Along the Presidio’s Western Edge, an Epic Ramble and Surprises in Store

Co-written by Oliver Walter and Frisc Editor-in-Chief Alex Lash

It’s summer, and the pandemic has thinned the usual tourist throngs. It’s a perfect time to explore the Presidio’s western shore, often at dizzying heights above the swells rolling in from the open Pacific. The well-known California Coastal Trail is generally the route to follow, but we have something more ambitious in mind.

We encourage you to break away from the coastal trail to find less-explored corners of the Presidio, adding a couple extra miles to a hike that should leave you as tired —and exhilirated — as any outing along the Marin or San Mateo coasts.

Even if the Presidio is your de facto backyard, there could be secrets yet to unlock.

Secret Passage

We’ll start at China Beach, named for Chinese fishermen whose camps around the Bay Area thrived until anti-Chinese laws and pogroms in the late 1800s.

It isn’t technically part of the Presidio, but at certain times it’s one of the park’s most dramatic gateways imaginable. At the bottom of the steep stairway to the beach, you might see folks sunbathing or exercising on the crumbling concrete decks of the 1950s clubhouse, but the real attraction here is the dramatic water. It’s not for amateurs. Strong swimmers paddle offshore, and if the tides are right, surfers head beyond the beach’s western end to Dead Man’s Point, where waves crash against Lands End cliffs, a seemingly insane place to surf if you’re a layperson.

It’s not just surfers who check the tides. On the occasional negative low tide, the ocean withdraws enough to let you walk on wet sand from China to Baker Beach. It’s a rare treat to see the bottom of swanky Sea Cliff properties that dangle stairways and ladders down to where the waves typically crash, revealing graffiti tagged between tides.

Because the rocks here are usually submerged, the extra-low tide reveals lush beds of mussels, sea anemones, and barnacles. A close inspection might also reveal creatures rarely found above water, like a chiton. Don’t forget, however, that the ocean is all-powerful. Even if you’ve timed the tides perfectly (and double-checked the charts), be extra careful. Keep a close eye on the water.

Once on Baker Beach, you can head north along its length, following the coastal trail, with the Golden Gate Bridge in your sights all the while. (Assuming it’s a clear day.)

But for your first break away from the coastal trail, make a right turn as soon as you see a watery breach in the beach: That’s Lobos Creek, the city’s last year-round free flowing stream.

A Dune Diversion

You’re likely to see kids, in swimsuits or pants rolled up, floating sticks down its current into the surf. The creek spills out of a culvert; look past it, just up the slope, for a chain link fence. Along the right side, there’s a break in the thick brush. Along the fence there’s a path few know about, and it takes you creekside for a strange sight. As it borders the houses that fill the slope above the Presidio land, Lobos Creek actually crosses under a wall or two, a modest San Francisco version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater.

Have you caught your breath? Good, because you’ll need it.

You can continue your diversion up to Lobos Creek Valley, across Lincoln Boulevard, for the half-mile boardwalk through a restored dune ecosystem with rare flora, then head back to Baker Beach. (The creek, which springs from the head of the small valley, runs nearby but is barely visible from the path.)

The California Coastal Trail sticks tight to Lincoln Boulevard on its way north, but you’re doing yourself (and your cardio training) an injustice if you take it so literally. Our recommendation: stay on the beach itself. The slog through the sand is worth every step. You’ll never know what reward awaits: porpoises darting through the surf. Crabbers on kayaks paddling out to check their pots. The remains of a whale. (Not everyone’s cup of tea, understood.)

Keep going until you nearly reach the clothing-optional section. The tip-off: you’ll start to see lean-tos built of driftwood. And, uh, naked people.

Keep your eyes on the far side of the beach —away from the surf— or else you’ll miss your exit strategy. A sand ladder beckons, taking you and your heaving lungs away from the surf and onto firmer ground: low coastal scrub that, defiant of salt air and frequent foggy chill, hosts a rich rainbow of life, including dune strawberries, purple and white lupine, golden sticky monkey flower, and fluorescent hummingbirds.

