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Sand Dunes and Low Bars (of the Drinking Kind)

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[Bernalwood's overlay of Glenn Lym's map; The Willows, via Burrito Justice]

More fun with maps and the geeks we love: architect and San Francisco architectural historian Glenn Lym put together topographical maps of what the town looked like, mid-19th Century and south of Market Street. Lym spent ten months translating historic data into CAD images. Lots of sand dunes! Todd Lappin at Bernalwood and Burrito Justice took the maps and laid over their own local history- hills and wetlands now missing from Bernal Heights and canyons that no longer exist in The Mission. Presumably the hills went to fill in the wetlands bordering the bay. Eric takes it another step with an exhaustive post about the Willows, a once-suburban roadhouse and inn located at the edge of a gulch at Valencia and 18th Streets. By the 1870's, Mark Twain would write

?the dingy horrors of San Francisco’s pleasure grove, the Willows. Sounds like out kind of place. Hours of highly-detailed online escape while you're pretending to work.
· My Head Up Above the Sand [Glenn Lym]
· Visualize the Topography of Bernal Heights in 1853 (Hint: More Wet, Even More Hills! [Bernalwood]
· The Willows & 18th Street Ravine in 3D [Burrito Justice]