San Francisco's Presidio:
From Spanish Fort to American Park
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By Miguel Pérez
When El Presidio de San Francisco was established by the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition in 1776, it became the northernmost edge of the Spanish empire. For more than two centuries, it served as an important military outpost for three nations – Spain, Mexico and the United States. It was the oldest continuously operating military base in the United States until 1994, when community activists won a long battle to make it a national park. |
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It is now a huge getaway for San Francisco residents, with multiple recreation areas and amazing views of the Golden Gate Bridge. The park and former fort encompasses 1,491 acres, including small forests, overlook bluffs, beaches, hiking and biking trails, picnic areas, historic buildings and a museum. It also includes 2.5 miles of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. In other words, it's awesome! |
El Presidio — The entire northwest corner of San Francisco
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It's all part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Mind you, Mission Dolores Park which I visited earlier as part of my journey, is only a fraction of the size of El Presidio. This park, in the northwest corner of San Francisco, is huge, bigger than San Diego's Balboa Park and much bigger than New York's Central Park!
From various museum exhibits here, you learn that control of the Presidio area went from the indigenous Ohlone and Miwok people to Spain in 1776, from Spain to Mexico in 1822 and from Mexico to the United States in 1847 — flying three different flags within 70 years! |
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When the Americans took over, El Presidio became a major staging ground for Army troops headed to battlefields abroad, including, ironically, the 1898 Spanish-American War, for troops deployed to the Philippines.
"The Army built new barracks, drill fields, firing ranges, warehouses, a general hospital, a cemetery, and a supply wharf," and exhibit explains. "A forest was planted and the marsh was filled. By the start of the Philippine-American War, in 1899, the post had more than tripled in size." Army engineers also built the famous Fort Point, to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay. But I came here looking for any traces of the original Spanish structures built here, and I found them! |
The only remaining adobe wall from the original Spanish fort built in the 1790s.
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In the Presidio's Officer's Club, now a museum, guide Clifford Schwartz showed me an adobe wall built in the 1790s and volunteer Anne Long gave me a detailed description of the Spanish artifacts in the museum, including a huge cannon believed to be the oldest in the United States.
"El Presidio was home to Spanish soldiers and their families who had come from what is today Mexico," a museum exhibit explains. "They built a new world and developed a new identity. They would call themselves Californios." |
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This was only seven years after another Spanish expedition, led by Gaspar de Portolá, had discovered San Francisco Bay. But this time there were some 200 colonists led by de Anza. Coming from parts of New Spain that were previously colonized, many already had mixed ancestries. They traveled some 1,500 miles. The men were mostly soldiers who brought their families with them. And half of the entire expedition were children! They came to stay!
To be clear: The very first 1776 fort was a wooden palisade surrounding hastily-built structures that were battered by winds and rain, and lasted only a few years. The remaining adobe wall in today's Officer's Club is from the fort built with adobe bricks and tile roofs in the 1790s, to replace the wooden encampment. |
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"Native people, both conscripted and paid, provided most of the labor," according to a museum exhibit. But in those early years, the exhibit notes that, "The fort offered few comforts. Even the commander's quarters had dirt floors. Some families settled outside El Presidio's walls to farm or raise cattle." While the only visible standing structure remaining from the Spanish era are the adobe walls inside the Officer's Club, in other parts of El Presidio, "Most of the adobe is still hidden under layers of alterations made by the U.S. Army after 1846," an exhibit explains, noting that much "remains to be discovered beneath the surface." |
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Yet, some exhibits here present the results of archaeological investigations that have unearthed important artifacts – “found on or in the land, within its many buildings, or gathered from the community. Each object provides a clue to a history that is both well-known and still unknown. Together, they remind us that the stories of the Presidio continue to be discovered."
But if you don't talk to Schwartz, you might come away thinking that you also saw original adobe walls just outside of the Officer's Club. "Those are fake," he says, explaining that they were built to show where the original walls were located. Here you learn that when de Anza and his people arrived at the mouth of San Francisco Bay, now overpassed by the Golden Gate Bridge, “They erected a cross near present-day Fort Point.” You learn that by 1792, the fort’s adobe buildings included a chapel, family quarters and a jail. You learn that San Francisco Bay is so large that it was first called "the arm of the sea" by Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, the chaplain a diarist for the Portolá expedition. |
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In 1822, when Mexico took over El Presidio from Spain, its commandant, Luis Argüello, became the first Mexican governor of California. I expected to find his grave in El Presidio's cemetery. Yet I found him at the Mission San Francisco de Asis cemetery (see photo). And having seen photos of San Francisco’s De Anza Monument, I expected to find it in El Presidio. But I found it in another part of the city. I’ll show you in my next post. Stay tunned!
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