Securing the Golden Gate

A diorama of Spanish Castillo de San Joaquín fort with thick, white adobe walls, bronze cannons.

European colonists realized early on that the unique geography of the Golden Gate held great significance for securing control of the region. Below the Golden Gate Bridge is Fort Point, a Civil War-era US Army post, but this was not the first fortification to be built here.

Prior to Fort Point, the Spanish built a fort of their own, Castillo de San Joaquí­n, which sat on a cliff nearly in the same place as Fort Point, only higher up. Castillo de San Joaquí­n was destroyed when the US Army blew up the bluff where it stood, in order to build Fort Point, because they wanted their fort to be able to fire at ships from water level.

On this walk you will mostly see concrete coastal defense structures installed from the late 1890s in a time known as the Endicott Period of coastal defenses, although a 1970s Nike ground to air missile base on the Presidio marked the final period of defenses here.