Meiggs Wharf
Also known as Meigs' Wharf or Meiggs' Pier, it was a L-shaped wooden pier extending an 'astounding' 1600 feet (some sources say 2000 feet) out from the northern San Francisco shoreline. Built by transplanted San Franciscan Henry Meiggs to attract the lumber shipping trade as part of his real estate development plans for what would become the North Beach area of San Francisco, it would bankrupt him before becoming a major part of North Beach and San Francisco society life as well as the San Francisco terminus for the ferry to Marin. It can be said that before there was Playland-at-the-Beach, there was Honest Henry's Wharf.
The Pier
The pier was huge, and to many of the day, certifiably built in the wrong place - the northern tip of San Francisco where the currents and tides ran strong and ships at dock were not protected by today's breakwater from the currents as they were on the reverse side of the San Francisco along the Embarcadero. Most ships preferred safety and sailed on to safer berths there.
Leaving land about midway between where Mason and Powell Streets (North-South) intersect with Francisco Street today, Meiggs' Wharf stretched an incredible 1600, or possibly 2000, feet out into the tides of the bay ending about 200 feet further out into the water from where Fishermens Wharf stands and the fleet submarine USS Pampanito (SS-383) and Liberty Ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien are docked today.
After Henry's abscondtion in 1854, the pier was left without an owner but it started to become the late 19th century version of a shopping mall and entertainment complex. It's 'anchor merchant' would be Abe Warner who opened his Cobweb Palace saloon and eatery in 1856 at the foot of the wharf near the northeast corner of Francisco and Powell Streets. A fancier of spiders, exotic animals and 'curiosities,' Warner never allowed the cobwebs to be cleaned from the rafters of his establishment, hence the name.
Stuffed with curios and curiosities including, allegedly, the preserved head of Joachin Murrieta in a glass jar, The Cobweb Palace became one of those low-brow, 'special places' that attracted the rich carriage trade out of the great houses along Van Ness Avenue and Nob Hill and the spill-over attracted other merchants and entertainment businesses to the wharf, like a modern shopping center and entertainment complex does today. It also served as an early social gathering spot and promenade for the entire city regardless of class as well as a favored destination for children looking for a safe adventure. Model yachtsmen used to sail handcrafted model yachts from the Meiggs' Pier over to what was then known as Goat Island and back, chasing them them in skiffs to make sure they didn't sail out the Golden Gate.
The later history of the North Beach area of San Francisco bore out Meiggs' dreams and vision for the land, buildings, warehouses and sawmills he had built and owned, then lost, as San Francisco expanded and North Beach became a thriving part of the city.
The end came for Meiggs Wharf, as it did for so much of old San Francisco, in the great conflagration that followed the 1906 Earthquake. The fires reached Meiggs Wharf during the late afternoon of April 20, the third day of the fire and, everything, all Honest Henry had build there, was consumed.
'Honest Henry' Meiggs
Financially, the pier and its associated real estate developments ruined 'The Father of North Beach,' as he tried to cover his shortfalls with illicitly obtained warrants against the San Francisco Street Fund. Before he was discovered, he beat a hasty exit allegedly leaving the "fire burning in the hearth and the birds singing in their cages," in his mansion on October 6, 1854. Fleeing with his family and brother John Meiggs, the newly elected City Controller, on his ship, the brig America, he eventually ended up in Chile where, where after losing his 'stake money' and pawning his pocket watch for capitol, he would again make another large fortune building the Chilian and Peruvian railroads. Part of his new fortune went to paying off his all San Francisco debts including, it is said, every single person he had defrauded except the speculators who had bought up the warrants for fractions of a penny on the dollar. Forgiveness though eluded him though and he never could return to the city he loved and was buried in Lima, Peru in 1877.