This brief historical account of research in San Francisco Bay and the Delta of California indicates that motivation for the study of the system has been primarily related to economic aspects of the alteration of the environment by acts of man, e.g. the study of hydraulic mining debris by G. K. Gilbert, or the stresses associated with drought periods, exemplified by the marine borer studies of the 1920s. Although there was an active interest in making a baseline study of the entire system around 1911-12 by members of the departments of zoology and geology of the University of California, the effort was soon abandoned and the Bay and its delta lapsed into academic oblivion. By the 1930s there was such general unawareness of the environment or its significance that major decisions for diversion of water from the system were made as if the Bay simply did not exist, and serious consideration was given to schemes, especially the Reber Plan, that would have destroyed San Francisco Bay completely.