When you reach Lincoln Boulevard, reward yourself with a deep breath or two. Or twenty. You’re only halfway done. The Presidio’s rich mix of human history and natural wonder has more in store.

Batteries to Bluffs

The Bay Area’s legendary military batteries — gun-fortified bunkers that protected against invasions that never came — are nowhere more dramatic than in the Presidio, hidden amongst trees and hanging over cliff edges. Thanks to the Batteries to Bluffs trail, which opened in 2007 after a complicated build-out, some of these concrete monuments are now connected with spectacular, oft-hidden nature and livened with new context.

The southern trailhead is only a few steps north of the top of the sand ladder trail. Have you caught your breath? Good, because you’ll need it. Start down the wide path to the first battery along the route, Battery Crosby, which feels out of place, emerging from the scrub and overhanging the Pacific like a UFO.

Operational from 1900 to 1943, Crosby was designed to bombard ships with its commanding view, which now makes it a popular spot for photoshoots, especially on fog-free evenings when the golden hour reflects off the water below. The battery’s simple, wide geometries also make its surfaces popular with skaters. Graffiti artists, too.

In fact, central to the experience of the batteries is the graffiti which adorns nearly every visible, and seemingly unreachable, concrete surface you encounter. Following the work from battery to battery turns the walk into a surprisingly expansive (and free) art exhibit. At the north end of Batteries to Bluffs, Battery Godfrey hides a small shrine decorated with two crosses and the inscription “love” nestled in the corner of the battery’s gun mount.

Before reaching Godfrey, however, the trail provides a thrilling ride. Winding wooden staircases snake through lush foliage — watch out for poison oak — as waves crash against the cliff below.

Near the bottom, the trail flattens out as it approaches Marshall’s Beach. If you’ve timed your trek for low tide, there’s more of Marshall’s to explore. Again, it’s clothing-optional, especially if you head to the northern section tucked behind boulders. (High tide might make it impassable, however.) Put aside the state of your neighbor’s undress for a moment: Standing on Marshall’s, the view in any direction is stunning. The power of the Pacific, squeezing between land masses through the Golden Gate and into the Bay, is even more visceral here. Landside, the geology of the bluffs — all that serpentinite, ranging from gunmetal gray to emerald green to nearly turquoise — is exposed by the tumble and shear of time.

Once you’ve absorbed enough of the beach, head back to the Batteries to Bluffs trail. Before you power up the staircase, however, pause one more time for a small observance.

Unexpected Water

San Francisco’s history is often directly tied to the saltwater that surrounds us on three sides. But the city’s native freshwater has been buried in most places.

The Presidio has a lot of it; Mountain Lake Park and Lobos Creek were its first signature rehabilitations. Others have followed: El Polín Spring, whose waters flow through a semi-restored watershed down to Crissy Field; Dragonfly Creek is another.

Find the small wooden footbridge where the Marshall’s trail rejoins Batteries to Bluffs, and you’ll also find a much less heralded, and not even named, small seep that works its way from the cliff above, down through clay and rocks, to the sea below. Its year-round freshwater stream bolsters a microenvironment of riparian plants, like watercress, just steps from the crashing waves.

A pause here affords you a window into San Francisco of another time, when the windswept scrub-and-dunes landscape was “the outer lands,” dismissed as a landscape to be conquered and paved, not enjoyed.

Back on the hill, if your legs burn from the ascent, stop periodically and notice how the view changes; the peaks of the Marin Headlands seem more distant and the swirling birds seem just out of arm’s reach. Out in the Golden Gate, watch for sprays of water near the surface: Humpback whales sometimes hang out close to shore this time of year. And keep an eye on the trailside too, for small delights: serpentinite outcrops of various colors and, near the top, the wreck of a car.

At the top, a few steps bring you to a sprawling complex of three batteries, stretching north toward the bridge. Battery Godfrey is the first and largest, sandwiched between a parking lot and the cliff edge; it can be much more crowded than anywhere else on the trail. Batteries Godfrey, Marcus Miller, and Boutelle are also an example of how the decommissioned bunkers have remained relevant today. In 2016, they were the site of the Home Land Security exhibition organized by the For-Site Foundation, which specializes in site-specific art. Drawing on the history of the Presidio batteries, artists from 11 nations explored the impact that the increasingly complex notion of borders and defense have on individuals and societies.

