Crane Cove Park is San Francisco’s newest and most aptly named park. There are cranes and there’s a cove. But that’s just the beginning. It’s also a great launching spot for a San Francisco time-traveling adventure — if you don’t mind sore shoulders and a soggy bottom.
Since it opened last fall, I’ve set out twice from the cove to paddle the bay and explore a slice of industrial maritime San Francisco that’s rarely seen and nearly gone. Most recently, on a busy Sunday afternoon, a friend and I forced our teenagers (her two daughters and my 14-year-old son) to give it a go aboard two inflatable kayaks and a dual-pontoon river raft.
You could spend an easy half hour just paddling within Crane Cove, which is protected from currents and wind and often a sunny oasis as the afternoon fog rolls into other parts of the city. It’s perfect for beginners learning to balance and maneuver, and in just a few strokes from shore you gain a new perspective on city landmarks, both familiar and new. But our kids are experienced river kayakers, so I had a more ambitious destination in mind.
Industry’s last gasp
Crane Cove is part of the Dogpatch neighborhood and the once heavily industrial Central Waterfront. It sits about a mile south of the Giants’ baseball park, which for two decades has been a destination for paddlers hoping to snag a home run splashing into McCovey Cove.
But Crane Cove is a different ballgame. One of the city’s last bulwarks of heavy industry dominates the view: The two imposing dry docks, where cruise ships were once hauled out and repaired, have been vacant since 2017.
All around, the new San Francisco is taking shape along the waterfront. To the north is Mission Bay, already dense with UCSF’s new campus and hospital, the Warriors’ new stadium, biotech labs, and tech offices, along with housing. Before the pandemic, Dogpatch and the rest of the Central Waterfront were slated to grow by 9,000 new housing units by 2026.
We experience today’s city in little neighborhoods between hills and valleys. Our factories, canneries, and distilleries were long ago transformed into convention centers, luxury lofts, and taprooms. Who encounters machinery or rust in SF anymore? I admit that getting up close and personal with heavy industry on our eastern shore is escapist nostalgia for a “simpler” era that I actually never knew, but it sparks appreciation for tradecraft that has faded in modern America.
During World War II the Bay Area (Mare Island, Sausalito, Hunters Point) was a major center of U.S. shipbuilding, turning out more than 1,400 ships. Towering Navy battleships were born in Crane Cove. Now the area is a study in contrasts: modern condominiums that overlook rusty dry docks; old piers and new stadiums and offices; ocean-going tankers anchored in the Bay; and private sailboats nestled in their slips. Where steelworking machinists once went on strike, a payroll software company now has its shoeless headquarters.
The cove is now part of a Blue Greenway chain of parks, trails, and bay access points that’s in development along 13 miles of snaking shoreline. But venturing out of the cove, little of the new San Francisco is present. On the water, you’re only going to encounter holdouts and ghosts of SF’s industrial age.
‘All that metal’
Leaving the cove, two options present themselves: left or right. Left, or north, is the calmer route. You can hug the shoreline for an easy paddle all the way to Pier 54, and if you’re willing to navigate some heavier current, continue all the way to McCovey Cove and the ballpark.
Yet I had a spot to the right, or south, in mind. We went straight out at first, past wharves operated by the port. In one bay a tugboat was docked in front of a barge loaded with mounds of gravel. Docked in the next was the midsize cargo ship Kamokuiki, prompting 11-year-old Julia to crane her neck up and ask, “Why don’t the ships sink?” I responded that they were full of air and less dense than the same volume of water they displace. She wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “But all that metal …”
From the kids’ point of view the water was fraught with unseen dangers: sharks and tsunamis and the fear of capsizing. But they soon got into the rhythm, and their comfort increased, opening up a sense of wonder at the mysterious landscape.
The longer you observe the massive dry docks, the more you see. Long snaking hoses, catwalks, numbered portholes, and giant tires — was there ever actually a tractor that big? — tied to the edges as bumpers with … wait a second … Canadian geese nesting in them?
Past the dry docks, two harbor seals kept eyes on us as we turned the corner and headed south. The tide was in our favor, but the wind was creating a lot of chop on the surface. To venture out in these conditions it’s best if you have a little experience.
To our left, the expanse of open bay spread out for miles toward Alameda and San Leandro. In the middle of the bay sat container ships, anchors down, all pointed in the same direction facing the tidal current. To our right was the destination I had in mind: a derelict pier, spooky and beguiling, like an abandoned house that you stumble upon on a wilderness hike.
Just five or 10 feet above the surface and at least 100 yards long, the pier runs parallel to the long wall of the last dry dock. Once it was shaped like a backward L and connected to shore. The connection is long gone, with only jagged stumps of pilings marking its former path. The rest of it, now an island of rotting wood, peeling strips of metal, and protruding rebar, is too dangerous for any craft to tie up to. Barnacles encrust some of the pilings; others have worn holes like haunting ghost mouths.
Hints of a bustling utility remain: streetlights, fire hydrants and some type of pumps with sinks attached still line the sections that haven’t collapsed. Red mooring bollards flank its sides.
We carefully steered underneath into little currents and eddies whirling and splashing around the pilings. We looked up into a checkerboard of holes and fallen planks, making hundreds of skylights, and it felt a little like exploring a sunken ship.
Then we spotted a hidden treasure: An Igloo lunch cooler nestled between collapsing planks. How in the world did that get there? When was the last time anyone took a work break and sat here to eat? Or was it hidden on purpose, placed during a water approach? Are there sandwiches and cold drinks inside? Large unmarked bills? A severed hand on ice?
