San Francisco Relocation Guide - Antevia

Babies in Hunters Point are 2.5 times more likely to die in their first year than those in
other areas of San Francisco. [2]
One of the city's current projects with this neighborhood is the Third Street Light Rail
Project, expanding mass transit system into less serviced neighborhoods.
Hunters Point also has a unique microclimate - the warmest in all of foggy San Francisco,
often never experienced by most of the city's residents.
Many community groups, such as the India Basin Neighborhood Association work with
community members, other organizations and city wide agencies to strengthen and
improve this diverse part of San Francisco.
History of the Shipyard
Main article: San Francisco Naval Shipyard
Hunter's Point as a community grew up around the two graving docks purchased and
upbuilt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by the Union Iron Works,
owned by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company, located at Potrero Point. The original
docks were built on solid rock. In 1916, the drydocks were thought to be the largest
drydocks in the world, for the time. At a length of over 1000 feet, they were said to large
enough to accommodate the largest warships and passenger steamers afloat. Soundings
showed an off shore depth of sixty-five feet. The Navy used the docks as a mid-site
between San Diego and Bremerton, Washington. Much of the shoreline was extended by
landfill extensions into the San Francisco Bay during the early 20th century. The Navy
recognized the importance of shipbuilding and repair in the San Francisco bay and began
negotiating for use and apropriation of the Hunter's Point Drydocks during World War
One. A Congressional hearing on Pacific Coast Naval Bases was held in San Francisco in
1920 at San Francisco City Hall wherein city representatives, Mayor Rolph and City
Engineer O'Shaughnessy and others testified on behalf of permanently siting the Navy in
the Hunter's Point.
The land was again appropriated by the United States Navy at the onset of World War II
and became one of the major shipyards of the west coast. Many workers, including
African Americans, moved into the area to work at this shipyard and other wartime
related industries in the area. After the war, the area remained a naval base and
commercial shipyard, as many blue collar industries moved here. The Navy closed the
shipyard and Naval base in 1994 and gave it back to the city. Right now, there is a
renaissance of the Hunters Point Shipyard.
As in most industrial zones of the era, Hunter's Point has had a succession of coal and oil
fired power generation facilities, and these have left a legacy of pollution, both from
smokestack effluvients and leftover byproducts that were dumped in the vicinity.