2017. The Balboa Reservoir. Photo: Amy O'Hair.

The History of the Balboa Reservoir

A series of posts about the long and complex history of a reservoir that never held water:

Photographs and short-takes:

MM O'Shaughnessy, "Proposed Balboa Park Reservoir," The Hetch Hetchy water supply and power project of San Francisco. 1931. https://archive.org/details/hetchhetchywater00osha_0/page/46/mode/2up
1926. “Proposed Balboa Park Reservoir.” MM O’Shaughnessy, The Hetch Hetchy water supply and power project of San Francisco, 1931. https://archive.org/details/hetchhetchywater00osha_0/page/46/mode/2up

My sincerest thanks to Harry Bernstein for generously sharing his research on the Balboa Reservoir. Without his diligence at unearthing facts and documents, I could not possibly written these articles.

Many thanks to the others who helped me write this series of articles: Greg Gaar; David Gallagher; Andre Guillory of the Office of the Assessor-Recorder; Ken Hollenbeck; Woody LaBounty; Oanh Mai, CCSF Archivist; Natalie Mattei, Albertsons Companies; Andrew Sherman; Jesse David Wall; and other local residents and neighbors who kindly responded to my queries about their unofficial uses of the reservoir space over the decades.