What did Alameda look like before the Oakland Estuary was dredged out; and Bay Farm, South Shore, and the West End were filled in?

Where was the Live Oak Forest? What kind of animals roamed what was once known as la Bolsa de Encinal?

This new Alameda Historic Ecology Web Map shows you in exquisite detail, using never-before-seen GIS data compiled and developed exclusively by the Alameda Native History Project.

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About this Map

Map made and designed by Gabriel Duncan using opensource software and (open) data.

-Software/Services Used:

-Data Sources:

  • Pre-1900 Shoreline compiled by Gabriel Duncan from NOAA Shoreline Data Rescue Project of San Francisco Bay, California
  • Historic Alameda Wetlands created by Gabriel Duncan
  • 1909, Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region, N.C. Nelson. – Georeferenced by Gabriel Duncan to form the Nelson-Duncan San Francisco Bay Area Shellmounds Map.
  • U.S. Geological Survey, National Geospatial Technical Operations Center: 2023 USGS Land Cover – Woodland Downloadable Data Collection
  • 2022, USGS Topo Map Vector Data Downloadable Data Collection
  • USGS National Structures Dataset (NSD) California (published 20240215) Shapefile: U.S. Geological Survey
  • Chestnut Shellmound plotted by Gabriel Duncan from article found in Alameda Daily Evening Encinal, published Fri, Jul 27, 1894, (Page 3), “Indian Skeletons”.
  • Historic flora and fauna compiled from various sources including (but not limited to): Merlin 1977, Wood 1883, and more.

Gabriel Duncan is a member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.


To learn more about this map, or about the work Alameda Native History Project does to decolonize history, please use this form.

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