Lands End is a park in

San Francisco 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 ...

within the

Golden Gate National Recreation Area The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is a U.S. National Recreation Area protecting of ecologically and historically significant landscapes surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of the park is land formerly used by the United ...

. It is a rocky and windswept shoreline at the mouth of the

Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by t ...

, situated between the

Sutro District The Sutro Historic District is a National Park Service historic district in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District in western San Francisco, California. It is within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, since being acquire ...

and Lincoln Park and abutting

Fort Miley Military Reservation The Fort Miley Military Reservation, in San Francisco, California, sits on Point Lobos (not to be confused with Point Lobos near Carmel-by-the-Sea), one of the outer headlands on the southern side of the Golden Gate. Much of the site is part of th ...

. A memorial to USS ''San Francisco'' stands in the park. Numerous hiking trails follow the former railbeds of the Ferries and Cliff House Railway along the cliffs and also down to the shore. The most-traveled trail in Lands End is the Coastal Trail, a section of the

California Coastal Trail The California Coastal Trail, or CCT, is an environmental project by the California Coastal Conservancy, an organization developed to enhance coastal resources and promote access to the shore in 2001. The trail is designed to connect the enti ...

that follows the railbed of the old Cliff House Railway. This trail is handicap-accessible until the Mile Rock Overlook, and bike accessible until the Eagles Point steps. A spur trail takes users to Mile Rock Point and Mile Rock Beach, which offer views of the

. Additionally, Lands End contains the ruins of the

Sutro Baths The Sutro Baths was a large, privately owned public saltwater swimming pool complex in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District in western San Francisco, California. Built in 1894, the Sutro Baths was located north of Ocean Beach, ...

. Other historic sites include numerous shipwrecks, which are visible at low tides from the Coastal Trail and Mile Rock. A visitor center, Lands End Lookout, opened on April 28, 2012.

History

The Yelamu Ohlone tribe lived at Lands End before Spanish settlement began in 1776. After the

Gold Rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...

, entrepreneurs designed the new Cliff House as a fashionable resort for the wealthy. A private company constructed a new road called Point Lobos Avenue. By the 1860s, a horse-drawn stagecoach made the trip every Sunday from crowded downtown San Francisco out to Lands End. During the 1880s, millionaire

Adolph Sutro Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro (April 29, 1830 – August 8, 1898) was a German-American engineer, politician and philanthropist who served as the 24th mayor of San Francisco from 1895 until 1897. Born a German Jew, he moved to Virginia Cit ...

constructed a passenger steam train from downtown to Lands End for the affordable fare of 5¢. In 1891, an old miner called Charles Jackson announced that he had discovered a vein of bituminous coal under the cliffs at Baker Beach, on Sutro's land; Sutro had a tunnel dug 200 feet under the railroad track and confirmed the find, but the mine was never exploited. File:Lands End Lookout pano.jpg, View from Lands End Lookout File:Lands End.jpg, Lands End is south of the entrance to the Golden Gate File:Panorama at Land's End San Francisco.jpg, alt=Panorama shows a wide, sweeping view of the view from an outcropping at Land's End. The Pacific Ocean shines a brilliant aquamarine and spectators can be see enjoying the ocean breeze on the clear summer day., View from an outcropping at Land's End

Labyrinth

Along the Coastal Trail at Eagle's Point, local artist Eduardo Aguilera constructed a "hidden labyrinth" overlooking Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. It has been vandalized numerous times and was destroyed in August 2015, but was rebuilt a month later by the artist with the help of 50 volunteers.

References

External links

NPS−Golden Gate National Recreation Area: Visiting Lands End

— ''digital guidebook''.
Lands End at the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy
{{authority control Geography of San Francisco Golden Gate National Recreation Area Parks in San Francisco Richmond District, San Francisco

History

Labyrinth

See also

References

External links