In honor of the park's 150th birthday in 2020, a 150-foot ferris wheel — or, as they're calling it, observation wheel — is getting installed in Golden Gate Park.

The large-ish ferris wheel, which will rise to about the height of the deYoung Museum's observation tower, was announced this week by Mayor London Breed ahead of the park's sesquicentennial celebration which is happening on April 4, 2020. It will be the first time that the park has had a ferris wheel since the Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, when a 120-foot wheel was erected — as Curbed tells us.

This wheel will go up on one side of the Music Concourse, opposite the bandshell, between the deYoung and the Academy of Sciences. 12-minute rides will be free on April 4, but after that they will cost $18 a pop — $12 for children and seniors. The cabins will be temperature-controlled and hold six passengers. And the wheel will keep spinning all year long (and beyond?) as part of ongoing celebrations of the park's anniversary.

"We want to celebrate the Park and give people a new way to appreciate the beauty of our City during this 150th anniversary celebration," says Mayor Breed. "This observation wheel is just the first of many exciting announcements we will be sharing in the comings months as we get ready for the coming year-long celebration."

“The storied Music Concourse with its spectacular observation wheel will be the center of a yearlong party that connects yesteryear with tomorrow," says Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the Rec & Parks Department.

Golden Gate Park was constructed in the late 1860s and officially opened on April 4, 1870. April 4, 2020 will officially be Community Day in the park, with more events and attractions to be announced.

You can learn more about the park's 150-year celebrations at this website.

As Curbed notes, this ferris wheel is dwarfed by a proposal for a 700-foot observation wheel on the Embarcadero to rival Las Vegas's High Roller wheel — currently the world's largest at 550 feet — and Ain Dubai's 689-foot wheel that's currently under construction. The Golden Gate Flyer, if it ever gets built, would spin along SF's waterfront carrying forty luxury, state-of-the-art cabins that would hold 36 people each, some of which would hold dining tables that seat eight or cocktail bars for private events.