A Drive-By History of Great Highway
This history of Great Highway is brought to you by Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP) to provide context for the opening of San Francisco’s newest park on April 12, 2025. As history is always unfolding, this story of how a highway became a park is neither finished nor comprehensive, but it does highlight key milestones, introduce you to radical people who have called his area home, and showcase how the road has transformed over time in response to the vocalized needs of San Franciscans.
Founded in 1999, WNP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that preserves, interprets, and shares the diverse history and culture of San Francisco’s west side. In support of this work, WNP launched the OpenSFHistory program in 2014 to digitize and make accessible online historical images of San Francisco. You can learn more by listening to our 4-part series about Great Highway on our podcast, “Outside Lands San Francisco,” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4), and by watching an 8-minute illustrated video on WNP’s YouTube channel.
(The Sunset District before development, with the Murphy Windmill visible in the distant right, c. 1910. Photo by Willard E. Worden; courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp15.366)
The western edge of San Francisco along Ocean Beach wasn’t legally part of the City of San Francisco until the Outside Lands Act of 1866. This codified on paper a vast expanse of dynamic coastal dunes shaped by ocean currents and accompanying winds that stretched along the coast and into what we now know as downtown. Learn more about the intricacies of this landscape through the San Francisco Estuary Institute’s
Hidden in Plain Sight project, created using photos and geolocation data from the OpenSFHistory archive.
(Map of the City and County of San Francisco by James Butler, 1864. Published by Britton & Co.; David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Pub List No: 11809.000)
Speculators claimed this area well before American surveyors laid a grid on it, beginning with Spanish colonists who took the land from San Francisco’s original peoples, the
Ramaytush Ohlone. As the San Francisco Estuary Institute notes, “Ramaytush” comes from the
Chochenyo term “rámaitush,” meaning people from the western side of the San Francisco Bay Area. A tribal group within the Ramaytush Ohlone known as the Yelamu had seasonal settlements just beyond the reach of what has been known as Great Highway, on the Richmond District side at Lands End. Primary Yelamu villages were located in what we now call Mission Creek, Visitacion Valley, and near Crissy Field in the Presidio of San Francisco. With access to the shore, the Yelamu people were able to hunt and make shelters from plentiful vegetation; they relaxed, played games, and told stories here. Fresh water was sourced from hillside springs that you can still find just below the Lands End Lookout, running down into the Sutro Baths pools. If you walk the Sutro Baths Upper Trail, you will also find a historic Yelamu shellmound, or “midden,” containing shells, bones, and seeds left behind by the Yelamu.
It’s widely believed there are no living Yelamu descendents today, the tribal group having been decimated by forced assimilation into the Spanish Mission system. Spanish occupation gave way to broad Mexican land grants that were then ceded to American homesteaders and capitalists, either through direct sales or swiped on technicalities in court.
(An etching roughly translated from Norwegian to English as: “On the shore of the Pacific Ocean, the shelter cliff-house outside San Francisco on the beach in the middle of the Skalhund Cliffs. Original drawing for N.I.T. by Danish artist Jorgensen in San Francisco,” c. 1879. Courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp4.0387)
People have always been drawn to the windswept sand dunes at Ocean Beach, traveling near the surf along the hard-packed sand, which formed a natural roadway. As the city slowly sprawled westward, the first attempt at a paved road here began in the 1860s. It was the planned extension to an unsuccessful, privately-franchised toll road that the Board of Supervisors assured would not “interfere with the excursionists on God’s great highway” in the Daily Alta California on March 31, 1864. However, it was immensely unpopular. After a local farmer named Robert Smith set the toll house on fire in 1872, the city set in motion an investigation that eventually led to the municipal purchase of this and other toll roads in San Francisco.
(Map of the City and County of San Francisco by George H. Goddard, 1860. Printed by Britton & Rey; David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Pub List No. 7819.00)
Throughout its history, the road has evolved as a reflection of the city’s needs. Looking at early maps, we see it alternately referred to as Great Highway and Great Highway Reservation, and it’s drawn as an extension of what would become Golden Gate Park. The road’s early classification and treatment as park land was likely to simplify maintenance logistics, since sand dunes migrating across the highway into Golden Gate Park required constant vigilance from an early iteration of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.