We didn’t go farther, knowing it would be a hard paddle back for the kids. Even with the tide in our favor, we struggled to make headway through the afternoon wind. The two inflatable kayaks took a bad line around the dry docks and before they knew it, they were being pushed out into the bay. Mother and big sister paddled hard and didn’t catch up to us until we reached the buoys and the calm water deep inside the cove.
South to Islais
On an earlier trip, however, I did journey farther south, past the decrepit pier and across Warm Water Cove. Its name might be misleading, but the small park on its shore (accessible by land via 24th Street) has received a cleanup and no longer deserves the old nickname “Tire Beach.”
As you paddle south, the transformation of Pier 70 to a new mixed-use neighborhood is happening on your right. Most of these warehouses were once machine shops, like Union Iron Works and Bethlehem Steel, supporting the shipbuilding industry. So far the conversion is farther inland; from the water you mainly see cranes, crumbling piers, and a warehouse with scores of broken windows.
Beyond the shoreline is Potrero Hill and its hilltop recreation center, which led my companion and I to a conversation about O.J. Simpson’s youth and the James Brown-Latrell Spreewell shoe commercial that was filmed in the legendary gym there.
There is still one functioning pier in San Francisco that loads and unloads cargo ships: Pier 80. We approached the north side and its two gantry cranes hovering about 40 feet above the water, but we wanted to push beyond. It took a while; the bay-facing end of the pier is more than 1,000 feet long. The reward, as we rounded the corner, was a spectacular view.
Two massive cargo vessels were docked on the south side of the pier. Paddling up to them was like sitting on the sidewalk under a 30-story building. (Take care here, it’s an active shipping channel.) We had reached the mouth of Islais Creek, named for the sweet, dark red islay cherries that once lined its banks, and it represents a 5,000 square acre watershed (San Francisco’s largest) that spans all the way up to Twin Peaks. Most of the creek and its tributaries are now underground, but a small portion in Glen Canyon has been freed; perhaps more of it one day will see daylight.
The bay’s container operations have long since moved to Oakland. But San Francisco’s natural deepwater berths have enabled the Port to maintain what it calls the Maritime Eco-Industrial Center. At the north end, Pier 80 receives “breakbulk” or “project” cargo to supply large industrial facilities and construction projects, like the Bay Bridge and the Central Subway.
On the south side of the Islais Creek channel are the huge silos and troughs of the cement plants of the Pier 90–94 Backlands. In the shadow of a conveyor belt for loading gravel and other construction aggregates, we hauled out on a small strip of sand for snacks and water.
To be in the midst of so much construction and industry yet interacting with nature in such a visceral way was mesmerizing. We were at the edge of a vast body of water, feeling the power of current and wind, with birds, barnacles, and the occasional sea lion surrounding us. Yet we were also dwarfed by scaffolds and silos, ropes and hoses half a foot in diameter, brick chimneys, and propellers and anchors that could crush a house.
We could have kept going, either up Islais Creek channel or south to the restored wetlands of Heron’s Head Park and India Basin. But the paddle back, into afternoon headwinds that would only grow stronger, was going to be tough. What was an one-hour leisurely journey to get to Islais Creek — a little under two miles — turned out to be more demanding work on the return.
Back on land
Once you’re out of the water, there’s even more to appreciate about Crane Cove Park. For people with sore backs and shoulders and empty stomachs, the park’s landscape is all the more inviting.
There are picnic tables and benches, two large lawns with new green grass, smooth cement, and a sandy beach that turns into pebbles and skipping rocks as you approach the water. To the left of the park, the patio of the venerable Ramp restaurant — hopefully open again soon for burgers, Bloody Marys, and live salsa — peeks out.
The park’s small footprint means you don’t need much leftover energy to explore. What gives the park its name are the two cranes from shipbuilding days. (They in turn have their own nicknames: Nick and Nora.) But without necks and heads they lack the intrigue of the working cranes atop the dry docks in the distance, especially once you’ve seen those behemoths up close.
What gives the park the most personality, in fact, is Slip 4, the long cement launch where newly built ships once slid right into the water. This slipway, 100 yards by 25 yards, has historical placards and is painted with outlines of the ships that went to sea there. Poke around other nooks and crannies of the park to find more placards and old machinery. But it’s no museum. You can walk on the slip, kick a ball around it, or, as was happening one day I was there, rehearse on it with your modern dance troupe.
Or you can find a patch of beach, close your eyes, let your muscles sink into the warm sand, and relive your paddle, whether you were pushing your limits or taking kids out for the first time. Our teenagers were activated, enriched, and actually admitted that they were glad they came.
The vast body of water isn’t merely scenery, something to be seen from the car window while crossing the bridge. It’s all part of our city and it’s all accessible to us. Crane Cove and the bay are there to explore and enjoy.
Practical information
- Be careful! The bay’s currents and tides can be strong, and its shipping channels are active. Weather conditions can change quickly.
- The main entrance of Crane Cove Park is at Illinois and 18th Streets. The T Third street car and 15 and 48 buses all stop one block away. (Check with Muni for COVID-related route changes.) Much of the on-street parking in the neighborhood is limited to one hour. There are parking garages in nearby Mission Bay.
- You can rent standup paddle boards and boats from Sports Basement and City Kayak. The Dogpatch Paddle Club rents boards, provides lessons, and a lot of helpful info, like a map of paddling routes.
- Please check conditions before you get in the water: Wind. Tides. The Dogpatch Paddle Club has a live cam of the cove. Bay Area Sea Kayakers has good advice on checking your paddle skills and water conditions.