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SFist Tonight
San Francisco was once pretty much a giant sand dune. We've even heard it said that the very name derives from the once common epithet "sands-can-drift-so", but we're pretty sure that this tale is apocryphal. Okay, we're positive, but a sunny weekend of wandering through Golden Gate Park prompted us to drift back to those early, sandier days.
Golden Gate Park was established in 1868, and a local newspaper described it as a "dreary waste of shifting sandhills where a blade of grass cannot be raised without four posts to keep it from blowing away."
And so it was. It was up to the first Park Superintendent William Hammond Hall to figure out a way to turn those rolling dunes into parkland, and he wracked his brain over the problem. Every exotic plant in the nursery was planted out in the dunes, but the strong ocean winds made short work of every one.
In fact, we might still be picnicking on sand today if it wasn't for one hungry horse.
Horse-power was the transportation of the 1860s, and the stuff that fueled the equestrian fleet was barley grain. One fine afternoon in 1869 a local citizen happened to stop for a spell along the beach. His horse, feeling peckish, dug into the feed bag for a snack. In his enthusiasm, the bag tore loose and a load of barley spilled out onto the moist sand. Before the winds could blow it away, a tiny crop of green shoots had popped up on the beach.
Superintendent Hall spotted the serendipitous sprouts and hollered "Eureka"! He ordered bushels of grain to be spread inland from Ocean Beach, parallel to the shoreline. As the grain took root and stabilized the sand, Hall added other, deeper rooted plants, and then called on the horses to contribute their plentiful (ahem) "exhaust" to the project.
By 1873 the sand had become soil, and a long fence was built and mounded over with tree boughs and brush. As you cruise along the Great Highway today, check out the high berm of grass-covered sand that separates the beach from the Park -- that ancient fence lies somewhere underneath.
The hills, trees, meadows and lakes of our beloved Golden Gate Park? Thanks to William Hammond Hall -- but don't forget the hungry horse whose feedbag of barley jump-started the whole spread.
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And there is so much more to the story. First, Fredirick Olmsted, of New York Central Park fame, was brought to San Francisco to design a great park. He noted the obvious fact that the land by the beach was pretty crappy and far away from most people. So he started work on plans for a park roughly where Van Ness is today. Gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a more centrally located park in a sunny location that can much more easily support trees and such?
But no. It turns out that the motivation for building a great park was to sell sand dunes to people, but who wants to buy a sand dune, unless it happens to be by a nice park!
So the developers won the day, got the park built out in fogland, and made a fortune turning sand dunes into real estate.
For more fun details I highly recommend the book the "Making of Golden Gate Park" by Raymond Clary.
You might especially like the part where McLaren, the other great park steward, dynamited the tower that the de Youngs built in the Music Concourse!
Thanks for the book tip, I'll certainly check that out.
In addition to selling off sand dunes, I think the city fathers of the time also had a serious case of Central Park envy -- they rejected Olmsted's plan at least partly because they were looking for something grand, something befitting the "Paris of the West".
I love McLaren -- what a character! I love his detestation of statuary, which explains why half the park's sculptures are half-hidden behind trees and bushes... and also the story about when the Parks Commission decided he needed a car... and the first time behind the wheel he drove it straight into the lake! A driver was hired shortly thereafter.
I've been meaning to record a show about McLaren for almost two years, now... maybe it's time to move him up the list.
=v= William Hammond Hall got his start at the other end of the park, though. To keep the dunes from inundating downtown, he created the Panhandle by planting some aggressive-growing trees.
This city doesn't seem to be taking its trees seriously, these days. I just got a mailing from Friends of the Urban Forest about the latest budget proposal, which takes a chainsaw to the tree budget. They are recommending that you reword the following and get it to your Supervisor by Wednesday:
I strongly support a thriving urban forest in San Francisco. You must reject the proposal to slash the City's urban forest budget and eliminate funding of Friends of the Urban Forest. Without this funding, 1500 trees planted in San Francisco in 2007 will die, and FUF's efforts to continue to build community and enhance our city's urban environment will be severely restricted.