(View of Ocean Beach looking southeast from the future site of the Cliff House, c. 1855. Marilyn Blaisdell Collection; courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp37.02040)
This was a wild part of the city, with roadhouses, saloons, and dance halls catering to rowdy clientele and radical thinkers who braved miles of shifting sand dunes to find space to be themselves here. An early significant building to be constructed near Great Highway was Ocean Side House between Ulloa and Vicente Streets, later known as the House of Mystery and Tait’s at the Beach. It was built by an attorney named B.S. Brooks, who at one time owned up to 52 blocks of sand dunes in the Outside Lands. He allegedly salvaged materials from a ship that wrecked on the shores of his property in the 1850s. The hotel, restaurant, and bar was open for business by the summer of 1867, leased by a man named George Newcomb, and it operated for the next three decades under a series of proprietors.
But the seaside resort that Brooks envisioned never materialized on Ocean Beach, earning the venture a nickname: Brooks’ Folly. As a land attorney, he seems to have had a soft spot for underdogs—defending the rights of property owners fighting eminent domain battles against the federal government, and representing Chinese residents against a Joint Congressional Committee of Investigation on Chinese Affairs in California that sought to restrict Chinese immigration in 1876. Ocean Side House closed and sat vacant for an extended period of time, becoming a neighborhood eyesore; Brooks eventually lost all his beachside property to foreclosure.
(“House is Open, Mrs. Russell Declares,” San Francisco Examiner, September 18, 1910.)
The stately structure passed through two subsequent owners who also couldn’t make the business profitable; in May 1901, the property was sold to Alexander and Ida E. Russell for $21,500, and the couple turned it into their private home. Alexander was a prominent local businessman active in local Republican politics, serving as County Recorder for a term in 1888. Ida was well known for her study of world religions, and she traveled widely with her husband and spiritually-aligned friends. While in Japan, she studied with Zen Buddhist master Soyen Shaku; in 1905, he was a guest of the Russells for nine months while he toured the county teaching meditation. Shaku was the first Rinzai Zen teacher to come to the United States, and this was his second and longest visit.
(Tait’s at the Beach at Ulloa and Great Highway, 1919. Courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp26.946)
Ida filled their home with rare religious art and artifacts from her travels; 2526 Great Highway also included a non-denominational chapel and was surrounded by a traditional Japanese garden protected from the harsh ocean winds and migrating sand dunes by a tall fence. Aside from Zen Buddhist masters, the couple hosted other visiting scholars and students and took in seven children with no place else to go. This all led to wild speculations that the remote house was the site of a cult—rumors made worse by a libelous 1910 San Francisco Examiner article on this “House of Mystery” that claimed residents were members of a “colony” indoctrinated under the teachings of “Mother Russell.” Despite a printed rebuttal from Ida, the aura stuck, and the mystique that surrounded her alternative lifestyle way out at Ocean Beach was not dispelled by her tragic death in the home following a botched cosmetic treatment in 1917. The Russell home was sold not long after Ida’s death in 1919, and it returned to commercial service as a popular restaurant and bar called Tait’s at the Beach, which was open until 1931. Sadly, the building burned to the ground in 1940.
(View of Carville from Great Highway between Judah and Irving Streets, with the Murphy Windmill visible in the distance, January 1910. Marilyn Blaisdell Collection; courtesy of Molly Blaisdell / OpenSFHistory, wnp70.0816)
In his lifetime, Alexander Russell—as a leading member of neighborhood improvement clubs—worked to elevate the neighborhood, which was best known for its sand dunes and radical lifestyles. In the 1890s, part of the Sunset District side of Ocean Beach became a Bohemian enclave known as
Carville-by-the-Sea that turned surplus street horsecars into clubhouses, taverns, and seaside retreats. Artists like Xavier Martinez and Jack London spent time here, as did local groups like a women's bicycle club called
The Falcons, which inspired
Lady Falcon Coffee Club. You can still find a home on Lower Great Highway with Carville horsecars built into its frame. But, as we see today, a remote area made popular by artists gave way to mainstream settlement. Improved public transit and the 1906 earthquake and fire brought new residents to the growing neighborhood, which was rebranded as
Oceanside.
