After World War II[1] the US Army began selling surplus coastal land throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to real estate developers. Among those sales, Gulf Oil Corporation bought 2,100 acres in the Marin Headlands (just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge[2]) and, with developer Thomas Frouge, intended on building a residential community called Marincello. Meanwhile, large-scale construction was also proposed for the Presidio and Fort Miley. But during this same time, The National Park Service had introduced a 10-year plan to expand its system with new parks, and the 1969 American Indian occupation of Alcatraz[3] brought to the nation’s attention the future of land owned by the government.
Congressman Phil Burton introduced, and on October 27, 1972 President Richard Nixon signed, “An Act to Establish the Golden Gate National Recreation Area”, turning the Bay Area military surplus land into a public urban park. The bill allocated $120 million for land acquisition and development. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA)[4] was established and its first order of business was purchasing Alcatraz and Fort Mason.
Huey Johnson (1933-2020) grew up in Mill Valley just north of San Francisco. He spent his life working to preserve Marin County open space. As Western Director of The Nature Conservancy, a national non-profit environmental organization, Johnson established the model of using private resources to purchase land. By 1972 he had raised enough money from private investors to purchase the land intended for Marincello from Gulf Oil, transferring the title to GGNRA.
Over the next 30 years, GGNRA acquired land and historic sites from the US Army and private landowners including Muir Woods in Marin, Crissy Field, the Presidio, Lands End, Sutro Baths, the Cliff House, Ocean Beach, Fort Funston and land in San Mateo county. Today GGNRA, managed by the National Park Service, owns 82,116 acres around the western Bay Area. It is one of the largest urban parks in the world and the most visited park in the United States.
Ocean Beach is a five mile stretch of shoreline running along the western edge of the Richmond and Sunset Districts. While looking quite innocuous, the beach is actually quite treacherous. The average outdoor temperature is 55 degrees and it is typically enshrouded in fog. The water is also cold, with dangerous undertows and sneaker waves. It is recommended that people not swim there; however, it remains one of the top surfing spots in the Bay Area despite the warning signs. A reef just off the coast makes it dangerous for sailing vessels as well. Between 1850-1925 there were 20 shipwrecks, many with loss of life. On January 25, 1878 the clipper ship King Philip was shipwrecked and its carcass can still occasionally be seen today during exceptionally low tides (the last time it reappeared was in November 2010).
From 1894-1967 an iron pier near Balboa protected an iron pipe that pumped water from the ocean to the Olympic Club[5] downtown and the Lurline Baths, located (from 1894-1936) at the corner of Bush and Larkin. The pipe stretched 600 feet offshore and continued four miles along Geary to a water pump and reservoir tank at Laurel Heights.
In 1929 the Great Highway, along with a boardwalk and seawall, was constructed along Ocean Beach from the Cliff House to Lake Merced. Public Convenience Stations were large buildings containing restrooms and changing rooms located sporadically down the stretch of beach, some of which remain today. Initially, pedestrians crossed the road via underground tunnels, though those tunnels were eventually replaced with a median, crosswalks and traffic signals that slows auto traffic to a crawl.
My great-grandmother Amelia Brand Filmer taught my grandfather William how to swim in the small cove next to the Cliff House. William would continue to swim at Ocean Beach as an adult. He once tried to get my grandmother Florence to swim with him, but having been pulled out in an undertow, she never went again. My mother Anne remembers riding her bike down the boardwalk as a child in the late 1940s: the southern part of the Sunset District was nothing but grassy fields and sand dunes. She also remembers the beach being covered with thick, gooey oil that came in with the tide. Today one can see black patches along the beach, but those patches are not oil but particles of magnetite.
While swimming is dangerous, the large swath of beach, magnificent vistas of the Pacific and designated fire pits for bonfires makes Ocean Beach a great destination on those rare San Francisco sunny summer days.
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[1] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222 [2] Golden Gate Bridge: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4916 [3] Alcatraz: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3344 [4] Visit them at www.nps.gov [5] Olympic Club: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3066
