San Francisco Street Railway Tracks Historic Context Statement

From the Gold Rush until after World War II, San Francisco was a foremost industrial center on the West Coast. Much of the waterfront was dominated by manufacturing plants, warehouses, and finger piers. Linking these facilities together was a network of street-level railroad tracks installed by the California Belt Railroad and several private railroads, including the Southern Pacific, Western Pacific, Ocean Shore, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.

As San Francisco deindustrialized after World War II, these railroads gradually pulled out of the city, one-by-one, with the California Belt Railroad ending operations in the mid-1990s. Over the last few decades, SFPW has removed most of the street-level tracks from public rights-of-way, leaving little evidence of this once-important part of San Francisco’s industrial infrastructure.

In 2017, ICF, which had a term contract with SFPW, hired VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting to prepare a historic context statement documenting the history of freight railroad operations in San Francisco, as well as identifying and assessing all remaining above-ground track segments of this once-vast network. The purpose of the report was to assist SFPW determine which remaining segments may have historical significance as the agency moves forward on removing the final remaining tracks from the city’s streets.