Warm Water Cove

Unfinished History

Warm Water Cove at the end of 25th Street on the bay, just south of the Potrero Hill power plant was for a long time a sewage outlet, enjoying a decade as the "toxic golf course" when local punks and other underground culture vultures would hit golf balls into the bay from its abandoned shoreline. Now the park has undergone a facelift, a native plant garden has been started...

Photo: Chris Carlsson

Pelicans and coots feeding on herring off warm water cove, January 2013.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

...and to many artists' chagrin, the city government and local property owners organized a painting party to obliterate the remarkable graffiti gallery that had developed on surrounding walls over a ten year period.

Abandoned and graffittied MUNI streetcars litter the docks adjacent to Warm Water Cove.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

After several years of effort to remove graffiti, and the final removal of the old Muni streetcars, the scene across warm water cove is a bit tidier in this January 2013 view.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

At the end of 25th Street is Warm Water Cove, aka Tire Beach, aka Toxic Beach.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

Curt Sanford explores San Francisco's eastern shoreline by kayak, from approximately Mission Creek to Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, including Warm Water Cove. His look at the old industrial waterfront includes great histories of various buildings in the old Naval Shipyard, as well as a good history of the Grain Terminal in Islais Creek, along with amazing shots of mysterious tags in dark spaces, brilliant murals, images of pelicans and herons and seals and more! Based on a presentation he gave at Heron's Head Ecocenter on July 1, 2017.