The ships buried under San Francisco
While Seattle and Chicago might be known for their city-spanning basements after colossal city-raising projects, San Francisco has buried underneath it something entirely unique. Probably. Sailing ships!
San Francisco was almost nothing until the mid-1800s. In 1847, its population was 459, being a miniscule settlement with inconvenient terrain other than the bay. What's the point of a bay if there's nothing for the ships to stop for?
And then suddenly, 1849 happened. There's gold in them thar hills! Within a few short years, San Francisco rocketed to a population of tens of thousands, with basically no infrastructure or land to support it.
The city had a dual problem. There was nowhere for the incoming 49ers to live, and there was nowhere for the flotilla of ships to moor. Ships would simply be abandoned in place as they arrived, either because their owners, in a rush to get to San Francisco, had bought something hardly even seaworthy, or because the crew abandoned their job in favor of gold fever.
The shoreline was described as a "forest of masts" with over a thousand ships crammed into as little space as possible. Even the ships that wanted to set sail again couldn't, as they got blocked in by the abandoned hulks.
What's a burgeoning city to do? Simply build over the ships.
The land around the coast was practically useless, being muddy bogs, but still incredibly valuable due to its future use as gold rush housing. The city sold it as lots, requiring new owners to fill them in with excavated land.
Even then, these lots sold out fast. How about another loophole? If your ship sank, you could claim it and the immediate area as salvage. Unseaworthy ships would mysteriously spring holes in the night, and their owners would claim the section of shore as legitimate salvage.
Some of the ships were nice enough that the shore was extended to them and their upper decks became proper buildings. Others simply got buried, supporting the new land above them. Gradually, what is now San Francisco's Financial District became regular land, with the ships forgotten artifacts well below the surface.
Every now and then though, an excavation project for a building foundation or subway tunnel strikes an ancient deck.
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