Steam Yacht Medea alongside the Berkeley, April 1980

Back in January I showed you some vintage family photos from San Diego that included the steam ferryboat Berkeley. I recalled seeing this boat in an episode of California’s Gold, and I was surprised to realize I had never featured it on my blog. So this week, I’m correcting that oversight! You may notice the mention of another San Francisco ferry, the Eureka; in 2016 I had a lot of fun exploring that boat, docked at Hyde Street Pier, and it looks very much the same inside as the Berkeley, including those cool wooden benches. This episode also includes a wonderful segment that gave me goosebumps as I listened to the 1920s-era theater organ — a beautiful survivor of San Francisco’s Market Street redevelopment in the 1970s.

The Berkeley, an 1898 steam ferryboat operated for 60 years on San Francisco Bay, and now has a loving home at the San Diego Maritime Museum. Likewise, the organ from the Fox Theater has a new life entertaining audiences at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood. Join Huell Howser as he retraces the journeys of these two items from their beginnings in San Francisco.

(Click on the linked image below to see the video.)