Day Trip Adventure: Stroll to the Cliff House
Stroll along the Great Highway from Golden Gate Park, visit the Camera Obscura, learn some history about the Cliff House.
This is part of a series of family-oriented day trip outings around the San Francisco Bay Area I look forward to enjoying with my kids once social distancing and shelter in place isn’t the norm any longer.
Seal Rocks, Camera Obscura, and the Cliff House by Cody Tolmasoff
Cliff House Stroll — A Bonus Adventure
A visit to the Cliff House is a step back in time. As a kid, the Musée Mécanique was located in the basement of the Cliff House, the entrance across from the Camera Obscura. During its last renovations, the Musée Mécanique had to relocate to Pier 45. But visiting it at the Cliff House gave added effect to stepping back in time playing with all the classic arcade games. I’m glad to see the Cliff House looking so good, but I miss visiting the Cliff House of my youth.
Adventure: A Cliff House Stroll
Stroll along the Great Highway from Golden Gate Park
Visit the Camera Obscura
Learn some history about the Cliff House
Stroll along the Great Highway from Golden Gate Park
The stroll up to the Cliff House from Golden Gate Park by Cody Tolmasoff
Crossing the Great Highway from Golden Gate Park, take a right and head north up toward the Cliff House perched on the rocks ahead. The walk is approximately 3/4 of a mile and about an 80-foot elevation gain. Walking at the edge of the Richmond District, notice the 2 blocks of condos between the park and Sutro Park. Until 1972, these two blocks and the two behind were Playland at the Beach. It was a seaside amusement park similar to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The O’Shaughnessy sea wall you are walking along hasn’t changed much over the last 100 years. On the beachside, you can still find grand stadium seating facing the ocean, although now it’s buried under the sand as it needs restoration. Some restoration to the promenade has been happening though.
The road up to the Cliff House was often unpassable until Adolph Sutro donated the funds in 1893 to create a macadam road (a rough rocky asphalt) to promote better access to the Cliff House. O’Shaughnessey also made improvements here in 1928 when he built the sea wall.
Visit the Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura behind the Cliff House by Cody Tolmasoff
The final remaining structure from Playland. It’s based on a design by Leonardo Da Vinci and projects a reflected image down into the room from the roof where there is a pyramid-shaped rotating opening. From the ceiling of the viewing room, the image is projected through a pinhole onto a parabolic screen. Sunsets can be pretty epic.
It’s an interesting experience for a few rotations. The fee to enter is $3/adult and $2 for seniors and children.
Learn some history about the Cliff House
Cliff House by Cody Tolmasoff
This is the third building to be called the Cliff House located on this site. The first Cliff House was built here in 1863 by senator John Buckley and C. C. Butler. It was a spot for San Francisco’s elite to rest and eat after a visit to Ocean Beach for horse racing and recreation. After an expansion after 5 years and a change in management, it began to cater to less savory Barbary Coast types. When Adolf Sutro bought the Cliff House in 1883, he tried to manage it hiring several unsuccessful managers before making it a more family-run establishment. On Christmas day in 1894, a chimney fire wasn’t contained and consumed the entire structure.
Sutro quickly replaced the structure by 1896 with one known as the Gingerbread Palace. It was eight stories tall, had 4 spires, an observation deck, 20 private dining rooms, an art gallery, banquet facilities, and a bar. Sutro died in 1898 and the Cliff House was leased to John Tait to operate things. Amazingly the Cliff House survived the 1906 earthquake, only to burn down in September 1907. Sutro’s daughter Dr. Emma Merritt partnered with Tait to build the third Cliff House similar to the one we see today, even though it’s gone through serious remodeling over the last century.
Take some time to visit the gift shop while you are here, and walk around the building. At one time in the late 1950s, a sky tram operated from the lower back balcony across to Point Lobos on the far side of the Sutro Bath ruins. The Sutro Baths entrance was only a short distance up the hill. Further up the hill is the classic eatery Louis’ and the Land's End Lookout.
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 a book, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park West.
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 9 May 2020