To ferret out details about an area’s historical watersheds and water bodies, the team relies on old maps and records; the San Francisco Estuary Institute’s 1998 EcoAtlas, which maps both the historical (circa 1800) and present Bay Area shorelines, has been another key resource. For information about San Francisco’s contemporary waterscape, Richard and Sowers studied maps kept by the city’s Department of Public Works and the PUC and talked to employees familiar with the system’s intricacies. They also studied aerial photographs and Google Earth, which has become an important tool, helping them home in on natural landscape features that are still traceable through the built environment.

The final step in making the maps is to go out on foot to check spots that are confusing. “Sometimes it’s not clear what’s draining what,” Sowers said. The team also field-checks locations marked as “points of interest” on the map--typically, spots where you can see how the original hydrological landscape has changed.

When checking points in the field, there are many clues to what’s below. “You’re listening at storm drains, especially in summer, to see which ones have perennial flow,” said Richard. “You’re following the different patterns of development; you look at patches and seams in the pavement.”

Both say that working on the maps has not only helped them get a better sense of the region they inhabit, but has also changed the way they look at the landscape. “I’m totally obsessed, everywhere I go,” said Richard. “When I’m driving along, I’m seeing the lay of the land more than individual buildings.” “When I cross a creek now, I pay attention,” agreed Sowers.

Links to the Past
A wide variety of people find the maps useful, enjoyable, or both--hydrologists, engineers, consultants, county permitting agencies, creek restoration activists, teachers, students, curious residents. “The enthusiasm with which people receive the maps is very satisfying,” Sowers said. “We put a lot of energy and enthusiasm into them, and it’s great to get it back.”

The project has also inspired other efforts at the Museum. Its website presents many of the maps, and the Waterstriders program teaches schoolchildren from urban elementary schools about their watersheds and then has them act as docents at the museum, explaining the aquatic exhibits to fellow students. “One of the things that gives me the most satisfaction is to have developed a tool that’s useful to both fifth graders and university professors,” Richard said.

But one senses that some of the pair’s most satisfying moments come from uncovering little tidbits about past lives and landscapes--like discovering that in 1870, the builders of Albion Brewery in Hunter’s Point hit the aquifer when they were boring tunnels and had to channel off all the water that came pouring through the walls. (When Prohibition came along, they switched from brewing beer to bottling spring water. Today the underground channels still flow beneath the old building, known as Albion Castle, which was sold in 2005 and may be resurrected as a brewery and restaurant.) Or driving up Twin Peaks in wet weather and discovering a little stream running across the road, and knowing that it must be from the spring that fed a tributary of the long-vanished Dolores Creek, which in turn fed Dolores Lagoon, the vanished lake by which the original Mission Dolores was located. Or standing at the end of a crooked little alley and knowing that it once was a footpath along a quiet lake.