The Think Tank

A Week in the Bay

Hey guys. Here are a few pictures from San Francisco.

The center picture was taken from the boat on the way to Alacatraz island. That sky show was incredible.

Fort Point is located right under the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. It has been guarding the bay in some form or other since the 1600’s. The cannon in the center picture is named San Martin. It was cast in Peru in 1684 and, more than one hundred years later was placed here to defend the bay. Of course at that time this part of the world was Spanish territory, and the Fort was known as as Castillo de San Joaquin.

The current fort was built by the US Army from 1870-1876. It was intended to house sixteen 40 pound cannon, but due to funding problems only recieved 5, plus an assortment of smaller artillery pieces. Combined with similar weapons from Fort Baker the Golden Gate was all but impenetrable due to the overlapping fields of fire. Eventually the 40 pounders were replaced by larger, more accurate 20 inch cannon placed farther up and down the coast. I took a picture of the various kinds of ammunition that has  protected the Bay over the centuries. Note that the largest shell, the 20 incher, could be fired more than 10 miles out to sea.

The scallops seen on the floor between the arches are where the rails for the cannon were mounted, allowing the weapons to swivel around to aid in targeting an enemy. As of the time the Fort closed, none of the guns were ever fired at an hostile ship.

I also discovered another lighthouse for Mom’s collection. Fort Point is one of a half dozen or so lighthouses that mark the trecherous passages through the Golden Gate.

Another of the lighthouses safeguarding the Golden Gate channel is Point Bonita Lighthouse. It’s construction was finished in 1855 and the 2nd order Fresnal (pronounced “fre’nel”) lens mounted in the lantern room has been constantly in use since 1855. I have visted most of the light houses up and down the Oregon and Washington coasts and this is the only one I have seen that still uses
the original lens. Pretty impressive.

Another interesting anectdote about Point Bonita Light is it’s fog horn. Today it has an electric fog horn housed in a building just below the lighthouse, but in 1855 when it was built, there was no such thing. The problem was solved by the addition of a
cannon. On foggy nights, every 30 minutes the Cannon Keeper would fire the weapon. There is a letter on display from the first Cannon Keeper complaining that he had been firing his fog horn every thirty minutes for three solid days without relief, as the lightkeepers refused to help. Soon after, an assisstant Cannon Keeper was added to the station.

I hit a couple other landmarks that afternoon: the tight, twisting bricks on Lombard Street, and the elegant Coit Tower.

From the top of the Tower I was met with some spectacular views of the city.

Above are some of the pictures from Alcatraz. As you can see from the photo’s, the sunset that night was spectacular. These shots were not altered at all, that’s exactly how it looked. I’ve rarely seen a show so brilliant and varying in color.

The “Indians Welcome” graphiti is one of the first things that great people at the dock, a left over from a 19 month period of time in the 1970’s when Native American’s occupied the island in an attempt to bring the the plight of the Indian Nation to the limelight.

The center picture on the bottom row is one of the 500 or so cells that made up the cellhouse of Alcatraz. I was amazed at how small they were, smaller than I had expected even knowing they were tiny. They measured about 6-1/2 feet long, six feet wide and seven feet high. That was it. The prisoners were confined to their cells 18 hours aday, unless they were not on a work assignment, in which case they were in their cells twenty-three hours a day. It was impossible to comprehend what it must have been like to spend twenty years or more locked in a cell that size, twenty-three hours a day.

The cell with the peeling paint was the home of the legendary Al “Scarface” Capon.

The cell on the top left, Cell D-42, belonged to Robert “The Bird Man” Stroud for six years, until he was moved to the infirmary where he remained until his death twelve years later. D block was reserved for the most violent and disruptive inmates,
or those requiring treatment. Below The Birdman’s cell were the nine “Solitary” cells known as “the Hole”. These cells were slightly larger then the others, but the inmates would be locked behind a solid steel door 24 hours a day, and kept in absolite darkness. A trip to the Hole could last for a period of days or weeks.

The last picture is looking down C block, known as Michigan Avenue. This is where George “Machine Gun” Kelly stayed for his time at Hotel Alcatraz.

On May 2nd, 1946 six prisoners conspired to escape. The leader was a man named Bernie Coy. He worked as a librarian, which allowed him to cirulate amongst the prisoners under the auspices of delivering reading material. He used this advantage to plan their escape. He’d noted that for a certain period of time each day there were only two guards in the cellblock, one on the floor, and one in the “gun alley”, a fenced-in catwalk that overlooked the cellblock. The gun alley was the only place weapons were allowed inside the cellhouse. Coy had fashioned a bending device, and on May 2nd, when the guards were both at other locations, he scaled that very section of gun alley, all the way to the top where he used his bender to spread the curved bars at the top just enough to him to skinny through. Then he overpowered the guard in the catwalk, took his keys and weapons and freed his accomplices. The only thing that stopped them from escaping into the yard and their supposed freedom was the steel door below gun alley. They successfully unlocked it, but the door jammed, leaving them trapped in the cell house and leading to a three
day standoff.

