Lands End
by Greg Reed
Title
Lands End
Artist
Greg Reed
Medium
Photograph - Photo
Description
Taken October 2007 at Point Lobos Ave.
Lands End Early History
San Francisco was originally inhabited by the Ohlone Indians. An archeological site at Lands End was dated at 150 A.D., but there is evidence that Indians had been living in San Francisco for around 3,000 years. They had seasonal camps where the Sutro Baths ruins are now, eating seafood and hunting seals; archeologists found their garbage dumps, more politely known as middens.
The first Europeans to see Lands End were possibly privateer Sir Francis Drake and his crew, when the Golden Hind sailed down the California coast past the entrance to the bay in 1579.
Two centuries later, the Spanish explorer Don Gaspar de Portola marched with his men up from Baja California and arrived at San Francisco Bay on October 31, 1769.
The Ferries and Cliff House Railway
The coastal trail used to be a railway line. In 1888, German immigrant Adolph Sutro arranged to have a railway built from downtown SF out to the wilderness area where he had built the Cliff House and the Sutro Baths. San Franciscans could take the train out to the Cliff House until 1925, when a landslide closed the track.
Fort Miley
Lands End was used as a military fort, Fort Miley, starting in the late 1800's. Gun batteries were installed in 1902 to guard the approach to San Francisco and were still being used for coastal defense until 1943. A veterans hospital was built on the grounds, and the Lincoln Park golf course now occupies a large section of the Lands End area.
Ship Graveyard
Over 300 ships have gone down in the treacherous waters approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. There are many rocks hiding under the waves, the channel is narrow, and combined with the strong currents and fog, entering San Francisco Bay is quite dangerous. Nowadays the big container ships use GPS, sonar, foghorns and a tugboat escort to navigate the entrance to the bay.
Possibly the worst wreck was the steamship City of Rio de Janeiro in 1901. The passenger ship made it past the rocks at the entrance, but hit a submerged ledge near Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge. The ship sank in eight minutes and 128 out of 210 passengers were lost.
Source: http://www.inside-guide-to-san-francisco-tourism.com/lands-end-san-francisco.html
Uploaded
September 17th, 2012
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