Advertisement

Video: San Francisco’s big, green secret

<p>San Francisco’s Presidio includes 1,491 acres, beginning at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.</p>

Share

The Presidio -- a 1,491-acre chunk of public land at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge -- is one of San Francisco’s greatest assets, yet it remains underappreciated by travelers. Too bad, because as this video shows, it keeps getting better.

The area has plenty of greenery, from lawns to forest. But it’s also full of historic buildings, dating to the arrival of Spanish troops who built their fort here in the late 18th century. (Details here.) For most of the 20th century, the U.S. Army controlled the area. But in 1994, the Army handled it over to the National Park Service.

Soon, the creation of the Presidio Trust was underway and improvement projects began. Along with an inn, several restaurants and a museum-quality exhibition area in the old Officers’ Club, the Presidio is home to the Walt Disney Family Museum. Some locals make good use of the Presidio, but others -- and many tourists -- haven’t quite caught on. To draw more visitors (attention, cheapskates!), Presidio management runs free bus service to and from the Embarcadero downtown.

Advertisement

(And in case you’re wondering: No, Walt Disney never lived in the Bay Area. But his late daughter Diane Disney Miller, founder of the museum, did.)

“A Minute Away” is a video series in which nothing much happens -- except you see the world, and hear it, and get a respite from workaday life. We’ve covered Machu Picchu, Red Square, the Yucatan, the Alamo, an Alaskan float plane and the reading room of the New York Public Library, among other places. Since early 2013, we’ve been adding a new minute every week (and some of those “minutes” are actually closer to 120 seconds. So if you’d prefer 100 minutes away, we’ve got more than enough here for you…

Advertisement