It ended when a combined force of Marines, San Francisco police officers and Alcatraz correctional officers stormed the cellhouse, killing two of the prisoners and capturing the remainder. In advance of the charge, US Marines opened holes in the roof and dropped explosives and gas grenades into the cellhouse. I got pictures of one of the holes in the roof and the scaring on the floor and walls that are still visible more than sixty years later.

All told 14 guards were shot, and two guards and two prisoners were killed.

Also of note, the rope and pulley system hanging from gun alley was used to transport keys from the guard on the floor to the guards in gun alley, thereby eliminating the possibilty of a guard being overpowered and having his keys taken.

The movie “Escape from Alcatraz” depicts the real life escape of three prisoners from Alcatraz Island. Using crude tools, spoons according to popular lore, Frank Morris and two brothers, John and Clarence Anglin, managed to widen the air vents
in their cells. They fashioned fake vent plates to cover their handiwork, and using pilferred hair from the barber shop and crude plaster molds made false heads to fool the guards during the evening headcount. On the night of June 11, 1962, they shimmied through their enlarged vent holes into the utility corridor pictured above, climbed to the top of the cell house, went through a ventilator and down to the waters edge. No one ever saw hide nor hair of them again. The common belief is that all three parished in the 50 degree, shark infested waters between Alcatraz and San Francisco. Not many people could have swam that mile and a half and lifed to tell about it. But, popular lore insists that they made it. Just like Butch and Sundance, it’s one of those tales no one will ever truly know the end of.

The picture on the right is of the kitchin. Take note of the knife box. Every knife, fork and other sharp object was hung on boards like the one shown, with black stenciled outlines to aid in inventory. I thought that was interesting.

Alcatraz was a wonderful experience, one that I would very much like to repeat again in the future. As is so often the case, I did not plan enough time to fully explore all that there as to offer and had to cut my trip short when they closed up for the night. One of these days I will come back, and I would highly recommend that anyone who reads this do the same.

Here’s a picture of the Alcatraz’s water tower and power plant. Both of these facilities are a requirement for the island, as there are no power lines running to it and the water in the bay is seawater.

And finally, the Alcatraz Lighthouse. The original lighthouse on Alcatraz Island was the first lighthouse on the West Coast.

The new light was built in 1909 when contstruction of the prison began.

The original lighthouse remained on Alcatraz until it was burned during the Indian occupation. Many fires broke out and a number of building were burned during this time, including the powerhouse. With the loss of the powerhouse, the lighthouse,
which was now electric, was rendered useless. This marked the first time since 1853 that the Alcatraz light was not active.

As I mentioned earlier, San Francisco Bay is treacherous to navigate, and without the lighthouses to guide ships, wrecks are frequent. Shortly after the light on Alcatraz was extinguised, two tankers collided do to navigational difficulties, filling
the bay with thousands of tons of oil. It was the final straw that broke the Indian’s back. Soon after, the Coast Guard was called in to remove the last of the protesters.

I finally had a tripod sent from home so I could take some night time pictures, so here they are! There was just a hint of fog in the air, so they have a little bit of a misty quality.

I finished up work Friday evening and hooked up with Mom and Judy Saturday morning. Judy had some things in storage in Santa Rosa, so the plan was we would hook up over the weekend, maybe bum around San Francisco for the afternoon, then load up the van they rented to bring the stuff back to Portland. But as usual, our plans were shot in the ass. their van blew a transmission on the way down, and by the time their new one was delivered, it had used up all of the time allotted for fun. They picked me up, and
we headed for Santa Rosa, where we packed the van full, then set out again for Portland. I wound up getting the primo seat, too: the overstuffed chair in the back. It was pretty comfy.

Along the way we went through the Avenue of the Giants, taking us through the wonderous redwood forest. We stopped and saw the
Drive Thru Tree and the Famous One Log House. It is a hallowed out log, measuring 7′ high and 32′ long on the inside, which
has been turned into a small cabin. It came from a 2100 year old redwood tree that took 8 months to hallow out and build, and it weighs in at 42 tons! Talk about a log cabin, eh?

We also stumbled across this little herd of elk on our way through the Redwoods National Park. And shortly thereafter, we found some really neat victorian houses in Eureka.

The Lighthouse in the above group is Battery Point Lighthouse in Crescent City, California. It is one of the most photographed lighthouses on the west coast. During high tide, this lighthouse sits atop an island, as the spit of land leading up to it
is submerged.