Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park is a 1,017-acre urban park located on reclaimed sand dunes in the western section of San Francisco. The park consists of three major elements—an expansive forest, extensive open meadows, and a connecting system of curvilinear paths and roads. Numerous gardens, lakes, and recreational features are located throughout as well. Golden Gate Park was developed beginning in 1871 from an original plan by William Hammond Hall. It was designed as a picturesque park landscape, influenced by the work of the preeminent landscape designer of the period, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., with whom Hall had an active correspondence. Olmsted had originally declared the project impossible due to wind and soil conditions.

In 1870, Hall surveyed the area for the new park, which stretches 3.5 miles (by 0.5 miles wide) from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean, with a narrow 0.75-mile-long panhandle extension on the [Page 310]eastern end. The site was located in the Outside Lands, an area consisting primarily of wind-raked sand dunes that had only recently been annexed to the City of San Francisco.

Hall was appointed park engineer and superintendent in 1871. Informed by a study of Olmsted's work, as well as European beach-reclamation techniques, his plan incorporated the existing topography, featuring some low rock hills and ridges as well as slight depressions among the prevailing sand dunes. Initial plantings of lupine seed sown with fast-growing barley began to stabilize the dunes and were followed by a succession of grasses, then shrubs, and finally tree seedlings. Massive amounts of topsoil and manure were imported, a park nursery established, a large underlying aquifer tapped for irrigation, and an elaborate distribution system constructed. Eventually, two windmills, the Dutch Windmill (1902) and the Murphy Windmill (1905), located at the far western edge of the park, would pump water to a reservoir atop Strawberry Hill, the central high point, from where it was fed throughout the park. Hall's design exaggerated the natural terrain by concentrating trees on higher ground, thus sheltering and helping to define the valleys, which became open meadows. Topography also played a role in the location of the lakes, several of which were sited in low areas that were already seasonal ponds. These lakes were also components of the irrigation system. In the first few years of park development, much of the area had been reclaimed and planted with seedlings that would become its forest, primarily Monterey pine, Monterey cypress, and eucalyptus. This introduced evergreen forest contrasted with the wooded areas of major urban parks in the eastern states, which consist largely of native deciduous trees. A major reforestation effort began in 1980, as the original plantings reached advanced age.

Hall's master plan concentrated recreational facilities in the eastern portion of about 270 acres. The high Victorian-style wood and glass Conservatory of Flowers (1878) was the park's first building. In 1882, the first bandstand was constructed in Conservatory Valley, providing a site for band music concerts, a popular entertainment in the period before recorded music. In 1889, the Children's Quarter, consisting of a playground, a carousel, and the Sharon Building, a canteen for children and their mothers, was completed as the first area of a public park in the United States dedicated to children. In the 1890s, active sports facilities appeared. The Recreation Grounds (Big Rec baseball diamonds) were added in 1893, followed by tennis courts in 1894. Bicycling was becoming popular at the time, and the park's first bicycle path, which paralleled the main carriage drive, was constructed in 1896. The Stow Lake Boathouse provided rowboats for visitors beginning in 1894. The Mid-Winter Fair of 1894, an international exposition intended to highlight San Francisco's mild climate, was held in the park. It resulted in the creation of the Music Concourse and deYoung Museum of Art, which along with the California Academy of Sciences now form the core of the park's cultural center. The Japanese Tea Garden, another legacy of the fair, is the oldest of its kind in the United States.

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