Misplaced Pages

#5994

27-714: The Sutro Baths was a large, privately owned public saltwater swimming pool complex in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District in western San Francisco , California . Built in 1894, the Sutro Baths was located north of Ocean Beach , the Cliff House , Seal Rocks , and west of Sutro Heights Park . The structure burned down to its concrete foundation in June 1966; its ruins are located in

54-485: A 1912 article written by J. E. Van Hoosear of Pacific Gas and Electric . Materials used in the structure included 100,000 square feet (9,300 square meters) of glass, 600 tons of iron, 3.5 million board feet (8,300 m) of lumber, and 10,000 cubic yards (7,600 cubic meters) of concrete. During high tides, water would flow directly into the pools from the nearby ocean, recycling the two million US gallons (7,600 m) of water in about an hour. During low tides,

81-478: A powerful turbine water pump, built inside a cave at sea level, could be switched on from a control room and could fill the tanks at a rate of 6,000 US gallons a minute (380 L/s), recycling all the water in five hours. Facilities included: The baths were once served by two rail lines. The Ferries and Cliff House Railroad ran along the cliffs of Lands End overlooking the Golden Gate . The route ran from

108-540: A wall separating it from the dilapidated swimming pools, until 1964 when the property was sold to developers for a planned high-rise apartment complex. In addition to financial struggles, the Sutro Baths became the focus of a significant civil rights battle in 1897. John Harris sued Adolph Sutro after being denied entry to the baths because of his race. Harris won the case, making it a landmark victory against racial segregation in public facilities. This case set an important precedent for future civil rights actions, underscoring

135-789: Is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean . It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge . The entire shoreline and adjacent waters throughout the strait are managed by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area . During the last ice age , when sea level

162-580: Is a rocky and windswept shoreline at the mouth of the Golden Gate , situated between the Sutro District and Lincoln Park and abutting Fort Miley Military Reservation . A memorial to USS San Francisco stands in the park. Numerous hiking trails follow the former railbeds of the Ferries and Cliff House Railway along the cliffs and also down to the shore. The most-traveled trail in Lands End

189-637: Is not recorded in the voyages of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo nor Francis Drake , both of whom may have explored the nearby coast in the 16th century in search of the fabled Northwest Passage . The strait is also unrecorded in observations by Spanish galleons on the Manila-Acapulco run from the Philippines that laid up in nearby Drakes Bay to the north. These rarely passed east of the Farallon Islands (27 miles (43 km) west of

216-822: Is the Coastal Trail, a section of the California Coastal Trail that follows the railbed of the old Cliff House Railway. This trail is handicap-accessible until the Mile Rock Overlook, and bike accessible until the Eagles Point steps. A spur trail takes users to Mile Rock Point and Mile Rock Beach, which offer views of the Golden Gate . Additionally, Lands End contains the ruins of the Sutro Baths . Other historic sites include numerous shipwrecks, which are visible at low tides from

243-559: The Cliff House , also owned by Adolph Sutro at the time. Both the Cliff House and the former baths site are now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area , operated by the United States National Park Service . The baths struggled for years, mostly due to the very high operating and maintenance costs. Eventually, the southernmost part of the baths was converted into an ice skating rink , with

270-478: The Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Sutro Historic District . On March 14, 1896, the Sutro Baths were opened to the public as the world's largest indoor swimming pool establishment. The baths were built on the western side of San Francisco by wealthy entrepreneur and former mayor of San Francisco (1894–1896) Adolph Sutro . The structure was situated in a small beach inlet below

297-556: The Point Reyes headlands, reported back to Portolá that he could not reach the location because of the existence of the strait. On August 5, 1775 Juan de Ayala and the crew of his ship San Carlos became the first Europeans known to have passed through the strait, anchoring in a cove behind Angel Island , the cove now named in Ayala's honor. Until the 1840s, the strait was called the "Boca del Puerto de San Francisco" ("Mouth of

SECTION 10

#1732781081006

324-625: The Port of Richmond , and the Port of San Francisco . Commercial cargo ships use the Golden Gate to access the San Francisco Bay, as well as barges, tankers, fishing boats, cruise ships, and privately owned boats, including wind-surfers and kite-boards. About 9000 ships moved through the Golden Gate in 2014, and a similar amount in 2015. The U.S Coast Guard maintains a Vessel Traffic Service to monitor and regulate vessel traffic through

351-466: The Coastal Trail and Mile Rock. A visitor center, Lands End Lookout, opened on April 28, 2012. The Yelamu Ohlone tribe lived at Lands End before Spanish settlement began in 1776. After the Gold Rush , entrepreneurs designed the new Cliff House as a fashionable resort for the wealthy. A private company constructed a new road called Point Lobos Avenue. By the 1860s, a horse-drawn stagecoach made

