...is what Jerry and I did over Fourth of July weekend. That's the island the Bay Bridge tunnel goes through. You hardly notice it from a speeding car. I got a closer look.
The island is steep and vaguely round. Lots of eucalpytus trees, native plants, chain-linked fences, and former military housing terraced up the steep sides, much of that now rented out to whoever wants to live in the middle of the bay without a grocery store. The views are startling: everywhere you turn you see San Francisco or the East Bay Hills or Marin County or the Golden Gate. There's a small cove of a beach and an isthmus that connects Yerba Buena to Treasure Island, landfill built on the shoals of Yerba Buena for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. One way or another, Yerba Buena Island has been a military outpost since the 1870's. The Navy left, but the Coast Guard is still active.
What we were doing there: Counting individuals and species for the San Francisco Fourth of July Butterfly Count. These counts happen nationwide at many localities within a month of the Fourth of July. It is very eccentric and Gary Larson-ish, people with nets and binoculars looking for butterflies and taking notes. I can hardly tell one butterfly from another, but my eyes are better than Jerry's, so I spotted, and he counted. All over San Francisco that day, people were counting in parks, gardens, and weedy patches. Yerba Buena Island now counts as part of San Francisco.
High point of the day: Snooping around Quarters One, otherwise known as the "Nimitz House," a big white Classical Revival pile located near the water on the northeast side of Yerba Buena Island. Built in 1900, it has pillars and dormer windows and a broad, friendly porch. It no longer affords the view it did before the Bay Bridge was built in the 1930's. Then the view was of the East Bay hills and ferries plying the waters between Oakland and San Francisco. Now the view is of the underpinnings of the old and new approaches of the Bay Bridge. And let me tell you, the new approach may seem sleek viewed from above, but underneath it looks like a demented organ, hundreds of slender pipes holding it up.
You can get inside the Nimitz House only if you attend an event organized by the designated caterer-manager, but I checked out what I could through undraped windows. Renovated and impressive. A hundred people can be seated at round tables downstairs, I read online. In case you're wondering.
The house is named after Chester Nimitz, a five-star admiral who commanded the Pacific Fleet during World War II. He signed for the U.S. when Japan formally surrendered on a military ship in Tokyo Bay. After a long and distinguished career, he moved into Quarters One, where he died in 1966. Long-time Bay Area-ites think of Freeway 880 between San Jose and Oakland as "The Nimitz Freeway," but I greatly prefer his house.
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