Memoirs...
Of
the Environmental Movement on San Bruno Mountain
A
series of talks distilled for clarity but not dessicated.
Herstory
Project of San Bruno Mountain Watch
(#3, web
version) a work in progress...
Speakers and Contents
Brisbane
Bruno Mountain Display, 1970
Citizens
Group Again Raps Garbage Project, Brisbane Bee, April 22nd 1965
Brisbane
Citizens for Civic Progress
Lu Drake
Eucalyptus
Chainsaw Massacre, 1995
Clear-Cutting a Path for Butterflies, San
Francisco Chronicle, February 24th 1995
Citizens
Group Raps Council, Brisbane Bee, April 15th 1965
The beginning
of the Garbage Wars, 1965
Paul
Goercke - Brisbane Citizens for Civic Progress Chair
California
Native Plant Society
Elizabeth McClintock, Author of
A Flora Of the San Bruno Mountains
Tilden
Botanical Garden
James
Roof - The Last of the Franciscan Region, 1970ish
Original
Committee to Save San Bruno Mountain
Bette Higgins, Chair
David Schooley, Secretary
Mike Kaiser
Jim Keegan
Bay Area
Mountain Watch
Robin Crabill, crystal collecting on the mountain
Economists and Developers
Dr. Michael
Potopan, SFSU professor
Sherman Eubanks, president of Visitacion Associates
Frank Calton, civil engineer, Visitacion
Associates
The Mountain's New Human Inhabitants
Kindergarten
Students Get An Early Butterfly Education, Pacifica Tribune, June 15th 1988
Hermit of San Bruno Mountain is Evicted, San Francisco
Chronicle, May 16th 1987
Introduction - This future book or publication is done in the same style as our informational leaflet, Voice of the Mountain, Spotlight on James Roof. It's a series of talks from as many people as we could get to cooperate so far...
The first struggle to save the environment in San Mateo County started on San Bruno Mountain. The citizens who lived on the mountain in Brisbane rose up and started fighting against San Francisco's dumping of garbage in the bay in front of Brisbane. The garbage dumping started during the cleanup of the 1906 earthquake. The city of San Francisco would load up the Southern Pacific trains with debris, get just beyond the San Francisco County border and jettison their load into the bay. The idea caught on and soon, the front of San Bruno Mountain was a giant garbage dump. Ironically, this is what saved the mountain from being prematurely destroyed by development. The developers couldn' t build and sell expensive highrises in plain view of a disgusting garbage dump, and the stench... But David Schooley was and still is, greatful for the garbage dumping.
So we start the memoirs with The Garbage Wars fought by the Brisbane Citizens for Civic Progress (BCCP). We have the two most key environmentalists from the BCCP, still alive. Then we go to the leader of the Committee To Save San Bruno Mountain, Bette Higgins. These people aren' t well known like our media star David Schooley. But they should be recognized.
We' ve even interviewed the king of development, Sherman Eubanks, and he's been pleasant. He was the president of Visitacion Associates and the mastermind behind the plan to tear the mountain down and use it for bayfill. And he wanted to build a highrise city that probably would have wound up packing in over 200,000 people up on the mountain. He'll tell ya, he likes large scale jobs. He grew up in a castle and they were always adding on and seeing all that construction turned him on to being a developer...
Mixed into all the transcribed talks are some news articles, sample literature and pictures. This is an unfinished project that's snowballing, despite the fact that we' ve gotten the run-around from a few key people we asked to do an interview.
When I distilled these talks I just trimmed off redundancies and tried to put things in a cohesive order. And I threw a little formatting in, for emphasis and to make the text less monotonous. It's about the people involved with San Bruno Mountain, who they are and what they' re perceptions of San Bruno Mountain are. So if there's little discrepancies between people's stories, it's because that's what people remembered and I deliberately left it that way.
It's also about the background of the people involved with the mountain. It's like a puzzle and the more people David and I interview the more pieces of the puzzle we get.
Transcribed
and distilled by Vicky Graham
Edited by Robin Crabill
Web by Peter Miller
Newspaper archives mostly from David Schooley
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