San Francisco Bay Area Shellmound Map
Shellmounds are sacred sites where people in the San Francisco Bay Area, and along a large portion of the California Coastline , buried their loved ones.
Shellmounds are made from alternating layers of dirt and burials.
During the pre-contact era, the ecology of the San Francisco Bay Area was vibrant, and teeming with life.
The shells of literally tons of clams, and mussels, abalone, and other shellfish, covered much of the shores, rocky shores.
Birds would pick shellfish open and eat them, or drop them on rocks and pick out the good parts.
The people who lived here, Muwekma (meaning “People “in Chochenyo, an Ohlone language,) used shells in all aspect of life. Including in burials. The shells helped to keep out would-be scavengers, so their ancestors could sleep in peace.
Unfortunately, Americans decided to destroy the shellmounds as soon as they took control of California through a long detracted war with Spain, and then Mexico.
Some shellmounds were levelled out, spread over a large area, or used to build the track beds for railways through the Bay Area. Other shellmounds were quarried to make the cement used to build large concrete buildings, as well, in the late 1800’s, and early 1900’s.
Angel Island is an example of how Native American graves were quarried, ground up, and used as concrete to build the massive immigration center you can still tour today.
[Construction of the Angel Island Immigration Station began in 1905, and it opened in 1910. Most of the old records were destroyed in a fire during 1940. Angel Island was decommissioned in 1946, after seeing approximately one million immigrants. Concrete buildings include the vaults, barracks, hospital, and other buildings on the island.]
In the following years, some shellmounds were capped with concrete to prevent any further disturbance by construction crews. Other burial grounds saw ancestors removed and reburied, or repatriated (returned) to their family or tribe. Many shellmounds still exist undisturbed, and are protected thanks to laws like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, AB 52, SB 18, and more. (The list is here.)
N.C. Nelson’s Shellmound Map of 1909
Sensing their imminent destruction, N.C. Nelson conducted a three-month survey of the Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region; verifying the information previously collected by John C. Merriam, and adding his own. N.C. Nelson identified more than 425 shellmounds in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 1909, N.C. Nelson published “Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region” in Volume 7, Issue 4 of American Archeology and Ethnology, published by University of California Press.
That publication included a “Map of San Francisco Bay Region showing Distribution of Shell Heaps”.
About This Map
This interactive webmap is based on N.C. Nelson’s shellmound map.
This map was carefully converted to a modern coordinate system, and all 400+ shellmound locations were hand-plotted using a reconstructed Pre-1900 San Francisco Bay Area Shoreline for even higher accuracy–which was verified by a 2019 Shellmound Survey, carried out by Gabriel Duncan.
The locations on this map represent those mounds which were marked as “present” and “partial” on N.C. Nelson’s map.
San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Shellmound Map
WARNING:
DO NOT USE THIS MAP TO BREAK THE LAW.
GOD HELP YOU IF YOU MESS WITH NATIVE AMERICAN GRAVES.
This is a Cluster Map. The number on the marker represents how many shellmounds are in the area around the marker.