Coastal fortifications at The Presidio

San Francisco, looking north across (yes!) the Golden Gate to the Marin Headlands. "Presidio" means "fort" in Spanish--the original name was El Presidio Real de San Francisco, The Royal Fort of Saint Francis--and the fortification was established by the Spanish in 1776 to try to consolidate their claims on this part of New Spain. The Presidio was inherited by Mexico after Mexican independence, and then by the U.S. after the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. It remained an important center for US coastal fortifications for something like a century, but by the mid-20th century advances in military technology had rendered it obsolete. (Who needs coastal artillery when radar or a satellite can identify a threat hundreds of miles offshore, and aircraft or a cruise missile can then take it out?) The grounds were finally taken over by the National Park Service in 1994. Many of the old military installations are now being managed as historical sites, some of the buildings have been refurbished and repurposed as high-end office space, and some of the coastal areas by the Bay have been restored as wetlands.

The concrete foundations in the foreground are from U.S. coastal batteries dating from ca. the 1890s (upper left inset). A close-up of one of the cannon foundations is shown in the inset below. None of the actual cannons or their metal mounts are left, presumably having been salvaged as scrap over the years.

The prominent highway cutting across the Marin Headlands opposite is Conzelman Rd, coming out of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I came back that way from the Point Bonita lighthouse, and took some pictures looking back this way (inset on the highway, approximately at the photo point).