An Environmental History
632 Pages – Full Color
The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most ecologically diverse—and most transformed—regions on Earth. In this sweeping and beautifully detailed book, David D. Schmidt traces how natural forces and human choices have shaped the landscape over thousands of years.
Inside, you’ll discover:
- Ancient roots of stewardship: How Native Tribes cared for the land through fire, harvest, and ceremony for millennia.
- Colonization and upheaval: The arrival of European settlers, the loss of Indigenous lifeways, and the ecological consequences of agriculture, mining, and logging.
- The making of a metropolis: How dams, filled wetlands, and sprawling urban growth reshaped the Bay’s natural systems.
- Cycles of change: Fire and flood, boom and bust, extinction and renewal—all part of the region’s ongoing evolution.
- Twenty thematic chapters: Exploring invasive species, transportation networks, waste disposal, and the rise of Silicon Valley.
- Stories of resilience: Victories like the Save the Bay movement, wetland restoration projects, and the revival of Indigenous stewardship practices.
- A hopeful path forward: How understanding the past can guide a more sustainable and equitable future for the Bay Area.
Grounded in meticulous research and accessible storytelling, San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History is an essential resource for anyone who loves, studies, or calls this region home.
Praise for the book:
From clear-cutting redwood forests to mining’s toxic legacy to urban sprawl, the pollution and loss that once shaped the San Francisco Bay Area has evolved into a hopeful new era of parks, renewable energy, and wildlife recovery. David Schmidt has expertly and comprehensively captured the Bay Area’s fascinating and storied environmental journey. A must read for anyone who wants to truly understand how this amazing place came to be.
Natural Resources and Environment Writer, San Jose Mercury News
There has never been a book like SFBA: An Environmental History. It is the new mandatory read for all citizens of this unique and precious place. In essence, it is a handbook that details what it is to call this place home.
author of the California Field Atlas
For more than two decades, David Schmidt has led unforgettable public outings for Greenbelt Alliance, captivating participants with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Bay Area’s cultural and natural history. Now, with The San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History, readers everywhere can experience the insight, storytelling, and deep place-based understanding that have made his guided walks so beloved.
David Schmidt’s San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History is the book the Bay Area—and, really, all of California—deserves. Exuberantly encyclopedic, it details the region’s rich natural history, from redwood forests to bay wetlands to Pacific beaches, sea otters to grizzlies to Tule elk. And it offers a clear-eyed examination of the ways the Bay Area’s human inhabitants—from the Ohlone and Miwok peoples to 19th century loggers to Silicon Valley tech execs—have nurtured, exploited, despoiled, and struggled to protect one of the most remarkable places on earth.
Like those who profit handsomely from the spoils of empire, those of us who enjoy the many benefits that cities have to offer seldom think about the people, animals, and plants who paid for the urbanization of their land as well as of what we beneficiaries have lost in the process. That will no longer be possible for anyone who reads David Schmidt’s detailed account of one of the Earth’s most favored places before and after contact with Europeans in 1769. Comprehensive in its scope and richly endowed with photos and maps, Schmidt’s book will rank as a classic.
Dave Schmidt’s environmental history of the Bay Area will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the area that we live in and love. The book is an essential history and an amazing achievement, the product of decades of dedicated research and wonder-inducing exploration. Dave’s lively storytelling is complemented by numerous maps, photos, and charts. Read it from cover to cover or dip in to explore topics of personal and local interest.