The military history of the Presidio and its bunkers reaches back to President Grover Cleveland, who called for the creation of the Board of Fortifications in 1885 to design a new coastal defense system. All the batteries along the Batteries to Bluffs trail were constructed in the late 19th century. Their guns were requisitioned for service in Europe during World War I, but it was not until 1943 that the bunkers were decommissioned, once Japanese invasion had become increasingly unlikely.

The end of World War II didn’t end the intrigue. During the Cold War, the squat, unassuming building directly across from Godfrey also served as a secret intelligence hub, including the central administration building for the 12 Nike missile sites dotted across the Bay Area, which were armed with nuclear warheads to shoot down Soviet bombers until being dismantled in the 1970s.

The Presidio’s Ghost Town

To put the western edge of the Presidio’s military history into a more modern context, take a second detour away from the coastal trail. From Battery Godfrey, head east, cross Lincoln Boulevard, and find the complex of buildings that surround a sprawling set of fields. This is Fort Winfield Scott. In non-pandemic times, the first field you see would normally be packed with kids’ soccer games and summer camps. Beyond it, arranged in a semi-oval, are ten military barracks erected between 1909 and 1912 that served as the headquarters for the Bay Area’s defense.

The barrack buildings, all Mission Revival style, served as the template for many future buildings spread throughout the Presidio, and became the base’s signature look.

Fort Scott has inspired other artistic, aesthetic work through the years. Unknown to most, building 1216 has a full-length wall mural depicting civilian and military life at the base between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Painted by men of the 21st Engineering Company who were based there, the scenes span everything from war to mapmaking to baseball games on the fort’s green to everyday chores. The Presidio Trust is working to maintain the murals and present them publicly, but until then, they can be viewed here.

Like its art, Fort Scott’s grand buildings are not ready for full reentry into society. Many remain uninhabited, and an attempt in recent years at an ambitious redevelopment plan, with a mix of for-profit and nonprofit tenants, stalled out in 2019 when park staff rejected a proposal centered around the co-working real estate firm WeWork. There were no other proposals on hand, and now the pandemic has all but assured that Fort Scott will remain a semi-ghost town for years. That’s no problem for the local coyotes who often use the oval, now a grassland meadow, as a hunting ground.

Under the Bridge

Head back to the coastal trail for one last peek over the cliffs, then keep going north for a view relatively few San Franciscans realize is possible. The trail, now paved for bikers to join, takes you under the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. You (and billions of other humans) have seen the towers and decking and cables — everything that makes the bridge an iconic design marvel. But you probably haven’t seen its underbelly, especially with cars clanking and roaring just above your head.

There’s one last view before the end of the walk: head toward the city and look at the bridge from a different perspective, not the towers framed by the water and hills, but the other buildings: the toll plaza, the maintenance and administration buildings, and the Round House Cafe (currently closed), which was designed in 1938 by Alfred Finnila, whose involvement in the bridge’s construction is a remarkable story all its own. (Finnila also built and owned Finnish-style bath houses in and around Castro Street, the last of which was closed in the 1980s. In 1977, San Francisco magazine wrotethat Finnila’s was “for many years the only non-gay bath house available.”)

The cafe, the toll plaza, the bridge itself: all art deco, redolent of another time and place, and the perfect way to end an afternoon of exploration and exertion, of visual exhilaration and contemplation of layers of history, all along the Presidio’s western edge.

How to get there: If you want to follow our route and start at China Beach, you can drive and park in the lot above the beach on tiny Sea Cliff Avenue. The 1 California and 29 Sunset Muni routes also stop nearby. At the end of the route, if you need to return to your car, the 28 19th Avenue bus stops at the bridge toll plaza and will take you to Park Presidio and California, where you can transfer to the 1 California.

Photo courtesy of Oliver Walter