Islais Creek or Islais Creek Channel is a small creek in San Francisco, California. The name of the creek is derived from a Salinan Native American word "slay" or "islay", the name for the Prunus ilicifolia wild cherries.
Around the time of the Gold Rush, the area became an industrial hub, and the condition of the creek worsened. After the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the city decided to reclaim the creek using earthquake debris, reducing the waterbody to its present size. Though much of Islais Creek has been converted to an underground culvert, remnants still exist today at both Glen Canyon Park and Third Street. Several community organizations are dedicated to preserve these remnants, as they are important wildlife habitats.
Islais Creek with an abandoned five-story-high copra crane, Interstate 280 and Sutro Tower in the background
Upper Islais Creek in Glen Canyon Park, San Francisco
A T Third Street light rail train crossing the Islais Creek Bridge, a bascule-type drawbridge that carries 3rd Street over Islais Creek
The creek's copra crane remnant in 2014, with an iron shape hanging in the center, with the word ISLAIS cut into it
Glen Canyon Park is a city park in San Francisco, California. It occupies about 70 acres (28 ha) along a deep canyon adjacent to the Glen Park, Diamond Heights, and Miraloma Park neighborhoods. O'Shaughnessy Hollow is a rugged, undeveloped 3.6 acres (1.5 ha) tract of parkland that lies immediately to the west and may be considered an extension of Glen Canyon Park.
Aerial photograph of Glen Canyon Park; the Bosworth St., Sussex St., and Diamond Heights Shopping Center entrances are labeled. O'Shaughnessy Blvd. divides Glen Canyon Park (on the east) from O'Shaughnessy Hollow (to the west).
Spring in Glen Canyon Park. Field mustard in flower clings to the stony canyon walls; Islais Creek and its willow thickets lie at their base.
Glen Canyon Park in winter. The photograph shows three characteristic features of the park's landscape. The vividly green wild oat (Avena fatua) and slender wild oat (Avena barbata) grasses on the left cover the steep eastern slope of the canyon. The line of blue gum eucalyptus trees is a windbreak planted in the 1850s following Adolph Sutro's purchase of this land, which he named his "Gum Tree Ranch". The willow thickets in the bottom and bottom-right of the photograph surround Islais Creek and a small wetland; the wetland is traversed by a boardwalk leading to the trail seen emerging from the thicket.
Roadcut showing Franciscan chert rock in O'Shaughnessy Hollow. The remarkable folding of the stacked layers indicates the tectonic forces that lifted up the coastal mountain ranges, and which warped the originally planar layers of this rock into the fantastic shapes they now present. The chert itself in this area is rich with fossils of radiolarian creatures. The land above and around the roadcut has a "coyote brush scrub" community of plants that is typically found on thinner, drier soils in this region.
