After writing my last post on the history of Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers, I wanted to learn more about the park as a whole. Also, I’m in love with OpenSF History, a website with an extensive archive of historic photos, and have been diving deep into the site to find historic park photos, so I want to share them. My favorite pictures are those showing everyday people enjoying the park.

I decided to focus more on images than on written history, but I have provided a bit. Much of the information I include comes from FoundSF (a digital archive) and from good old Wikipedia. You can also watch an interesting video about Golden Gate Park by Glenn Lym.

The 1800s

By the mid-1800s, San Francisco was evolving from a minor port town into a metropolis due to the Gold Rush and the discovery of the Comstock Lode, as well as the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. City officials wanted San Francisco to have the attractions and amenities of East Coast and European cities, such as museums and parks. At that time in the United States, a large park within a city was a new idea but was gaining popularity as a social health movement, given the dirt and noise of late-19th Century cities. New York’s Central Park (1858), Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park (1865), and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park (1866) were Golden Gate’s predecessors and the only similar projects in the United States.

The two men who share the credit for the creation of Golden Gate Park, engineer William Hammond Hall and horticulturist John McLaren, envisioned a bucolic, wooded landscape in which San Franciscans could escape the hustle and bustle of daily life. In 1870, Hall won the bid to do a topographical survey of the land on which the park would be created and to create a plan for the park; work began in 1871.

The land on which the 1017-acre park now sits was previously an ocean of windblown sand dunes with little vegetation. Stage one was growing grass seeds obtained from France. Next came trees in order to stabilize the dunes that covered three-quarters of the park’s area. By 1875, about 60,000 trees, mostly eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and Monterey cypress had been planted. By 1879, that figure had more than doubled to 155,000 trees over 1000 acres. The lush meadows, forests, and gardens, as well as lakes, that eventually were created were made possible by irrigation and water pumped in via two windmills at the western end of Golden Gate, built in 1903.

Although Hall and McLaren wanted the park to remain mostly “natural,” they were forced to compromise, with multiple buildings, formal gardens, raceways, and other attractions being added. The Conservatory of Flowers opened in 1879 and is the oldest building in Golden Gate Park. The Music Concourse, with its grand bandshell, was originally a part of a Worlds Fair, the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 (which encompassed 200 acres and included 120 structures; more than 2 million people visited). The Japanese Tea Garden is another remnant of the Midwinter Exposition. By the turn of the century, Golden Gate Park was “the free Disneyland of its time” and was a huge success, despite its relatively remote location. Children’s Playground, originally called the Sharon Quarters for Children, opened in 1888, and is thought to have been the nation’s first public playground. At various times, the playground included bears, elephants, a merry-go-round, goat-drawn carts, swings, and other pleasures for children and families.

The the Early 1900s: Refugees, Races, and Museums

In the early 1900s, the park was busy with locals and visitors, who came to enjoy the outdoors and to visit the museums and other sights. Bicycling, baseball, boating, and picnics were all popular activities.

After the tragic earthquake and fires of 1906, Golden Gate Park became a site of refuge for many who found themselves homeless and did not have relatives to take them in. Twenty-six official homeless encampments were constructed in Golden Gate Park and nearby. The refugee camps in the park were primarily used as an interim location while the Ingleside horse stables were renovated to house refugees. Over the months following the quake and fires, “earthquake shacks” to house people who had lost their homes popped up all throughout the undeveloped “Outside Lands” (as the sand dunes of western San Francisco were known at that time).

San Francisco bounced back from tragedy. As the refugees found more permanent homes, Golden Gate Park soon went back to its original purposes–recreation and culture.

The De Young Museum’s original building was the Fine Arts Building from the Midwinter Exposition, of which de Young was the director. A new museum for de Young’s vast collections was completed in 1921. (The current extensive reconstruction of the museum began in 2001, and it reopened in 2005.)

The original museum of the California Academy of Sciences consisted of eleven buildings built between 1916 and 1976 in Golden Gate Park. The original structures were largely destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, with three of the original buildings conserved for the new construction, which opened in 2008.

Tough Times

During the Great Depression, the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department ran out of public funds, so maintenance of Golden Gate Park was taken over by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a government program providing employment and community improvements during the economic woes of the 1930s. The WPA built roads in the park, as well as other park fixtures, including an archery field, parts of the arboretum, Anglers Lodge, and the adjoining fly casting pools.

Today

A lot has changed in Golden Gate Park since the early days. However, a lot is still pretty much the same: The western end of the park remains mostly natural, with trails, lakes, and woods. The windmills, Conservatory of Flowers, and Music Concourse are still there. People still row boats and fish on Stow Lake. Some roads and meadows have been renamed, and museums have been expanded and modernized, but the beauty and charm of Golden Gate Park lives on.

With 24 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third-most-visited city park in the United States after Central Park and the Lincoln Memorial. Golden Gate is 20 percent larger than Central Park, at more than 3 miles long and half a mile wide. I’m lucky to live within walking distance of this beautiful treasure.