Welcome to the Park of the Week Newsletter for February 8, 2024. This week’s park is an urban park packed with things to see and do.
Golden Gate Park
Location
San Francisco, California, United States
Claim to fame
Golden Gate Park is a city park, occupying 1,017 acres in the heart of San Francisco. The park was first opened in 1870 and hosted a World’s Fair in 1894. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city and the third most visited urban park in the United States.
Golden Gate Park has a rich history. It was home to the first public playground in the U.S., known today as Koret Playground. The park was the epicenter for the Summer of Love in 1967, when tens of thousands of young people came to events in and around the park.
The park is also famous for its beautiful and numerous gardens, memorials, and arboretums, like the glass-enclosed Conservatory of Flowers, built in 1879 as the park’s first formal structure.
Reason to visit
Golden Gate Park attracts more than 25 million visitors annually, about twice the visitation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited U.S. national park. It has forests, meadows, lakes, numerous fields and open spaces, and 15 miles of scenic drives.
Golden Gate Park offers an exhaustive list of recreational opportunities, with spaces for playing a variety of sports including Kezar Stadium, which was the original home of the San Francisco 49s football team. In addition to formal sports, park visitors can bike, jog, stroll, boat, fish, and play in playgrounds. Golden Gate’s main attraction is its diversity–the park has a space dedicated to nearly every outdoor activity possible.
The park also hosts concerts and other special events. It houses cultural and regional attractions, like the De Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences.
Wild Fact
In 1906 Golden Gate Park was a refuge for those displaced after the earthquake and subsequent fire that decimated the city and many of its structures. Tens of thousands of San Franciscans camped in the park after the disaster. At first they lived in whatever shelter they could construct, but eventually wooden barracks were built within the park.
The 1906 earthquake was the deadliest in U.S. history, killing over 3,000 people. The quake had an estimated magnitude of 7.9, and it ignited fires which lasted for days throughout the city. Around 80% of San Francisco was destroyed. Public lands like Golden Gate were some of the only areas left, and became oases for survivors.
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