In 1769 Spain discovered and settled in San Francisco, naming the area Yerba Buena. In 1794 the Spanish built the Castillo de San Joaquin to store canons, an Adobe structure that abutted up against a Presidio[1] at what is now Fort Point. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico gained control of the castillo. In 1846 when the Mexican-American war broke out between Mexico and the United States, several notable US soldiers captured the castillo and disabled the cannons.
Two years after the United States won the Mexican-American war and California became a state, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco. Military forts were set up at Alcatraz[2], Fort Mason[3] and at Fort Point.
In 1853 the US Army Corps of Engineers blasted the original 90 foot cliff edge into a fifteen foot shelf so that the lowest tier of Fort Point could be as close to the waterline as possible. The structure, which still exists today, has seven foot thick brick walls and is multi-tiered. Construction began during the height of the California Gold Rush, and the 200 workers who worked for eight years constructing Fort Point were mostly unemployed miners. It remains the only fortification of this magnitude west of the Mississippi, and it became the most formidable deterrence the US could offer against a naval attack. During the Civil War, the fort was manned to protect the San Francisco Bay from Confederate raider ships. Its cannons were never fired.
After the Civil War, Fort Point was used intermittently as army barracks. The war cannons, now obsolete, were removed. In 1869 a granite seawall was built around the Fort’s base. The Fort sustained little damage after the 1906 earthquake[4] and was used as a temporary refuge camp. During World War I[5], Fort Point was remodeled for use as a detention facility, though that never came to pass. In the 1920s it was used by the Presidio to house unmarried officers. During World War II[6] it was refortified with soldiers stationed to guard the entrance of the San Francisco Bay from enemy submarines.
When plans for the Golden Gate Bridge were approved in the 1930s, Fort Point, considered up to that point as the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, was slated to be demolished. Bridge engineer Joseph Strauss, an avid San Francisco historian, did not want to see the structure destroyed, and designed an arch which allowed construction to safely occur directly over the site.
In 1959 a group of retired military officers and civilian engineers created the Fort Point Museum Association and lobbied for the site’s designation as a national historical site. On October 16, 1970 this finally came to pass. The fort is currently administered by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area[7]. It is a popular tourist destination, with entertaining tours and educational programs[8].
[1] Presidio: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5121
[2] Alcatraz: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3344
[3] Fort Mason: see story coming June 14th
[4] 1906 San Francisco earthquake: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849
[5] World War I: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4079
[6] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222
[7] Golden Gate National Recreation Area: see story coming July 12th
[8] Visit them at www.nps.gov
