoir Project. All preliminary advisory and regulatory work was completed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, halting progress on the project. Ground has yet to be broken and, as with other housing projects in a city desperate for more residential units, the project remains perpetually 'in progress.'

Almost a Monopoly

One area of the city where the Spring Valley Water Works was not dominant was in the Mission District, near center here, where a successful Forty-Eighter named John Center had bought up most of the land and resisted the company's monopoly, dropping wells to develop his own independent water supply for the neighborhood. During the 1906 earthquake and fire, when the Spring Valley's system was overburdened, a single fire hydrant (since dubbed the 'Golden Hydrant') at 20th St. and Church St. fed by Center's wells provided sufficient water to firefighters, saving the Mission from the destruction seen elsewhere.

The Spring Valley Water Works

The Spring Valley Water Works, later the Spring Valley Water Company, was largely responsible for building the modern water system of San Francisco and exercised a virtual monopoly over the city's water supply for decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As San Francisco emerged from the Gold Rush in the 1850s, city planners were confronted with the problem of providing clean water to the growing population. The city hardly resembled its current form, with parks full of eucalyptus and redwood trees; instead, it was barren and arid, its western half mostly sand dunes. When the California legislature passed a law allowing for eminent domain over land and water rights to provide a water source for cities, various entrepreneurs aimed to be San Francisco's sole water provider. Backed by the expansive eminent domain law, the Spring Valley Water Works, led by George Ensign, acquired rights to Lake Merced and its watershed in San Mateo County and built a series of dams and aqueducts.

The company quickly delivered on its goal of supplying water to San Francisco but was entangled in financial and political skullduggery in the process, seeing off potential rivals and an attempted public takeover by the City Supervisors. The company also acquired vast real estate holdings throughout San Francisco, especially in its less developed southern and western sections, based on dubious claims of the lands being essential for the water system (that is, until they were sold to real estate developers). City residents developed a special disdain for the company, complaining of high rates and poor service. One major problem was that by the end of the 19th century, the San Francisco had outgrown the water infrastructure built in the 1860-70s. The city's thirst for water was so strong that the Spring Valley Water Works began drawing water from across the Bay, in the Alameda Creek Watershed, depleting East Bay farmers' water supply.

The situation was unsustainable. When James Duval Phelan (1861 - 1930), a wealthy Progressive, became mayor in 1897, he championed the construction of a massive dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, some 170 miles from San Francisco, as the city's future water source. The plan was given added impetus after the 1906 San Francisco Fire and Earthquake, when the system of pipes and hydrants built by the Spring Valley Water Works failed, supplying only a trickle of water to exasperated firefighters. Still, the project was delayed for years, largely because the valley sat in Yosemite National Park and was, therefore, meant to remain undeveloped. Construction on the dam at Hetch Hetchy finally began in 1914, was completed in 1923, but only made operational in 1934. In 1930, with its monopoly due to be broken by a public utility, the Spring Valley Water Company sold out to the city.

Publication History and Census

This map was printed by the prolific local lithographic firm Britton and Rey. It is dated 1894, but as mentioned above, it was most likely printed a bit later, perhaps in late 1895 or 1896. No author is identified, but the map must have been prepared by the Spring Valley Water Works itself. It is quite scarce, being listed in the OCLC among the holdings of the California Historical Society, St. Patrick's Seminary and University, and Stanford University (part of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection). An earlier map with the same title was printed by the Dakin Publishing Co. in 1887 and 1891 but differs significantly in appearance and content.