We wondered how much email would come in over the correct identity of what Google Maps like to call the "China Basin Water Channel" (above) which we always thought of as Mission Creek. We'd really like to know why Berry Street is called Berry Street and not Melon Way or Mango Road, but a reader came up with the following riparian factoids:
Mission Creek is the channel along the southeast side there. It leads out to China Basin, which has been obnoxiously renamed "McCovey Cove." I like Willie McCovey, but do we have to rename our historic waterfront geography for him? He never played there. This same Mission Creek channel captures the water of the former creek that descends in a culvert from Eureka Valley and the Mission along 18th Street and then Division St. For those too young, or too uninterested, Willie McCovey was one of baseball's great hitters. A creek in Eureka Valley? Makes sense- the 1855 map after the jump shows a creek south of Mission Dolores to the original shoreline at Townsend Street, already laid out over what would become landfill. We love that SoMa was once called "Pleasant Valley."
· Willie McCovey [Baseball Hall of Fame]
· Berry Street [Curbed SF]
· Early map of San Francisco [BoatingSF]