This website is no longer updated and has been replaced with a static copy. The Spatial History Project was active at Stanford University from 2007-2022, engaging in dozens of collaborative projects led by faculty, staff, graduate students, post-docs, visiting scholars and others at Stanford and beyond. More than 150 undergraduate students from more than a dozen disciplines contributed to these projects. In addition to a robust intellectual exchange built through these partnerships, research outputs included major monographs, edited volumes, journal articles, museum exhibitions, digital articles, robust websites, and dozens of lightweight interactive visualizations, mostly developed with Adobe Flash (now defunct). While most of those publications live on in other forms, the content exclusive to this website is preserved in good faith through this static version of the site. Flash-based content is partially available in emulated form using the Ruffle emulator.
Morgan's Bay Holdings, 1930
Authors: Gabriel Lee, Alec Norton, Andrew Robichaud, and Matthew Booker
Mapping bathymetry against property allowed us to understand the relationship of ownership and oyster habitat over time. The maps presented here are not illustrations of historical speculations or conclusions drawn from documents. Rather, they serve as evidence in their own right and have led to a new set of conclusions about oyster production and bay ownership and speculation. Morgan Company held a monopoly because it controlled oyster habitat. But as time passed, Morgan also speculated in property, buying pieces of the Bay that held little productive value, but which might have had strategic value as the Bay became a site for railroads, pipelines, and uses that made bay ownership profitable in other ways. Morgan came to see the Bay less as a productive space and increasingly as an opportunity to speculate, where ownership of a key piece of real estate could offer large returns.
