Bayview's history: food, farms & families

The full history of our neighborhood's role in food provision for the City of San Francisco could (and probably should) fill a book.

It wasn't long ago that most homes in the neighborhood included a backyard garden and some livestock. Remnants of those days are everywhere: converted chicken coops, aging Mediterranean plum trees, and the rusty tractor (pictured) that was just recently removed from what was a family farming operation on Williams Avenue.

From the slaughter houses in Dogpatch, named for the opportunistic dogs that lived off the slaughter house scraps, to Hunters Point Hill where the Hunter family grazed animals on the hillside in full view of the burgeoning town below, to the Chinese shrimp vendors and Italian fishermen along the water front, local food production and distribution to residents in the neighborhood and beyond its borders was common.

See more Bayview history online.