Everything is always changing and while changes can feel like challenges, there is always beauty to be found. For as long as I can remember I’ve been drawn to old abandoned places. I love wondering and questioning “what was life like here?”, “what happened here?”, “when was the day it all ended?”. The thought that at one time a place and space was filled and bustling and then either slowly or sometimes quickly and abruptly was abandoned and just left frozen in time is so fascinating. One day and that was it, someone walked away, stepped out the front door for the last time and then stillness. Just like that the space is changed forever. All that remains are little puzzle pieces to a picture of the past that can never be fully reconstructed, there is always something missing, a guess, a gap, a space, a mystery to fill, a story to create. Treasure Island is an example of a changing landscape that while it isn’t that old, it is filled with abandoned remnents of the past and in the process of change. Below is a photo essay of Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay Area taken in October 2020. Many of the old buildings still remain and are simply waiting to be removed for a newly developed version of the island in the future. Filled with peeled paint, rust and bursts of color the island begs to be remembered for what it once was, before it’s transformed to something new.
Treasure Island was initially built as an extension of Yerba Buena Island to serve as land for a future airport and to host the 1939 world’s fair, The Golden Gate International Exposition. At the time San Francisco wanted to celebrate the engineering marvels of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge, which were about to be completed. As the fair came to an end in 1940 the Navy began occupying the island to deploy troops to fight in WWII. The island remained a naval base until the 1990’s and is now in the process of being redeveloped.
You can learn more about the history and future of Treasure Island from this Bay Curious KQED two part segment “How Treasure Island Got Made - And Why” by Kevin Stark.
