Eric Porter, "A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport" (U California Press, 2023)
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San Francisco International Airport
The land on which SFOs sit used to be open water. It was reclaimed by a wealthy California banker named Darius Ogden Mills, who made a fortune from gold mining and other extractive ventures. He originally became the one that took to graze his dairy cows; it still may have been used for dairying when it was given to the city of San Francisco in the late 1920s. The lands surrounding the airport were part of the California Rancho during the Mexican period.
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