Lands End, San Francisco

Lands End is a park located on the West Side of San Francisco within the larger Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is also the geographic name of a specific promontory next to the Pacific Ocean on the northwest side of the park. The park is in large part a rocky and windswept shoreline at the mouth of the Golden Gate, situated between the Sutro District and Lincoln Park and abutting Fort Miley Military Reservation. 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 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 Golden Gate. A memorial to USS ''San Francisco'' stands in the park, at the southern end of the park's section of the Coastal Trail. Additionally, Lands End contains the ruins of the Sutro Baths. 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, 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 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 Dead Man’s Point, 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.

Geography

The Lands End unit of Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is adjacent to Lincoln Park, a San Francisco city park that includes a city-owned golf course and the Legion of Honor Museum, as well as the Fort Miley Military Reservation, which largely consists of the San Francisco VA Medical Center. The GGNRA land largely surrounds Lincoln Park and Fort Miley, to the north and west of these areas. The Lands End GGNRA unit largely consists of scenic cliffside areas overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and is centered on the Coastal Trail and several branch trails. The section of the Coastal Trail in Lands End leads from the northern terminus of 32nd Avenue in the wealthy Sea Cliff neighborhood, past the high headland that includes Lincoln Park, and then following the coastal headlands downhill to the west and south, to Point Lobos Avenue, where the park then adjoins Sutro Heights Park and the Cliff House.

The coastline of the Lands End area includes several promontories that have historically been of importance in navigation in the approach to the Golden Gate. One such point is Lands End, which gives its name to the larger area. Lands End point is northeast of the Legion of Honor and south of the offshore Mile Rock, which in turn gives its name to Mile Rock Beach, which is in a cove adjacent to Lands End. This area can be reached by the Lands End Trail, which branches off from the Coastal Trail. The point is the site of the Lands End Labyrinth. Dead Man's Point and Eagle's Point are two smaller promontories on the park's coastline to the east of Lands End.

Another important promontory is Point Lobos (not to be confused with Point Lobos in Monterey County), on the far west side of the park, immediately above the ruins of the Sutro Baths. It can be reached by the Sutro Bath trail and includes a scenic overlook. Several tunnels that used to deliver sea water to the Sutro Baths are cut through the headland that makes up Point Lobos. Point Lobos is also sometimes called "Parallel Point", after a schooner named the ''Parallel'' that was shipwrecked there in 1887.

File:Lands End Lookout pano.jpg, View from Lands End Lookout
File:Panorama at Land's End San Francisco.jpg, View from an outcropping at Point Lobos

Labyrinth

Along the Coastal Trail at Lands End, 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.

See also

* List of beaches in California
* List of California state parks

References

External links

NPS−Golden Gate National Recreation Area: Visiting Lands End




— ''digital guidebook''.

Lands End at the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy

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Geography of San Francisco
Headlands of San Francisco
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Parks in San Francisco
Richmond District, San Francisco