State Resolution Would Name the Bay Bridge Tunnel After Emperor Norton

State Senator Scott Wiener introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 193 on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, proposing that the tunnel carrying the Bay Bridge through Yerba Buena Island be named the Emperor Norton Tunnel. Assemblymember Catherine Stefani signed on as a co-author.

It would be a naming rather than a renaming. Everyone calls the passage the Yerba Buena Tunnel, but the Emperor Norton Trust, which has run the campaign, says it has never been given an official name and carries no dedicated signage.

Who Emperor Norton was

Joshua Abraham Norton arrived in San Francisco in the Gold Rush years as a businessman and lost his money after an attempt to corner the rice market. In 1859 he declared himself Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico. Local newspapers printed his proclamations for the next two decades. He died in 1880.

Wiener’s statement focuses on the content of those proclamations. “Emperor Norton was a San Francisco original,” the senator said. “At a time when Chinese Californians were being targeted with exclusion and harassment, he stood up against hate and preached inclusion. At a time of war, he stood against violence and hostility.” Wiener’s office also notes that Norton inspired a character in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Why this particular tunnel

Norton published three proclamations in the Pacific Appeal in 1872 calling for a bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. All three specified a route by way of Goat Island, the name then used for Yerba Buena Island. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened in November 1936, 56 years after his death, and it crosses the island as he described.

The Emperor Norton Trust argues the tunnel is the part of the bridge that matches Norton’s stated route most exactly, and the only piece of the original 1936 structure that is both unnamed and located inside San Francisco. The western span already carries a name: the legislature attached former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown’s name to it in 2013.

The timing is built on two anniversaries. 2026 is the 90th year of both the bridge and the tunnel, and the 180th anniversary of Norton’s arrival in the United States in 1846.

Where the proposal stands

A concurrent resolution has to clear both houses of the California legislature. SFist, citing the San Francisco Chronicle, reports that the resolution would have Caltrans determine the cost of replacing signs, and that the Emperor Norton Trust expects to raise the money for the signage if the naming proceeds.

The Trust ran an earlier campaign to add Emperor Norton Bridge as an honorary name for the whole span, from August 2013 to October 2022, and closed its petition in August 2023 with more than 6,700 signatures. It has since redirected the effort at the tunnel. Endorsements have come from the San Francisco Historical Society, the Chinese Historical Society of America, the Imperial Council of San Francisco, the Treasure Island Museum, California Lodge No. 1 of Free and Accepted Masons, and the San Francisco Bay chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The precedents

The Trust points to two. California named the previously unnamed Waldo Tunnel in Marin the Robin Williams Tunnel in 2015, the year after the actor’s death. San Francisco named Terminal 1 at SFO the Harvey Milk Terminal in 2018, after an earlier push to name the whole airport for Milk did not succeed.

Norton already has one piece of the city. In 2023, then-Supervisor Aaron Peskin had a Financial District alley named Emperor Norton Place. Peskin had tried in 2004 to put Norton’s name on the entire Bay Bridge.

The Trust has also floated a dedication ceremony at Panorama Park, on the west side of Yerba Buena Island, which looks back toward San Francisco.

The resolution and quotes come from Senator Wiener’s office, with the campaign history and anniversary case from the Emperor Norton Trust. SFist and the San Francisco Chronicle reported the introduction on August 5.

For more of the city this month, see things to do in San Francisco in August.

Photo: Leonard G., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.