With the creation of the Emeryville Crescent State Marine Reserve in 1985 and increased attention to ecosystem preservation, the last mudflat sculptures were removed in 1997.

The uplands were created by filling existing marshlands with rubble from building demolition, steel mill slag, industrial waste, sand, and clay to a depth ranging from 5 to 20 feet (1.5 to 6.1 m).

[4] The students may have been inspired by Kurt Schwitters, whose Merz art (shortened from the German term for commerce, Kommerz) used leftover materials.

[22] In 1977, the California Arts Council awarded a $4,393 grant to Richard Reynolds to purchase film for a documentary on the mudflat sculptures,[23] which was published in 1980.

Development of the Emeryville Peninsula had been grandfathered by the city, whose planning commission had adopted the General Plan and approved permits just days before the McAteer-Petris Act of 1965 passed, creating the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) to review construction projects that would reclaim land from the Bay.

[26]: 71–72  At the first hearing to determine the scope of the environmental impact report/statement in August 1986, the deputy director of BCDC suggested the commission would not support Santa Fe's proposal.

The report called the Crescent the "single most diverse wildlife habitat in the Bay" and identified significant impacts from continuing to allow human access to the site.

[28] Other factors in the decline cited include the reconstruction of the freeway after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which reduced the visibility of the mudflats from traffic; vandalism and destruction of existing sculptures without reconstruction; the prevailing conservative political culture under the Reagan administration; and the creation of McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, encompassing the mudflats.

[30] The mudflat sculptures are visited by the eponymous characters in one scene of the contemporaneous film Harold and Maude (1971), which was photographed in and around the Bay Area.

"[32] The Emeryville mudflat sculptures inspired a similar set of structures that were erected from the early 1970s to 1986 near Humboldt Bay, approximately 280 miles (450 km) north of San Francisco.

[34] In 2018, Ned Kahn and Pete Beeman were selected as finalists for artworks at the Emeryville Marina; like the earlier mudflat sculptures, the installations are intended to be visible from the eastern approach to the Bay Bridge.