How Many Ways Can a Harbor Be Defended?

Civil War gun range map

NPS

As one of the first Europeans to see San Francisco Bay, Spanish priest Pedro Font described it 1776...

The port of San Francisco...is a marvel of nature, and might well be called a harbor of harbors... I've seen none that pleased me so much as this. And I think if it could be well settled like Europe there would not be anything more beautiful in all the world, for it has the best advantages for founding in it a most beautiful city.

Look out over the bay and see how Father Font's prophetic vision has been realized. Ever since gold was discovered in 1848, it has been the army's highest priority to defend this strategic harbor. Although there are many ways to defend a harbor, the army built four generations of harbor defenses here. The first generation used brick forts with many cannons to level crossfire on enemy ships. Only two of the three planned forts, at Fort Point and Alcatraz Island, were constructed. The Lime Point installation, planned for Fort Baker, was never built. The next generation of harbor defenses, from the 1870s to the 1920s, consisted of large rifled guns dispersed along the bay entrance. This generation led to the construction of batteries at Fort Baker. The third generation, during World War Two, relied on huge 16-inch guns on the coastal bluffs, and underwater mines managed from Fort Baker. After the war, Nike missiles at Fort Cronkhite, to the west of Fort Baker, deterred attacks from Russian bombers into the 1970s.