The Treasures of Treasure Island Part I

I was going to do a brief Fun Filled Fact 'bout Treasure Island, the man-made island jutting out from Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the bay. Which, by the way, anchors the two sections of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  But in doing just the most basic research, I found a whole "treasure" trove (no pun intended) of information, worthy of its own article.

Treasure Island and the Bay Bridge

Treasure Island is almost one hundred years old but ask most San Franciscans about it and they will most likely inform you that it's that flat island we drive by all the time.  Construction on the 4000-acre island began in 1936, just as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was completed and only months before the Golden Gate Bridge had its grand opening.

Treasure Island author, Robert Louis Stevenson did live in San Francisco for a few years, and was even married here, but that is not where the name originated.  Through rumor and urban myths, it was believed that the dredging necessary to create the island unearthed millions of dollars in gold dust.  I suppose no one came up with a better name when they had the chance to and went with Treasure Island.

Built for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, like its predecessors, it had a theme.  San Francisco’s 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition was a response to the wildly successful 1893 Chicago World's Fair, The World's Columbian Exposition. 

The 1894 Exhibition showed the world that San Francisco, barely 40 years old, was an international destination for business and leisure. Once more, and unlike Chicago, San Francisco had a year-round temperate Mediterranean climate.

The 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrated the recently opened Panama Canal.  The world's fair also sent out the clarion call that less than a decade after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire leveled a third of the city, San Francisco had returned to the pantheon of great world cities.  The 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition highlighted the opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, celebrating these two marvels of modern engineering.  

In fact, it's hard to believe in the 21st. century but between 1934 and 1939 this city built the two longest suspension bridges in the world at that time, Treasure Island, Coit Tower, a modern transit center, and the San Francisco International Airport as we know it today.   

All of these were completed in the middle of the worst economic depression the world had ever seen.  By contrast, it took almost twenty years to rebuild the half of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge which collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

The Golden Gate International Exposition was scheduled to open over two consecutive summer seasons, between 1939 and 1940, and close during the winter months in between. Patrons who crossed the turnstiles at both the 1915 and 1939 World's Fairs, noticed a difference. 

In 1915 the World's Fair was much more prone to exposing visitors to other people from around the world, as well as other cultural events.  Visitors to the 1939 World's Fair said the international cultural exhibitions were there, but there seemed to be many more booths with games and burlesque shows, like a county fair.  Some felt it was a bit more garish than the 1915 World's Fair, more stocking than parasol.  Despite all that, 17 million visitors came and went.

When the fair opened for its first season on February 18, 1939, 23 nations had pavilions sharing their cultural heritage.  Sadly, many of the pavilions representing a number of European countries that opened the fair in1939, were closed by the time the fair shut its gates on September 29th, 1940, due to the Nazi German invasion of their borders.  One year those pavilions were open to the public, the next they were boarded up.