378-655: The Golden Gate is the site of over 100 shipwrecks . The Golden Gate is often shrouded in coastal fog , especially during the summer. Heat generated in the California Central Valley causes air there to rise, creating a low pressure area that pulls in cool, moist air from over the Pacific Ocean. The Golden Gate forms the largest break in the hills of the California Coast Range , allowing a persistent, dense stream of fog to enter

405-567: The Golden Gate), for fear of the possibility of rocks between the islands and the mainland. The first recorded observation of the strait occurred nearly two hundred years later than the earliest European explorations of the coast. In 1769, Sgt José Francisco Ortega , the leader of a scouting party sent north along the San Francisco Peninsula by Don Gaspar de Portolá from their expedition encampment in San Pedro Valley to locate

432-528: The Golden Gate. For navigational guidance, there are white and green lights on the center of the span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Lighthouses with beacons and foghorns provide alerts at Point Bonita , Point Diablo , Lime Point and Mile Rocks . Before the Golden Gate Bridge was built, a lighthouse protected the south side of the strait at Fort Point . Buoys and radar reflectors provide additional navigational aid at various locations throughout

459-532: The Orient". The U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp on May 1, 1923, celebrating The Golden Gate , portraying the schooner USS Babcock passing through an empty strait. The Babcock served in the United States Navy from 1917 to 1919, with San Francisco as its port of call. In 1933 construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge , a suspension bridge connecting the city of San Francisco on

486-520: The Port of San Francisco"). On July 1, 1846, before the discovery of gold in California , the entrance acquired a new name. In his memoirs, John C. Frémont wrote: "To this Gate I gave the name of 'Chrysopylae', or 'Golden Gate'; for the same reasons that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn ." He went on to comment that the strait was "a golden gate to trade with

513-730: The United States, after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City . In 2007, it was ranked fifth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects . The Golden Gate strait serves as the primary access channel for navigation to and from the San Francisco Bay, one of the largest cargo ports in the United States. Commercial ports includes the Port of Oakland ,

540-610: The baths to a terminal at California Street and Central Avenue, now Presidio Avenue. The second line was the Sutro Railroad, which ran electric trolleys to Golden Gate Park and downtown San Francisco . Both lines were later taken over by the Market Street Railway . Lands End, San Francisco Lands End is a park in San Francisco within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area . It

567-484: The bay there. Although there is no weather station on Golden Gate proper, the area has a mediterranean climate ( Köppen Csb ) with very narrow temperature fluctuations, cool summers and mild winters. For the nearest weather station see the weatherbox of San Francisco . The Golden Gate Bridge being nearer the ocean and at elevation indicate it being cooler during summer days. Nearer the San Francisco urban core,

SECTION 20

#1732781081006

594-460: The growing demand for equal treatment and access to public spaces. A fire in 1966 destroyed the building while it was in the process of being demolished. All that remains of the site are concrete walls, blocked-off stairs and passageways, and a tunnel with a deep crevice in the middle. The cause of the fire was determined to be arson . Shortly afterwards, the developers left San Francisco and claimed insurance money. The following statistics are from

621-482: The northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County . Today it is part of both US Highway 101 and California Route 1 . The Bridge was the longest suspension bridge span in the world when completed in 1937 and is an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and the state of California . Since its completion the span has been surpassed by eighteen other bridges and remains second longest in

648-472: The railroad track and confirmed the find, but the mine was never exploited. Along the Coastal Trail at Eagle's Point, local artist Eduardo Aguilera constructed a "hidden labyrinth" overlooking Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. It has been vandalized numerous times and was destroyed in August 2015, but was rebuilt a month later by the artist with the help of 50 volunteers. Golden Gate The Golden Gate

675-512: The temperatures resemble the official NOAA weather station instead. Before Europeans arrived in the 18th century, the area around the strait and the bay was inhabited by Native Americans  – the Ohlone people to the south and Coast Miwok to the north. Descendants of both tribes remain in the area. The opening to the strait was surprisingly elusive for early European explorers, presumably due to persistent summer fog. The strait

702-413: The trip every Sunday from crowded downtown San Francisco out to Lands End. During the 1880s, millionaire Adolph Sutro constructed a passenger steam train from downtown to Lands End for the affordable fare of 5¢. In 1891, an old miner called Charles Jackson announced that he had discovered a vein of bituminous coal under the cliffs at Baker Beach, on Sutro's land; Sutro had a tunnel dug 200 feet under

729-557: Was several hundred feet lower, the waters of the glacier-fed Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River scoured a deep channel through the bedrock on their way to the ocean. (A similar process created the undersea Hudson Canyon off the coast of New York and New Jersey .) The strait is well known today for its depth and powerful tidal currents from the Pacific Ocean. Many small whirlpools and eddies can form in its waters. With its strong currents, rocky reefs and fog ,

#5994