San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History

Did you know that the Bay's polluted waters once caught on fire, and that Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds was based on a real incident? If you only knew what these lands and waters have been through . . .

Join historian David D. Schmidt and environmental elder David Schooley for a conversation on a sampling of stories from Schmidt's new book, San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History. From the Native Tribes and grizzly bears who once populated the region, to gross pollution of the Bay with sewage and garbage, to the unstoppable women who saved it, to the 60-year struggle to save San Bruno Mountain, Schmidt and Schooley will reveal how the Bay Area's environment was trashed for more than a century before the environmental movement won incredible victories to restore it.

You'll hear about colorful characters like grizzly hunter "Mountain Charley" McKiernan and a left-wing Berkeley songwriter whose songs inspired campaigns against nuclear power and urban sprawl in the 1960s, as well as the giant garbage dump that ironically helped save the Bay and San Bruno Mountain (the ridge everyone flies over when they fly out of SFO).Don't miss your chance to ask these experts how your favorite part of the Bay Area's natural and urban landscapes (and people) have been transformed over the past 257 years!

David D. Schmidt is an environmental historian and has been a Bay Area native and San Francisco resident for more than 50 years. For nearly 30 years, he was a writer and editor for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Pacific Southwest Office in San Francisco. He has a bachelor's degree in History from Santa Clara University and lives in Santa Rosa.

David Schooley is a lifelong environmental activist and Berkeley native who participated in protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearing at San Francisco's City Hall in 1960, the first major protests of the raucous 1960s. He "discovered" San Bruno Mountain and the threats to it in 1969, co-founded San Bruno Mountain Watch, has written four books about it, and has been working tirelessly to save it since 1971.