The Wiggle

The Wiggle's city-installed route sign on Haight Street.

The Wiggle is a one-mile, zig-zagging bicycle route from Market Street to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, that minimizes hilly inclines for bicycle riders. Rising 120 feet (37 m), The Wiggle inclines average 3% and never exceed 6%. The path generally follows the historical route of the long since paved-over Sans Souci Valley watercourse, winding through the Lower Haight neighborhood toward the Panhandle section of Golden Gate Park.

Although the route is primarily used for going up hill (north and west), the city route signs are also posted visible to riders heading down hill. One such rider, pictured, is turning south on Pierce Street from the eastbound direction of Haight Street.

The lower end of the route begins at either end of the Duboce Bikeway in the block of Duboce Avenue just west of Market Street. The elevation is approximately 100 feet (30 m) above sea level. It then moves in a zig-zag toward the northwest along Duboce Avenue, Steiner, Waller, Pierce, Haight, Scott, and Fell Streets to the Panhandle Bikeway, 215 feet (66 m) above sea level. After climbing 50 more feet, the peak of The Wiggle is reached near Stanyan Street at the peninsular drainage divide, i.e., the dividing point between surface water flowing to the San Francisco Bay on the east side and flowing to the Pacific Ocean on the west.

Bicyclists can travel The Wiggle between major eastern and central neighborhoods (such as Downtown, SoMa, The Mission District, The Castro) and major western neighborhoods (including the Panhandle, The Haight, Golden Gate Park, and The Richmond and Sunset Districts).

The route

A 1928 San Francisco Public works proposal to extend the Panhandle Park to Market Street followed the Wiggle route exactly, but without the wiggling. The plan called for demolition of houses to allow a straight route.

Below are five route-finding techniques for those who follow the Wiggle: Geography, Signage, Map, Directions and a Mnemonic trick.

Geographic route-finding

Without memorizing streets, a simple pattern will produce the route easily. The rider or pedestrian wishing to go on the flattest route makes a turn toward the north or west each time the forward direction presents a hill steeper than the turn.

Thus, starting northbound on Church at Market or westbound on Duboce at Market this pattern will avoid all steep areas and produce a route from Market Street to the bike path in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park and the main routes through the Park itself. Similar "wiggles" can be found using this method for reading the geography in other hill areas, though this wiggle route is known most widely.

Signage

Follow the Bike Route 30 signs from Duboce Avenue westbound (at Market Street or Church Street). In some places, the signs also say "The Wiggle."

Map

[5] Google map with terrain.

Directions

Westbound starting at Market and Duboce [6] (google maps)or Church and Duboce, the route takes these steps...

1. Duboce - Head west
2. Steiner - Turn right (north)
3. Waller - Turn left (west)
4. Pierce - Turn right (north)
5. Haight - Turn left (west)
6. Scott - Turn right (north)
7. Fell - Turn left (west)

Mnemonic trick

The initial letters in the sequence of roads follows the consonants in SWaP HiS: Steiner, Waller, Pierce, Haight, Scott

OR

you can use: Da Small White Pigs Had Some Figs: Duboce, Steiner, Waller, Pierce, Haight, Scott, Fell. (West bound)

Fa Sho Hannah Played With Sand Dunes: Fell, Scott, Haight, Pierce, Waller, Steiner, Duboce. (East bound)

Geological process that created the flat terrain

The hills adjacent to the route, on the northeast side are made of underlying serpentine rock:

• Mint Hill (known successively as Reservoir Hill, and then Clinton Mound until 1937 when the new U.S. Mint was built on it.)
• Alamo Square

The adjacent hills on the southwest are of the Franciscan chert formation:

• Lone Mountain
• Corona Heights
• Buena Vista Hill

These hills are the northernmost manifestation of the San Miguel Hills (including Twin Peaks), which themselves comprise the northern tip of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Over thousands of years, the gentle valley bottom was formed through a process of gradual erosion of the soft, crumbly serpentine. This flat creek bed contained, until roads and other construction obliterated them, the intermittent stream of the creek itself and two ponds. as with all such flat valleys, the location of ponds tended to shift, but they were generally located at what is now Divisadero Street near Oak Street and at Market Street from Belcher Street to Reservoir Street—a little known public street which is currently the parking lot entry for the Safeway grocery store at 2020 Market Street. (The back of this store is located at the start of the Wiggle.) The reservoir referenced was the successor to the pond.

Human history

Before Europeans settled in San Francisco, a route approximately following that now known as "The Wiggle" was used as a way to avoid hills while walking. A summer village called Chutchui existed beside the area where The Wiggle meets Market Street. The path went toward what is now the Panhandle and then connected to the winter village area at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula near the current site of Crissy Field.^{[citation needed]}

When the San Francisco Presidio and the Mission Dolores were founded in 1776, the trail became a horseback connector eventually called "the Old Spanish Trail." In the 19th century, the trail was the commute route of military personnel who lived in the Mission District and worked at the Presidio. In the 1860s, it finally was widened to become a toll road, passable by carriages, and going by the name "Divisadero" or "Devisadero" Street. In the 1870s, a grid of streets was imposed in its place, one retaining the old road's name, across a newly formed neighborhood with all the sandy hills and steep gullies filled or scraped flat.

External links

• The Wiggle in Wikispot SF
• San Francisco government traffic calming plans for The Wiggle area.
• Natural history tour of The Wiggle presented by the author of the first article popularizing the term "The Wiggle".
• turn by turn directions at citysearch.com
• Twin-Peaks-Wiggle-Loop map of The Twin Peaks Wiggle Loop.
• Listing in Bay Guardian's "Best of the Bay"
• Tubular Times original layout with map on tearsheet of 1994 article about The Wiggle
• The 340-foot-long (100 m) Duboce Bikeway Mural, where the wiggle starts, and in which the Sans Souci Creek is depicted with the names of the current streets visible in and on the water