The Presidio is a patch of land in the heart of San Francisco connected to the Golden Gate Bridge which is slowly transitioning out of its military history without any intention of letting go of it completely. With its white headstone cemetery on a rolling green hillside and many of the beige original military buildings having changed only in use, in its current state the nearly 1,500 acres feels equal parts military base, public park, and residential neighborhood with slow, limited, and cautiously planned commerce creeping into it.
It was the Spaniards who created a military installation here in the same year as America’s independence, on the southern side of where the entrance to the San Francisco Bay is at its most narrow. It didn’t become an American military base until seventy years later and was decommissioned and became a national park in nineteen nineties. The Presidio is double the size of Central Park in Manhattan and serves as a massive natural buffer to the city with giant Sequoia redwood, eucalyptus and cypress trees, jogging trails and expansive vistas of the ocean, bay and city served with an amazing tranquility. The area runs down a gentle grade of a hill on either side of the Golden Gate Bridge before meeting the ocean and its rocky coast at Baker Beach, and the wide opened green grass flats of the former military airstrip of Crissy Field.
If you want to explore everything that the area has to offer you can get a map of the Presidio from the visitors’ center before heading off to walk the 24 miles of trails or meander through the nearly five hundred repurposed former military buildings which have retained their original façades. You can head to the public golf course which offers a dramatic view looking back at the Golden Gate Bridge, then walk back along Baker Beach or hike the rugged coast with its dramatic ocean views from the trails which often expose the long abandoned concrete bunkers and gun posts. Back at Crissy Field you can fly a kite or play Frisbee on the wide-opened grass field, or in-line skate along its perimeter and end up at the beach to throw a ball with your dog or just sunbath and watch the windsurfers and kite-boarders which launch from the main beach. Just outside of the east gate entrance to the Presidio you will find one of San Francisco’s many quality museums, the Palace of Fine Arts
While the planning commission and the national park service have been slow and methodical in their approach, in recent years they have begun to allow commerce to complement the Presidio and give it a sense of a future, rather than to remain a relic of the past. You can now eat at a growing number of restaurants, climb at an indoor rock gym, swim at an indoor swimming complex, buy local wine, enjoy a spa, or purchase sporting goods for the many outdoor activities that are possible inside the Presidio. One of the biggest changes to the Presidio to date though is the multi-building occupation and long-term lease accommodating Industrial Light and Magic, the Lucasfilm company created by George Lucas and best known for its Star Wars films.