(Kite view of the Outer Sunset showing Carville after it was cleared, at approximately Irving and 48th Avenue, in 1912. Marilyn Blaisdell Collection; courtesy of Molly Blaisdell / OpenSFHistory, wnp70.0282)
The Oceanside name was in use through the 1920s, when this part of San Francisco began to intensively transform into a residential and recreation hub. Although the
Cliff House, Sutro Baths, and Sutro Heights had long brought San Franciscans to the seaside for fun and relaxation, infrastructure improvements and additional attractions further incentivized the trip. In the 1910s, what became
Playland at the Beach began to take shape along Great Highway, with rides and restaurants appealing to all ages. A
seawall and esplanade—which made it easier to walk, ride bicycles, drive, and park along the highway—was dedicated in 1929. At the other end of the highway,
Fleishhacker Pool opened in 1925, followed by the establishment of
Fleishhacker Zoo in 1929. Improvements between these recreation zones like pedestrian tunnels, public restrooms, bridle paths for horses, and play structures for children continued through the 1930s, making Great Highway safer and more family friendly.
(Children’s playground between Upper and Lower Great Highway just north of Sloat Boulevard, with the Wawona pedestrian tunnel visible to the right, March 5, 1923. Photo by Horace Chaffee, SF Department of Public Works; courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp36.02989)
(Boxer Jack Johnson and trainers outside Seal Rock House at the foot of Sutro Heights, June 26, 1910. Courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp4.0918)
This western outpost of San Francisco continued to make space for everyone. In the early 1900s,
Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight boxing champion, trained at the Ocean Beach Pavillion while preparing for the legendary “Fight of the Century” from his headquarters at Seal Rock House. As the city became known for its counterculture, a vibrant surf community took shape at
Kelly’s Cove. Despite her passing in 2018, you can’t miss the colorful home of local legend
Carol Schuldt, known as the Queen of the Beach, along Lower Great Highway. Music promoter Chet Helms brought the Summer of Love scene to the beach, hosting Family Dog concerts with acts like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead at the Surf Club.
(View of the Ocean Beach Pavilion in its Surf Club era, looking south from the foot of Point Lobos Avenue and Great Highway, circa 1964. Courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp25.0145)
Car culture has been essential to the identity of Great Highway; it became known for drag racing, and enthusiasts like the San Francisco Ocean Beach Hot Rods, Kustoms and Classics (
@sfobhotrods) still meet regularly at the beach. You could find youngsters like Al Young—who later became the first Asian American World Champion race car driver—testing their limits on the highway. In an interview given to Palma You and Steve Haines of the
Chinese Historical Society of America in November 2020 as part of
Chinese in the Richmond, Al remembered “We would go to the Great Highway and there would be parking lots on either end. The Great Highway was not blocked off the way it is now, it was a straight stretch, a good three miles. One side, there was no place for a policeman to park, so if you raced on that side, they could never see you because there was a big berm. The other side we called the hot side—a cop could actually see. We picked out a person who we thought we might stand a chance at beating. I come out in my ‘47 Chevy, and we would race, and when the car was fast enough to pull ahead of an opponent—oh, it was terribly exciting.”
