Remnants of boozy village discovered beneath downtown San Francisco
By ANIFriday, January 7, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO - Archeologists have discovered dozens of relics from the 1800s underneath a parking lot in downtown San Francisco.
They have found dozens of vestiges-dolls, a piece of a tent, tableware and “many, many liquor bottles”-that tell stories dating as far back as 1848 under a roughly 100-square-foot portion of a parking lot near First and Minna streets by the future Transbay Transit Center.
Underneath the asphalt, archeologists rummaged through what used to be shopkeepers’ and entrepreneurs’ homes that once sat between two enormous sand dunes.
“This working class came from all over. Eleven feet down, there was tableware manufactured in Philadelphia and coins not minted as money that also came from Philadelphia,” the Examiner quoted lead archeologist Heather Price, as saying.
“And from the ground surface all the way to 12 feet below, we found fancy serving platters … and many, many liquor bottles,” said Price.
She said that they found pieces of a tent that roaming miners might have used on their way up to Gold Country.
“The supercool stuff was 12 feet deep. We got down to just immediately after the Gold Rush, like 1850 and maybe even late 1840s,” she said.
At that time, the shoreline of San Francisco Bay was about 11/2 blocks away. Then the 1906 earthquake and fire pulverized the homes, and the sand was leveled for industrial development. (ANI)
