Water Lots and (Un)Real Estate Lust

theresadonovanbrown
2 days ago
2 min read

Rebar Dangling From Jagged Edge at the End of Beach Street, Moss Beach, CA

Every time I think I have found the seaside house of my dreams, my penchant for real estate inspection (geotechnical investigations, really) reveals impending catastrophe. Whatever charming place I've Zillowed, bathed in the susurrant promises of nearby surf, the smell of the sea (dimethyl sulfide produced by zooplanktons grazing on phytoplankton blooms), and the glittering glory of ocean swells just waiting to be cut by a heart-shaped gray whale spout, turns out to be next in line to slide into the ocean, through some combination of erosion, landslide, earthquake fault lines, and sea level rise.

I take a twisted sort of comfort, though, in realizing how common, how universal, how pedestrian is my yearning for the romance of a seaside cottage. (See treacly paintings by Thomas Kinkade and his ilk). The wish to be by the sea does captivate a large swath of the human population and has done so since time immemorial. This drive has resulted in innumerable real estate follies the world over. Still, properties like those in Moss Beach or Bolinas, CA, (sites of my own recent real estate lust indulgences) that sit on top of or uncomfortably close to OBVIOUS landslide activity continue to rise in value until the water company cuts off their supply because of broken mains or the house is condemned. (See, for example, https://www.coastsidenews.com/news/moss-beach-residents-face-growing-geological-disaster/article_ef0f68a9-9909-41bf-84f7-453c7af61886.html)

And yet, we ocean-hungry seekers continue to turn blind eyes, build on tidal flats, demand sea walls and riprap to slow the inexorable advance of waves, and hope our access roads do not end up like the one depicted above at the end of Beach Street in Moss Beach.

Researching my next novel, which also will take place on the ocean lands and bay lands of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was stopped by this photo below, which I found in the treasure trove of Found SF. As depicted in the novel I am currently publishing, BAY LANDS, real estate lust has been a driving force in the dramas of people's lives in the San Francisco Bay Area for centuries, certainly since the arrival of colonizers. As Nancy J. Olmstead writes in her richly informative essay, "The Golden Era, 1848-1853," in FoundSF,

The city had 459 inhabitants in the latter part of June 1847; by the close of 1849 there were somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 people and “there was no such thing as a home to be found.

No, those were not houseboat berths. A real estate frenzy developed in San Francisco 175 years ago. It included selling inundated parcels of the actual bay, not even tidal mudflats, but fully submerged parcels, known as "water lots." There is a crazy history of speculation, court battles, and civic debt behind these shenanigans, but the result was the beginning (and the continuation to this day) of infilling of the San Francisco Bay to accommodate shoreline buildings and roads.

I urge readers interested in California's relationship with the coast, bayside and oceanside, to read CALIFORNIA AGAINST THE SEA: VISIONS FOR OUR VANISHING COASTLINE by Rosanna Xia.