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Steamboat Point

headland marking the northeastern limit of Mission Bay, on San Francisco Bay, named for the shipyards that built and repaired steamboats there during the 1850s to the mid 1860s

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 3, 2025
Entity authorityQ21196778
Source-derived summary

Steamboat Point a headland marking the northeastern limit of Mission Bay, on San Francisco Bay. It was named for the shipyards that built and repaired steamboats there during the 1850s to the mid 1860s.

History

The first reference to Steamboat Point appeared on the 1852 U.S. Coast Survey Map of San Francisco, southeast of Third and Townsend Streets. H.B. Tichenor's marine railway at his shipyard for repairing ships, (the first on the Pacific coast), was shown at Second and Townsend, jutting into the bay. On the stretch of South Beach between Tichenor's railway and into the marsh just west of the point were located the boatyards of famed steamboat builders John G. North, Domingo Marcucci, Patrick H. Tiernan and others who constructed and repaired many and most of the best of the fleet of sternwheel and sidewheel steamboats and ferries that plied the bays and rivers of California, Oregon and Washington Territory. It was also the city's prime shipbuilding location until the mid-1860s, when the shipyards gradually moved south across the Mission Bay to Point San Quentin (or Potrero Point). Subsequently, the shore line along the bay was rapidly filled in leaving only a ship channel for Mission Creek and Steamboat Point a small hill inland from San Francisco Bay.

References

External links

1852 Coastal Survey Map showing Mission Bay and surrounds About Mission Bay/Mission Creek from sfsailtours.com accessed March 29, 2015. Shows Steamboat Point, circa 1852.

1857 Coastal Survey Map showing Mission Bay and surrounds, with additions to 1852 map to up to 1857 About Mission Bay/Mission Creek from sfsailtours.com accessed March 29, 2015.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Steamboat Point” as headland marking the northeastern limit of Mission Bay, on San Francisco Bay, named for the shipyards that built and repaired steamboats there during the 1850s to the mid 1860s. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1852, 2015, 1857—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Steamboat, Point and headland can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as headland marking the northeastern limit of Mission Bay, on San Francisco Bay, named for the shipyards that built and repaired steamboats there during the 1850s to the mid 1860s. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q21196778. Authority coordinates are 37.778, -122.389. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1852, 2015 and 1857.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Steamboat Point” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.