Fort Funston, Just South of San Francisco

Fort Funston is the place for hang gliders and those who want to watch hang gliders in the San Francisco Bay Area. (It is classified as "Hang-III, intermediate.)

A day with no wind is very rare on the Pacific coast of San Francisco, though I have been at Fort Funston when there was none. (And once when such wind as there was came from the northeast so that there were no updrafts for those who (usually) rush to jump off the cliff toward the Pacific Ocean.) Both the launching pad and a platform to watch the hang gliders is straight west of the parking lot. Some people also look at the ocean from there. On a clear day, the Farillone Islands are clearly visible. A wooden platform surrounds the rusting structure that was an observation post for the artillery guarding the entrance to the San Francisco Bay (that is, the Golden Gate, which is channel, not the bridge over it).

As for the batteries in Vancouver's Stanley Park, and Fort Miley, further north above the southern part of the entrance to the Golden Gate, the 16" guns were never fired at enemies. Even target practice was largely avoided because of the cost of the shells, the wear and tear on the guns, and the shaking of the Sunset District (which is all built on what were sand dunes like the one among my photographs here.

The big guns was mounted under thick concrete shields on which artificial hills were built and covered with vegetation to make them virtually invisible from above. The US Army wanted to stop the dunes shifting and planted ice plant (indigenous to South Africa) which took over and ousted native plants (a swathe of ice plant is shown in my fifth photo here).

The guns were scrapped in 1947 and the Coast Artillery was deactivated in 1950. The remnants of the battery fortifications are now part of the Golden Gate Recreational Area, which encompasses much of the coastline of San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties.