Battery Bluff Park has been open for a week as San Francisco's latest park. The Golden Gate Bridge serves as a stunning backdrop to the concrete domes that were once used as gun mounts in the Presidio. Furry friends and visitors on bikes were some of the park's early visitors.
Once Off-Limits to the Public, SF's Battery Park Offers Breathtaking Golden Gate Bridge Vistas
The new Battery Bluff site on April 22, 2022, in San Francisco. The gun batteries, built by the US Army at the beginning of the 20th century, now provide the public a closer look at this area's history. (Amaya Edwards/KQED)
The gun mounts — used in the early 1900s to protect the Bay Area from military threats — were decommissioned in 1920 and now are the park’s namesake. The land, which was once inaccessible to residents, now hosts picnic tables, a park lawn and a new perspective of the San Francisco Bay.
The park is built partially on top of the freeway and is part of a project that aims to restore the Presidio Parkway — the 1.6 miles of U.S. 101 between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marina neighborhood — and to reimagine underutilized land as green spaces.
Michael Boland, chief park officer for the Presidio Trust, said that the park was 25 years in the making.
“What's exciting to me about this project is California's cities are full of freeways. Imagine if we began to build parks over the tops of those freeways,” Boland said.
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