Siplichiquin Oyster Point Shell Mound San Bruno
Amazingly, this 5000 year old shell mound / village site has been protected from development. It is older than the pyramids in Egypt.
Thank you David Schooley and San Bruno Mountain Watch, Patrick Orozco, and others.
We don’t recommend to the faint of heart trying to reach it the way we did.
We started at the top of San Bruno Mountain, hiked 2.5 miles out the ridge line (spectacular views) and then dropped 1200 feet down to the shell mound by the freeway.
It took Bob 4 hours to hike back to the car. I took a cab. $25. Worth it.
That little row of trees by the freeway next to the tall building on the right is it. 75 yards long, 30 yards wide, 8 yards deep. You feel like you are walking on a sponge, just like the natives did.
“The permanence of Californian culture,” Alfred Kroeber wrote in 1925, “is of far more than local interest. It is a fact of significance in the history of civilization.”
The mound rises above Bob.
In 1909 N.C. Nelson identified over 400 shell mounds ringing San Francisco Bay. Very few remnants remain.
Think about all the people who lived here then.
Heck Yeah!
If you ever wondered why it is called Oyster Point…
