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Map and bird's-eye view advertising lots on Richmond's waterfront around its newly developed inner harbor.
The bird's-eye view shows the subdivided lots and an early developmental stage of the Richmond Canal (Santa Fe Channel) before the Harbor Channel was built. The city appears densest in Point Richmond and above Ohio Street, but the land is sparsely developed for some distance (until nearing Oakland) and the Inner Harbor Basin has not yet been built.
Direct comparisons to San Francisco are used to help sell, with Cutting Boulevard touted as the "Market Street of Richmond" and the Canal Subdivision as offering the opportunities of the burned district.
The importance of California ports was expected to increase with the forthcoming completion of the Panama Canal. Richmond offered harbor facilities and more warehousing space than San Francisco. Henry C. Cutting, seeing the potential for a major deepwater port, purchased the land for the inner harbor from Jacob Tewksbury's widow. Tewksbury, an early developer of Richmond, had filled in the sloughs and made Point Richmond a peninsula.
![San Francisco [June] 1849.](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/97028.jpg)
