That map shocked three Berkeley women into action. Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay Kerr, and the late Esther Gulick made some phone calls inviting a few people to Gulick’s home, and the Save San Francisco Bay Association was born. It campaigned successfully for legislation that created the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) to protect the bay ecosystem and provide public access to the shore.

After BCDC put an end to major filling projects and moved to close the municipal garbage dumps that burned at the edges of the bay, Bay advocates turned their attention to existing undeveloped landfills, most owned by the Santa Fe Railroad Company. It was obvious to Save the Bay that since this land could not be returned to its natural state, it should be opened to everyone’s enjoyment.

“Our first thought was stopping the fill, but I envisioned how nice it would be to have all this open space,” Sylvia McLaughlin said recently, sitting at her dining room table with the bay visible through the window behind her. Back in 1960 she had written to the president of the Santa Fe Railroad asking if the company would like to donate their land. Not surprisingly, she got no response. Santa Fe had big plans for that land, including an 18-story twin-tower hotel extending into the Emeryville mudflats, a shopping center on the Berkeley waterfront, an office and retail complex in Albany. Save the Bay fought these proposals, and others that appeared whenever one was defeated, with letters, petitions, lawsuits, appeals to legislators, and innumerable meetings.

“I can’t tell you the number of Saturday meetings we had at this table with Santa Fe Railroad,” McLaughlin said. “They finally gave up.”
Meanwhile, the idea of a shoreline state park took root, promoted by Save the Bay and the Sierra Club, working with citizens in Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, and Richmond. In 1982, the Coastal Conservancy started a citizen planning effort in support of the park concept and State Parks undertook a feasibility study. In 1985, to carry the idea forward and raise the necessary funds to buy the land, Citizens for Eastshore State Park was formed. A total of $40 million was secured: $25 million in State park bond money, the rest from the East Bay Regional Park District’s (EBRPD) measure AA.

State Parks had not exactly jumped to embrace the park idea. An urban landfill was not a typical state park. “I was incensed when they said it was just a dump,” McLaughlin recalled, “We thought it had great potential. And they finally came around.”

With crucial help from Assemblyman Tom Bates, State Parks and EBRPD began to negotiate with Santa Fe, and in 1997 bought 1,800 acres along the 8.5 miles of shoreline between the Oakland end of the Bay Bridge and the Richmond Marina. Eastshore State Park was now a reality, and in 2000 State Parks, EBRPD, and the Coastal Conservancy began a two-year planning process, which resulted in a general plan meant to accommodate diverse forms of life and recreation.

This park carries symbolic significance, for it is on the site where the movement to save the bay—predecessor of the movement to save the coast—began, and where people can experience themselves in relation to the regenerative power of nature. During the years of contention over use of the land, nature moved in. Birds brought seeds, and plants became established. Informal trails appeared, especially at the Albany Bulb, the former Albany municipal dump, now a rough urban wilderness. People come to walk here, alone or with dogs, enjoying the views across the bay. Artists, including some of the homeless who lived for a time in the shelter of the greenery, created sculptures of rebar, Styrofoam, and other debris that had been dumped here or brought in by storms. (The same impulse inspires people to make driftwood structures along the shore.) How the park will look when the general plan is implemented, and whether traces of this modern history will be saved, will not be known for some time.

Save the Bay is now working toward a goal only dreamers would have considered possible 30 years ago: to acquire and restore 30,000 acres of wetlands that were lost to diking and filling in the past century or so. Kay Kerr, in her 90s, continues to receive and read the minutes of Save the Bay meetings. Sylvia McLaughlin, now 86, seldom has time to visit the new park. She’s too busy with “things that come my way,” as things have a way of doing when someone is an imaginative, energetic, and much-appreciated community leader. “The next task is resolving the Magna proposal issue,” she said, referring to a large hotel and retail complex proposed for land owned by Golden Gate Fields. There was a look in her eye that was both playful and feisty as she pointed out: “It’s right in the middle of our park.”

CLICK HERE for A Planner's Perspective about the planning of Eastshore Park