(Great Highway and Lincoln Boulevard, c. 1955. Courtesy of a Private Collector / OpenSFHistory, wnp25.0398)
Young belonged to a pioneering Chinese family in San Francisco that migrated west from Chinatown, settling in an increasingly multicultural neighborhood alongside families with Russian, German, and Jewish heritage. The
Sunset Chinese Cultural District was created in 2021 and the neighborhood is also well known for its Irish community, anchored by the
United Irish Cultural Center, which has served the neighborhood on 45th Avenue between Sloat Boulevard and Wawona Street since 1971. An example of pioneering Irish history with roots in the neighborhood comes from local historian Elizabeth Creely and the story of her relative, Francis J. McCarty, who is credited with creating the first wireless telephone in San Francisco. On the morning of Saturday, September 2, 1905, Francis demonstrated his homemade machine from the basement of the Cliff House, where a temporary transmitting station had been installed, sending his voice to a receiver at the Cyclers Rest, a distance of about a mile. He greeted reporters from the
San Francisco Examiner and hummed songs, including "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”
Francis and his brother Ignatius also established the first wireless telephone company in San Francisco: the McCarty Wireless Telephone Company, constructed in a shack among the Sunset District sand dunes at the northwest corner of what is now 45th and Lawton Avenue. Unfortunately, Francis never made a fortune on his invention. He sadly died on May 8, 1906 (20 days after the San Francisco earthquake), after losing control of his horse in Oakland, where he had relocated the McCarty Wireless Telephone Company. He was thrown headfirst from the cart he was driving into the concrete curb and died three days later.
(“New Hope in Death of Teka,” San Francisco Examiner, September 10, 1970.)
At the end of the 20th and into the 21st century, Great Highway slowed down. Accidents, like the tragic death of 10-year-old Teka Gowan in 1970, led to the installation of traffic lights and other safety improvements. Playland at the Beach closed and was demolished in 1972, making space for a grocery store and additional housing. Public debates about the future of Great Highway heated up in the late 1970s and 1980s, as the city grappled with herculean efforts to manage disruptive sand migration, prepared to build the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant, and negotiated requirements by the California Coastal Commission to better balance recreation areas with car traffic. Local organizations like the Sunset Ocean Beach Association and the Great Highway Neighborhood Association voiced concerns about what changes would mean for residents of the Sunset District in closest proximity to the highway.
(Bruce Livingston, California Director of the environmental nonprofit Clean Water Action, speaks at an anti-wastewater press conference at Sloat and Great Highway, 1995. Photo by Philip Liborio Gangi, Richmond Review Newspaper Collection; courtesy of Paul Kozakiewicz / OpenSFHistory, wnp07.00193)
As this human history has run its course, native species have been impacted and coastal erosion has been undeniably at play. The
2012 Ocean Beach Master Plan, an interagency effort incorporating public feedback led by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, has helped the city implement policies and projects that promise to bring significant changes to Great Highway, including the
Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project overseen by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. In 2020, San Francisco was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of Great Highway temporarily shifted to meet the needs of quarantined San Franciscans, closing (like many streets throughout the city) between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard to provide additional space for residents to safely recreate six feet apart. The Friends of Great Highway (now known as
Friends of Ocean Beach Park) formed to help steward and activate the closed corridor, and the nonprofit group lobbied to make the closure permanent.
In November 2022, voters rejected Proposition I, which would have returned the highway to full-time car traffic. That December, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution that launched a pilot program to close the road to car traffic on weekends, except for emergency vehicles and park staff. With the pilot set to expire in December 2025, the option to permanently close the road and designate it as open space was again put to a vote. In November 2024, San Franciscans passed Proposition K and, in March 2025, the work began to transform a road that dates back to the 1860s into San Francisco’s newest park.
Even as this park,
named by the people, celebrates its opening day on April 12, 2025, those living nearest to Great Highway disagree about what’s best for the neighborhood. People have voiced concerns about increased traffic congestion on local streets, as well as the impact on commute times and local businesses, and have called the road’s redesignation as permanent recreation space redundant because of its proximity to Golden Gate Park. In particular, members of the Sunset District’s Chinese American community feel San Francisco officials have again failed to listen to their needs; the nuances of this history are well articulated by Zhe Wu in a
San Francisco Public Press article published in February 2025. A lawsuit to keep the highway open to car traffic has been filed by former District 7 candidate Matt Boschetto, local business owner Albert Chow, and the nonprofit LivableSF, incorporated by Vin Budhai (who is also a co-organizer of the campaign to recall District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio). The plaintiffs claim the highway’s closure is in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act and the state vehicle code. The challenge will be heard in civil court in June 2025.
Which way this road goes, only time will tell.
