Wednesday 25th April 2007. San Francisco, The Republic of California.

San Francisco Bay formed at the end of the last ice age when a river valley flooded and Alcatraz is actually the rocky summit of a submerged hill...think of the topography of this area.

In more recent times California became the 31st State of the Union in November 1850. The immediate background to this being that American settlers on the northern frontier of what was then Mexico had declared themselves an independent republic in 1846 raising the Bear Flag on June 14th.

The Presidio of San Francisco had infact been the northern bastion of the Spanish Empire from 1776 until the Mexican Revolution in 1822.

Today Alcatraz is an isolated island that presents a unique ecosystem of flora and fauna brought to the island throughout its history. The island is now a haven for birds who can live here predator free and so it offers a protected home today for garden archeology. In many ways the island with its layers of history tells the tale of a developing nation.


Behind the pier building here on the Embarcadero stands Robert Arneson's Yin and Yang sculpture. Arneson was a founding father of the contemporary ceramic sculpture movement using humour and satire to confront and explore moral and ethical concerns in clay, bronze and other media with yin and yang being part of his 'Egghead Series'.

The first bridge I catch sight of in San Francisco is the one I come to view as the more attractive. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge or simply Bay Bridge was opened in 1936 (it is older than the Golden Gate) to link the city with Contra Costa and Alameda counties. At 8.5 miles the bridge is a suspension/cantilever structure with the divide from cantilever to suspension being a tunnel through Yerba Buena Island.

I head out along the piers today for Pier 33 and a journey to Alcatraz. The first thing I notice when stepping onto the island is the smell of fish?

Anyway, Alcatraz became a national park in 1972 ostensibly because of its military history, being the first permanent fort on the West Coast...

However, there is a little more to this...

In 1969 Indians (as Native Americans were then called) occupied the island to prevent it being sold to a private developer...

Were they here because this was the home of the first lighthouse on America's West Coast?
Were they here because of the Military era (1853-1933) with Fortress Alcatraz built to protect San Francisco from foreign invaders?
Were they here because the army later constructed a military prison for convicted soldiers and prisoners of war?
Were they here because this was the site of arguably the most famous federal penitentiary and maximum security prison (1934-1963) in American history?...
Or were they here from 1969-1971 as Native American political activists who for nineteen months called national and international attention to native American civil rights?

Most tourists are certainly here because of the federal penitentiary era, even though the majority of prisoners on Alcatraz were infact in the US military period and thus not civilians.