Urban Exploration II: San Francisco Bay Area

From the naval shipyard that once stood as the Pacific Fleet’s bulwark to the inland quarry carved out of sun-baked valleys, the Bay Area tells its story through ruins. The arc begins with the westward push, when railroads and rocks blasted open the hills. It swells in the years of war, when bunkers multiplied on the coast and cranes rose over the shipyards. It ends in glass towers and the circuitry of software empires, where industry no longer stains the hands but writes itself invisibly into code. The tides of history have come and gone, leaving their wreckage in plain sight—structures abandoned, scattered like bones along the water’s edge. Come with me, then, from north to south, across the forgotten corners of San Francisco Bay.

San Francisco’s Pacific Sentinels

The west edge of San Francisco faces the Pacific, cliffs absorbing the first storms, bunkers and batteries crouched like sentries. They were poured into the sand as the mainland’s defense. Now they sit in silence, dark mouths opening to the wind.

The piers stretch across the waterfront like a timeline. Some dazzle with tourists; others still labor, hauling cargo and goods. But in the southeast, war once held sway. Potrero Point and Hunters Point wore their warehouses like armor. Pier 90 is the chosen arena for competitive graffiti artists, where huge murals defiantly showing off the nerve of their creators.

Hunters Point—the largest naval shipyard on the coast—still broods over the shoreline. Its giant crane looms above decaying hangars and barracks, casting long shadows over land once measured for radioactive waste. Inside, a warehouse glimmers with glass latticed in wire. Climb the crane, if you dare, and the city unfurls, restlessly teeming beneath your feet.

Old Tracks and Dark Tunnels

Southward, in Brisbane, the remnants of the old railway lie in weeds. The Bayshore Roundhouse at South San Francisco sits like a discarded shell, a leftover from another line.

Further down the peninsula, the ground opens into drainage tunnels—labyrinths stretching for miles. In summer, when the channels run dry, kids slip inside for “sewage surfing.” But in the rains, the tunnels flood without warning, turning play into a trap.

Silicon Valley’s Ghosts

In Silicon Valley, land rarely stays idle. Yet even here, ruins remain. The Agnews Developmental Center—the biggest insane asylum in the region—divided into two halves: one razed and memorialized under Oracle’s vast campus; the other still trapped inside Cisco’s empire, a relic fenced and surrounded by parking lots and schools. On the nearby Lafayette Street, the roads diverge: south into San Jose’s blight, north into Alviso, a marshland town where shacks lean against the tide.

Alviso feels like another country, half drowned, its streets ending in wetlands. Just beyond, the ghost town of Drawbridge sinks into mud, roofs collapsing into the swamp. Amtrak trains rush past, offering only glimpses of a place almost gone.

East of here, at the border of Milpitas, the Oak Creek Business Park decays in slow motion. Graffiti blooms across its walls, windows shatter, fences multiply. The silence of its offices is louder than the work that once filled them.

Bridge That Ends Midstream

Going around the bay’s mouth, we enter the territories of Fremont and Newark. The famous Dumbarton Bridge connects this part of Bay with its pitiful counterpart, East Palo Alto, across the water. Few notice the other bridge—its twin, the railway span, burned by kids in the 1990s and left split, unrepaired, over the turbid water. Nearby, pipes and a control house stand sentinel, their machinery rusting, their functions forgotten.

Oakland: the Apocalyptic City Walk

Oakland unravels in plain sight. Due to its growing safety concerns and rampant gang activities, population drifts away. Buildings empty. Greyhound stations, high schools, service centers—all left behind. The 16th Street Railway Station still towers, a husk under constant surveillance, a cathedral of concrete and silence.

The Islands of Abandonment

Across the tunnel, Alameda’s island bears its own ghosts. The navy is gone, the barracks face the City Hall like hollow eyes. The runway is locked, except on the first Sunday of each month, when a flea market swarms the concrete pavement.

Further west is Alameda Point—where the USS Hornet rests, and hangars stretch into emptiness. Windows are shattered, gates closed. Stories cling to the walls—of chemicals, radiation, and contamination—whether true or rumor, they are enough.

Graffiti Belt to the North

Further north, the rails lead into Emeryville and Berkeley. Factories collapse under waves of graffiti, a mural that crawls from wall to wall until it bleeds into Richmond. There, near the docks, sits a chemical lab. Its doors are boarded, warning signs hang loose, walls stained. Maybe it once made medicine. Its past may lie in pharmaceuticals; its present is simply this: abandoned, facing the bay that outlasts every builder.

What the Ruins Tell

The Bay speaks in silences: of shipyards that built might, of tunnels that carried water and now carry only echoes, of campuses and military grounds that gave way to technology. Each broken window and rusted pipe is a sentence in that history. These are not just forgotten spaces—they are prophets of neglect, monuments to transitions we prefer not to name.