San Francisco Relocation Guide - Antevia

Bernal Heights, San Francisco, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bernal Heights hill and microwave tower
The Bernal Heights neighborhood, familiarly called Bernal (rhymes with colonel), lies
to the south of San Francisco's Mission District. Its most prominent feature is the open
parkland and microwave tower on its large rocky hill. Bernal is bounded by Cesar
Chavez Street to the north, Mission Street to the west and freeways 280 and U.S. Route
101 to the south and east.
History
Bernal had its origin in an 1839 land grant to Don Jose Cornelio Bernal, who grazed his
cattle on what he called Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo. In 1860 the land
belonged to a French merchant, Francios Pioche, who subdivided it into smaller lots.
Bernal remained undeveloped, though, until its combination of bedrock with a lack of gas
or electricity spared it from the shaking and fires of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Some of the tiny earthquake cottages built to house refugees survive to this day. During
World War II the area saw another population surge thanks to its proximity to the San
Francisco Naval Shipyard at Hunters Point.
By the 1990s, Bernal's pleasant microclimate, traditional Victorian and Edwardian
architecture and freeway access to the peninsula and Silicon Valley led to a third wave of
migration. Bernal has not gentrified to the extent of its neighbor Noe Valley, but property