Slideshow: A Visual History of Mission Bay
From the early 1800s until now, Mission Bay has undergone significant changes, including as a railroad yard for Southern Pacific Railroad Co.
Now the land has become a hub of research and patient care for UC San Francisco.
View the slideshow of Mission Bay throughout the years as well as key people who helped the UCSF Mission Bay campus become what it is today.
1800's: An aerial view rendering of the Mission Bay
1950s: The Mission Bay area was the location of a Southern Pacific Railroad Company railyard.
1999: After Southern Pacific Railroad Company shut down its railyard, the Mission Bay area spent years as an abandoned swath of land. In September 1997, Catellus Development Corp. agreed to donate 30 acres for the UCSF Mission Bay campus. In 1998, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to donate 13 acres to the campus.
1999: At the Mission Bay groundbreaking ceremony, are from left, Bruce Spaulding, then-vice chancellor for University Advancement and Planning who negotiated the deal for the donation of 43 acres of land on behalf of UCSF; Zach Hall, former executive vice chancellor; and then-Chancellor J. Michael Bishop, MD, third from right, who guided its development and established a public art program on campus. Photo by Robert Foothorap.
1999: After taking office as mayor in 1996, Willie Brown directed San Francisco’s economic development staff to work on keeping UCSF's new campus in the city, as the University considered locations in Alameda and Brisbane. Brown, speaking at a 1999 UCSF brown bag lecture in this photo, is credited with pulling together the deal that established the campus at Mission Bay. ©Christine T. Anderson 1999
July 2000: An aerial view of the Mission Bay area shortly after UCSF began development. To the left is the Mission Bay Golf Center, which closed in 2006 to make way for a pump station and other infrastructure for the burgeoning campus, and at bottom-right is the construction site of Genentech Hall, the first research building.
Dec. 7, 2000: Three UC Chancellors discuss the founding of the California Institute for Biomedical Research, or QB3, to be headquartered at UCSF's Mission Bay at a news conference. From left, then-UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood, then-UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl and then-UCSF Chancellor J. Michael Bishop. QB3, a joint program of all three campuses, opened in 2005. Photo by Lisa Cisneros.
Jan. 8, 2003: Charles Craik, PhD, a UCSF professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, shows his excitement as he unpacks his office at Genentech Hall as the first researcher to move to the Mission Bay campus. Craik's previous office was converted from a janitor's closet on the Parnassus campus. Photo by Christine Jegan.
Oct. 28, 2003: Hundreds of faculty, staff, students, elected officials and community members gather for the dedication of the Mission Bay campus and the official opening of Genentech Hall, the first research building to open there.
May 5, 2004: Nobel laureate J. Michael Bishop, MD, who served as UCSF’s chancellor from 1998 to 2009, poses at the entrance of Genentech Hall on the Mission Bay campus, where he played a critical role in launching construction during his tenure. Photo by Mark Estes.
June 7, 2006: Regis B. Kelly, PhD, who was instrumental in the development of the Mission Bay campus as UCSF's executive vice chancellor from 2000 to 2004 before becoming director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), gave then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom a tour of the campus. Photo by Christine Jegan.
April 17, 2009: Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tours the Mission Bay campus and the J. David Gladstone Institutes with Gladstone Institutes founding director Robert Mahley, MD, PhD, center back, and Deepak Srivastava, MD, front right, the Younger Family Director at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, before a press conference that highlighted funding for scientific research in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Photo by Chris Goodfellow/Gladstone Institutes.
Oct. 5, 2009: Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, speaks to colleagues and the media in the atrium of Genentech Hall after winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her research on how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the telomerase enzyme. Photo by Elisabeth Fall/fallfoto.com.
Aug. 5, 2009: A billboard touting the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay sits on an empty lot where construction would begin in several months. Photo by Mark Citret.
Oct. 1, 2009: The UCSF Orthopaedic Institute was the first clinical service to open at Mission Bay and is the most comprehensive location in the Bay Area for outpatient treatment, research and training in musculoskeletal conditions, injuries and sports medicine. Photo by Noah Berger.
Sept. 2, 2010: Shuvo Roy, PhD, director of the Biomedical Microdevices Laboratory, unveils a prototype for the world's first implantable artificial kidney, developed by Roy's team of 40 scientists from UCSF, the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University, University of Michigan, Ohio State University and Penn State University. Photo by Susan Merrell.
Oct. 26, 2010: UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, is joined on stage by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, far left, UCSF Medical Center CEO Mark Laret, second from right, and UC President Mark Yudof, far right, as she speaks at the groundbreaking of the new Mission Bay medical center. Photo by Elisabeth Fall/fallfoto.com.
Feb. 24, 2011: The state-of-the-art robotic pharmacy begins operation, preparing oral and injectable medicines, including toxic chemotherapy drugs, for patients. The new system delivers medication more accurately and frees pharmacists and nurses to focus more on providing direct patient care. Photo by Susan Merrell.
May 16, 2011: Members of the core Mission Bay Hospitals Project team celebrate the structural steel raising for the new medical center. From left, Ivy Chiao, senior project manager; J. Stewart Eckblad, AIA, director of design and construction; and Cindy Lima, executive director. Photo by Susan Merrell.
Oct. 17, 2011: Construction workers at the new medical center place the last steel beam on the structure in a "topping out" ceremony. Traditionally an evergreen tree and a national flag sit on the beam to symbolize growth and bring good luck. Photo by Susan Merrell.
May 18, 2012: Elizabeth Watkins, who was appointed the new dean of the Graduate Division in January 2012, lines up for the academic procession at the commencement ceremony in Jeanne Robertson Auditorium at Mission Bay before addressing her first graduating class. Photo by Susan Merrell.
Sept. 11, 2012: Ronald Vale, PhD, front-center in a Giants jersey, who won the 2012 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, celebrates news of his achievement with colleagues in the lobby of Genentech Hall. Vale was recognized for his work that helped illuminate how cells move material around internally. Photo by Susan Merrell.
Oct. 24, 2012: Gladstone Senior Investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, left, speaks at a press conference during a stem cell symposium at the Gladstone Institutes after winning the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with John Gurdon, PhD, right, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England. A UCSF professor of anatomy, Yamanaka won for his discoveries that led to the development of induced pluripotent stem cells. Photo by Chris Goodfellow/Gladstone Institutes.
2012: This aerial shot of the Mission Bay area shows a robust health sciences hub, with construction continuing on the new UCSF Medical Center, which will be San Francisco's first new hospital in three decades when it opens in February 2015.