| Located
along Stuart Street, between Harrison and Folsom, almost directly
beneath the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge, this
site contains the remnants of Charles Hare's mid -
1850s ship breaking yard. By the height of the Gold Rush era,
the waters of Yerba Buena Cove (as San Francisco's harbor
was known at that time) was clogged with the rotting hulks of
hundreds of ships that had transported the 'Argonauts'
to California. Upon arrival, passengers and crews alike had
abandoned many of these vessels. . |
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Charles
Hare was an entrepreneur who realized that these unwanted
vessels, which were worthless while sitting intact in the
harbor, could be salvaged and sold piecemeal for a handsome
profit. With this goal in mind, he scrapped numerous abandoned,
superannuated 'Forty-niners' at his
ship breaking yard at the foot of Harrison Street. During
1988, archaeological field investigations at the Hills Plaza
site yielded hundreds of ship's timbers and metal fittings,
among which had been lost or discarded by Charles Hare's
workers during the salvaging process
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