It is widely believed that Treasure Island was built for a world’s fair. This is a misguided idea advanced by San Francisco that illustrates the city’s supreme skill at self-promotion and the Navy’s skill at concealing the truth.
San Francisco is great at comebacks. In previous years, the city suffered two cataclysmic shocks. At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, the deadliest earthquake in U.S. history, nearly 8.0 on the Richter scale, struck the city. An estimated 3,000 people died. As buildings collapsed, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that left the city in ruins. Rapid rebuilding was followed by a victorious 1915 world’s fair. The Panama-Pacific Exposition memorialized the city’s speedy recovery from the quake.
The City pulled off a second glorious return. During the 1929 stock market crash, banks failed right and left, but not one of San Francisco’s banks collapsed. The City solidified its reputation as a national financial center at the very height of the Great Depression. It was decided to celebrate by building two bridges. They would be the largest in the world. Bay Bridge construction began July 8, 1933, and the bridge opened three years later on Nov. 12, 1936. Golden Gate Bridge construction started Jan. 5, 1933, and it opened four years later on May 27, 1937.
In the 1930s, before the concept of another world’s fair was a gleam in anyone’s eye, because the city was known as a major West Coast hub, the federal government decided to build an artificial island for a federal airport in San Francisco Bay. In 1933, the government requested that the Army Corps of Engineers begin construction. This Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertaking was intended to provide employment during the Great Depression…