The Heart Line by Gelett Burgess — Read

It is easy to imagine the virtuous pride with which the civil engineer, / Jasper O'Farrell, set about the laying out of the town of San Francisco / in 1846. Here was the ideal site for a city -- a peninsula lying like a / great thumb on the hand of the mainland, between the Pacific Ocean and a / deep, land-locked bay, an area romantically configured of hills and / valleys, with picturesque mountain and water views, the setting sun in / the west and Mount Diablo a sentinel in the east; to the northward, the / sea channel of the Golden Gate overhung by the foot-hills of Tamalpais.

There was still chance to amend and improve the old town site of Yerba / Buena, the little Spanish settlement by the cove in the harbor, whose / straight, narrow streets had been artlessly ruled by Francisco de Haro, / alcalde of the Mission Dolores. He had marked out upon the ground, / northerly, La Calle de la Fundacion and the adjacent squares necessary / for the little port of entry in 1835. Four years later, when Governor / Alvarado directed a new survey of the place, Jean Vioget extended the / original lines with mathematical precision to the hills surrounding the / valley; and it would have been possible to correct that artistic blunder / of the simple-minded alcalde. But Jasper O'Farrell had seen military / service with General Sutter; his ways were stern and severe, his / esthetic impulses, if he had any, were heroically subdued. Market / Street, indeed, he permitted to run obliquely, though it went straight / as a bullet towards the Twin Peaks. The rest of the city he made one / great checkerboard, in defiance of its natural topography.