Treasure Island is an artificial island in the San Francisco Bay and a neighborhood in the City and County of San Francisco. Built in 1936–37 for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, the island was named by Clyde Milner Vandeburg, part of the Fair's public relation team. Its World's Fair site is a California Historical Landmark. Buildings there have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the historical Naval Station Treasure Island, an auxiliary air facility (for airships, blimps, dirigibles, planes and seaplanes), are designated in the Geographic Names Information System. Treasure Island is connected to Yerba Buena Island, another auxiliary island of San Francisco, by a causeway, creating access to Interstate 80.
Geography
The San Francisco census tract that includes Treasure Island extends up and down the San Francisco Bay and includes a small uninhabited tip of western Alameda Island. Yerba Buena and Treasure islands together have a land area of with – in 2010 – a total population of 2,500. Treasure Island alone is 393 acres. It is connected by a causeway to Yerba Buena Island, which in turn has on- and off-ramps to Interstate 80 on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
The island has a marina and a bikeway connecting to the newly completed Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Raised walkways circumscribe nearly the entire island along five streets (Avenue of the Palms, Perimeter Road, Avenue N, Pan American World Airways Esplanade and Clipper Cove Way, formerly known as 1st Street).
History
Prior to the island's construction by the United States government, "Yerba Buena Shoals" of rock north of the transbay island had less than clearance and were a shipping hazard. The island was constructed by emplacing of quarried rock in the shoals for the island/causeway perimeter rock walls (a freshwater reservoir was quarried in the rock of Yerba Buena Island). Approximately of dredged bay sand filled the interior, was mitigated from salt, and then topsoil was used for planting 4,000 trees, 70,000 shrubs, and 700,000 flowering plants. Facility construction had begun by March 4, 1937, when two hangars were being built.
On February 18, 1939, the 'Magic City' opened with a "walled city" of several fair ground courts: a central Court of Honor, a Court of the East, a Port of Trade Winds on the south and on the north: a Court of Pacifica, a 12,000-car parking lot, and the adjacent National Building, the $1.5M Federal Building, the Hall of Western States, the $800K administration building, various exhibit halls for industries (e.g., "Machinery, Science, and Vacationland"), and two hangars planned for post-exposition use by Pan Am flying boats (e.g., the China Clipper through 1944) using the Port of Trade Winds Harbor later referred to as Clipper Cove between the two islands. In addition to Building 2 (Hangar 2) and Building 3 (Hangar 3), remaining exposition buildings include Building 1 (Streamline Moderne architecture) intended after the expo as the Pan American World Airways terminal. The expo's Magic Carpet Great Lawn also remains.)
A couplet from the song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady", in the Marx Brothers' 1939 film, At The Circus, reads "Here is Grover Whalen unveilin' the Trylon/Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island", citing, in the Trylon and Treasure Island, two prominent features of international civic events happening that year (as the 1939 New York World's Fair vied for tourist patrons with the Golden Gate International Expo).
Military base
Treasure Island was originally intended to become a second airport for San Francisco, augmenting the existing San Francisco Municipal Airport, now SFO. But with war looming, the Navy moved in.
Naval Station (NAVSTA) Treasure Island began under a 1941 war lease as a United States Navy "reception center". On April 17, 1942, the U.S. Navy cut short an ownership dispute with the city by seizing the island. The Navy eventually compensated the city with $10 million in improvements to the existing airport, including reclaiming 93 acres of land, and postwar ownership of all military improvements. (A widely cited Navy report gave rise to the urban legend that the Navy swapped the island for land on which the city then built SFO. In fact, the airport had been operating in its current location since 1927.)