Bernal Heights Summit ( ) or Bernal Heights Hill is a hill in the
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
neighborhood of
Bernal Heights
Bernal Heights ( ) is a residential neighborhood in southeastern San Francisco, California. The prominent Bernal Heights hill overlooks the San Francisco skyline and features a microwave transmission tower. The nearby Sutro Tower can be seen from ...
. Upper elevations are part of Bernal Heights Park, which is managed by the
San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department
The San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department is the city agency responsible for governing and maintaining all city-owned parks and recreational facilities in San Francisco, California. The Recreation & Parks Department also runs Sharp Park i ...
. At its highest elevation (466 ft.) is a privately-owned equipment building and 50-foot tall telecommunications tower. The tower does not have an official name, but some residents call it "Sutrito", as it resembles a shorter version of
Sutro Tower
Sutro Tower is a unique three-legged tall TV and radio lattice tower located in San Francisco, California. Rising from a hill between Twin Peaks and Mount Sutro near Clarendon Heights, it is a prominent feature of the city skyline and a landma ...
. The park and summit are largely surrounded by Bernal Heights Boulevard.
Ecology
Unusual flora and fauna can be found on Bernal Hill. Wildflowers include the
footsteps of spring,
blue-eyed grass
''Sisyrinchium'' is a large genus of annual to perennial flowering plant in the family Iridaceae. Native to the New World, the species are known as blue-eyed grasses and, though not true grasses and in varieties with flower colors other than blu ...
,
checkerbloom,
shooting star and
yellow mariposa lily. Bernal Hill was one of the earliest hills in San Francisco to be re-colonized by wild coyotes.
Geology
Bernal Hill, along with the other hills in the San Francisco area, is a folded hill; it was created by the "wrinkling up" effect of the Pacific plate subducting under the North American plate, when the North American and Pacific plates were converging around 150 million years ago. Near the summit are folded layers of very hard rock called
radiolarian
The Radiolaria, also called Radiozoa, are protozoa of diameter 0.1–0.2 mm that produce intricate mineral skeletons, typically with a central capsule dividing the cell into the inner and outer portions of endoplasm and ectoplasm. The elab ...
chert
Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a prec ...
.
It is a sedimentary silicate rock which gets its silica content from the shells of microscopic creatures called
radiolaria
The Radiolaria, also called Radiozoa, are protozoa of diameter 0.1–0.2 mm that produce intricate mineral skeletons, typically with a central capsule dividing the cell (biology), cell into the inner and outer portions of endoplasm and Ecto ...
. The red color comes from
iron oxide
Iron oxides are chemical compounds composed of iron and oxygen. Several iron oxides are recognized. All are black magnetic solids. Often they are non-stoichiometric. Oxyhydroxides are a related class of compounds, perhaps the best known of whic ...
. In between the layers of chert are thin layers of shale in many different colors from the same red as the surrounding rock to white, green, and purple. Other types of rocks and minerals on the hill include serpentinite, jasper, and clay.
See also
*
List of hills in San Francisco
This is a list of the hills of San Francisco, California.
Prior lists
Several cities claim to have been built on seven hills. "The Seven Hills of San Francisco" are Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Rincon Hill, Twin Peaks, Mount Davidso ...
*
List of summits of the San Francisco Bay Area
This is a list of named summits in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area that are more than above sea level. Note that there are no natural features above in the city of San Francisco.
Unless otherwise referenced, all data are from the Geograp ...
References
Hills of San Francisco
{{SanFrancisco-geo-stub