F I R S TP R E V780NEXTLAST

Renaming the Marina District
Before it was the upscale Marina District, this waterfront neighborhood on the city's northern shore was known as Crabville-by-the-Bay, Harbor View, and Gas House Cove, after the old San Francisco Gas Light Company, a coal-gas manufacturing plant that sat on this site.

This area was first settled by Danish crabbers who built ramshackle huts here because of its location near the mouth of the bay. Every morning in the 1 a.m. dark the Danish men (there were no women in Crabville) would leave their weather-beaten shacks and sail out on the ebb tide in their small sail-powered smacks. Eleven hours later the boats would return with 150-250 crabs in each. The Danes would then sell their catch, earning 60 cents per dozen crabs (less a ten-percent commision to the fish brokers). However eventually the arrival of the larger, faster, longer-ranged Italian fleets at Fisherman's Wharf brought an end to Crabville-by-the-Bay.
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