FORT SCOTT AND THE GOLDEN GATE, PRESIDIO RESERVATION, SAN FRANCISCO]
It is a far cry from 1776 to the present day (though not so long as from 1776 back to the first day of Spanish settlement in the future United States), but, while the immediate aspect of the country round about Spain’s presidio of 1776 at San Francisco has changed, the situation of the post has remained the same; and the view of land and water here is just as entrancing to-day as it was on that day in 1769 when the expedition from San Diego saw the far-famed Golden Gate.
The Presidio of San Francisco, the most important military station of the Pacific coast, is situated on the northwest rim of the city, north of Golden Gate Park (and north of the exposition grounds of 1915) and connected with that park by a beautiful boulevard one mile long. The grounds comprise more than fifteen hundred acres, developed for military purposes in the most modern fashion. From almost any part of the grounds or the approach thereto enchanting views of the wonderful bay of San Francisco are to be obtained.
A description of the view of the presidio as you approach the place on the boulevard from Golden Gate Park has been given by Ernest Peixotto in his “Romantic California,” which may well be repeated here:
In the meantime the city boasts one splendid driveway that, with a connecting link completed, will rank with the famous roadways of the Old World.
Only a decade or two ago the Presidio (it still bears its Spanish appellation) was an isolated military post separated from the city by several miles of barren, sandy thoroughfares. Now some of the handsomest homes crown the hill tops about it, and owe their chief attraction to the glorious views of bay and shore that they command. To start some fine afternoon toward sunset from one of these homes and take a drive around the cliffs is an experience not soon to be forgotten.
A few blocks run brings you to a stone gateway, its posts topped with eagles; you turn sharply to the right through a grove of eucalypti, swing round a curve and then you stop the motor. From the red Macadam roadway upon which you stand, the hills fall gently in a broad amphitheatre to the barracks and parade grounds laid out symmetrically along the shore, and teeming with soldier life. Beyond, the waters of the bay mirror the azure of the sky--a blue, tinged with green, like those half-dead turquoises that they sell in the marts of Tunis. The North Beach hills, thick-studded with the modest homes of the city’s alien population, gleam white against the Contra Costa Mountains--verdant in winter, tawny and dry in summer--with the lumpy silhouette of the Monte Diablo, the Devil’s Mountain, poking over the shoulder as if it, too, wished a peep at so fair a prospect.