Enjoy The View From Hawk Hill, Visit Point Bonita Lighthouse, Tour Nike Missile Base SF-88
Minutes away from San Francisco, wandering around Marin Headlands is a breathtaking experience offering a glimpse into moments from the past.
This is part of a series of family-oriented day trip outings around the San Francisco Bay Area I look forward to enjoying once social distancing isn’t the norm any longer.
Point Bonita Lighthouse by Cody Tolmasoff
Social Isolation — Day 5
This morning I was listening to a favorite podcast of mine called The Earful Tower hosted by Oliver Gee. It’s a slice of Paris life kind of podcast, he interviews a wide range of people bringing you a taste of everyday Paris. They recently went into lockdown and he’s paused his current theme to share what it’s like in Paris under the current state of affairs.
I swear on my honor that I am leaving the house for an essential reason…
One of the biggest differences between here and there was the official form you have to fill out prior to leaving the house (allowed for limited necessary activities). You either have to print it out or copy it by hand. If the police stop you, and you are without the form, it’s a €138 fine. So far, that isn’t happening here in the Bay Area, yet.
Still, yesterday I went for an evening walk at my local park and it was surprisingly crowded. The thing that really bugged me was the larger groups of people crossing my path not giving space to walk by, let alone the social distance required at this time. 4 people walking abreast from each other forcing me up into the foliage in order to pass safely. Sigh, what’s so hard to understand about social distance.
But if that’s my biggest complaint at the moment, I should consider myself lucky.
Destination: The Marin Headlands
Hawk Hill
Point Bonita Lighthouse
SF-88 Nike Missile Base
https://www.nps.gov/goga/marin-headlands.htm
Today I imagined driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, up and over Conzelman Road, stopping at Hawk Hill to enjoy the view of San Francisco, and maybe hike through the former military batteries. Then take a short breathtaking drive down to the Point Bonita Lighthouse, hiking down the steep walkway through caves and over a small suspension bridge to the lighthouse. Finally, driving around to the preserved SF-88 Nike Missile base for a tour. There is also the Marin Headlands Visitor Center, or the Marine Mammal Center, Rodeo Beach, or maybe a hike through the hills back there.
Back in the Spring of 2004, I was lucky enough to work for a museum audio tour company that had offices in former military barracks at Fort Cronkhite across from Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands. Every day I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, drove through the single-lane Baker-Barry tunnel or over Conzelman road, then out to Rodeo Beach.
There were a lot of challenges the year I worked out there, but I still fondly look back on the amazing people I got to work with and the fantastic environment I got to enjoy. Hopefully, I can share a bit of that with you here.
Hawk Hill
Photo by Tom Gainor on Unsplash
Hawk Hill is a specific point you can find driving up Conzelman road. I have always considered it the entire hillside west of McCullough road. Once you drive past the prime tourist lookout spots and pass the roundabout, keep driving west to some scattered parking near the entrance for Battery 129. It can get really busy here too, and you might be lucky to find a parking space, but the view from here (and the bird watching) is remarkable.
There are a number of trails here, and some benches scattered about. One of my favorite outings with my kids here was hiking down to one of the giant gun emplacements and having a picnic lunch while overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Then climbing up to the summit to do some impromptu bird watching. They call it Hawk Hill for a reason.
Point Bonita Lighthouse
Photo by Siam Choudhury on Unsplash
The first thing to note about Point Bonita is the limited hours you can visit. Sunday & Monday 12:30–3:30 (and you have to be on the trail down by 2:30). If you were looking to make a weekend out of a visit to the Nike Missile Base, it’s only open Saturdays, so you will have to pick the day you visit thoughtfully.
Lighthouse keepers often had a very solitary existence, often at quite a distance from civilization. Even though Point Bonita feels close to San Francisco, getting here was no small feat. 118 feet of tunnel had to be dug through resistant rock. They brought supplies in by boat to Bonita Cove where you can still see remnants of a dock and rails up the steep hillside that would transport the supplies up to the station.
Once you find parking and start hiking over to the lighthouse, you will walk down through the tunnels and along some narrow paths. Eventually, you will find yourself at the foot of a short suspension bridge, which is exciting to walk across. Huell Howser filmed an episode of California’s Gold here. Walking across the bridge brings you to the lighthouse, with some epic views.
Each of the area lighthouses would signal at a set interval so the sailors navigating into San Francisco Bay could know which light they were looking at by how often it blinked. This was the fourth lighthouse activated in the area, first being lit in 1855. Initially, it was stationed another 260 feet up the hill. But due to fog, it was often obscured to sailors. So by the 1870s, the Fresnel lens was moved down the hill to the southwestern tip of Point Bonita.
SF-88 Nike Missile Base
By Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A. — Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54904745
As the Cold War began to heat up in the early 1950s, America was desperate to create a defense against the threat of airplanes carrying nuclear weapons to our shores.
The Army set out to create a defense cobbled together from various technology available at the time. Beginning in 1954, this was one of 12 permanent launch sites constructed around the Bay Area to protect us from Cold War threats.
The idea was simple enough. They would employ radar available at that time to continuously look for enemy aircraft. Once spotted, they would use slide rules and charts to calculate the trajectory of the incoming aircraft (and later missiles). Meanwhile, technicians on the other side of a dirt berm would fill a Nike Missile with liquid fuel (mixing the components at fueling, a very hazardous job) to prepare the projectile. Once ready, another technician would program in an intercept trajectory and set a timer.
The idea was to detonate this medium-range (Nike-Ajax, range 37 miles) missile close enough to the enemy to blow them out of the sky. Eventually, these were updated with Nike-Hercules solid-fueled rockets with a longer range (87 miles) that could shoot down a plane flying at 2 times the speed of sound.
SF-88 is open most Saturdays (weather permitting) from 12:30 to 3:30 PM with tours at 12:45 PM, 1:30 PM, and 2:15 PM. On the first Saturday of the month, you may find veteran volunteers there who can tell you some incredible stories. Maybe they will even let you ride the missile elevator ;)
They have moved most of the base equipment down to the missile site, but originally the radar installation was up on Hill 88, which you can still hike to, starting at the far end of Rodeo Beach. Sumit the hill and you will find the old radar installation.
![By Bhautik Joshi from San Francisco, United States — SF-88 Nike Hercules Missile Site [13]: Missiles in underground storage, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54903749](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58c95f231b631bc251e4a252/1584576362129-IXNLTE6ETJZTAMRF4H01/1620px-SF-88_Nike_Hercules_Missile_Site_%2813%29-_Missiles_in_underground_storage_%287406077636%29.jpg)
By Bhautik Joshi from San Francisco, United States — SF-88 Nike Hercules Missile Site [13]: Missiles in underground storage, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54903749
Rodeo Beach by Cody Tolmasoff
Marin Headlands
Cody Tolmasoff is an author and publisher for Adventuring.in. He is a recovering programmer and a San Francisco native, raising two daughters, and regularly finding new adventures around the SF Bay Area. This article is an excerpt from an upcoming book, 52 San Francisco Bay Area Weekend Adventures, Day Trips With Your Kids!
Find him on Twitter @codyo, and read his most recent title Adventures in Getting Out on Amazon, filled with advice on successfully getting your family out for day trip adventures.
Originally published on Medium on 18 March 2020