Tour of Abandoned Alviso

Have you ever been strangely attracted to a place for no apparent reason? Somewhere that feels like home even though you’ve never been there before, except perhaps in a previous life? For Dick, that place is Alviso, a community that rises out of the mudflats at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.

Between its mobile home parks and abandoned buildings, Alviso doesn’t look like much today. But in the 1800s its port was the hub for the Santa Clara Valley, with steamboats bringing passengers and goods on daily trips from San Francisco. Alviso was first home to a mill that produced up to 300 barrels of flour a day, then a fruit cannery after the valley filled with orchards. During the depression, what was once the US’s 3rd largest cannery closed, the salt pond operations expanded, the port silted up and the town’s regional economic role declined.

What’s left of Alviso is ordinary–even ugly–to most people, but intriguing to my husband, who rides out to Alviso almost every week. I recently joined him and brought along a new camera to see if I could capture the charm of Alviso, Silicon Valley’s most neglected historic town.

Is there a place that is special to you in a way that is hard to explain, even to people who know you well?

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