Planning Golden Gate Park

In the 1860's, as San Francisco boomed with the Gold Rush and the first transcontinental railroad, civic leaders planned a large park and arboretum in the city's western sand dunes despite doubts about the windswept, shifting site. From 1870 to 1879, Army-trained engineer William Hammond Hall, then twenty-four years old, surveyed the land, prepared a preliminary design in six months, and as Engineer of the Park spent the next five years leveling and stabilizing the dunes, establishing a nursery for the first 60,000 trees, and shaping curved roads and plantings to soften ocean winds and create a natural, rustic, informal landscape that quickly won public support. From 1887 to 1943, superintendent John McLaren, a Scottish-trained landscape gardener, built the park into a world-class landscape by drawing on a worldwide network of plants and arranging increasing varieties of shrubs and trees in naturalistic settings, while dedicating himself to making the park relaxing and enjoyable for the public; when he reached mandatory retirement at age 70 in 1916, voter pressure secured him life tenure, and he remained at work until his death at 96. The San Francisco Botanical Garden grew from this vision: in 1889 McLaren chose the present site for a future arboretum, in 1926 Helene Strybing's bequest provided funds that became available in the 1930s, from 1935-37 Eric Walther became the garden's first director and spent 20 productive years testing plants from many parts of the world, in 1940 the garden officially opened as an arboretum and botanical garden, in 1959 landscape architect Robert Tetlow prepared a master plan for features including the great meadow, the fountain, and the basic layout of the present gardens, and in 1972 the Library of Horticulture opened and soon became Northern California's largest horticultural library.

San Francisco, California · United States