SAN FRANCISCO—On April 4, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco celebrated its 154th birthday. An event was held to celebrate the milestone which included a celebration near the Conservatory of Flowers—the park’s oldest building—featuring entertainment, activities, a rock-climbing wall, a birthday cake, and more.
Golden Gate Park was nominated by U.S.A. Today’s 10 Best Reader’s Choice Awards for Best City Park. Golden Gate Park is in the running along with 19 other city parks nationwide. At the birthday celebration, the Mayor of San Francisco was joined by Rec and Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg to ask all San Franciscans to vote for the park online.
The top 10 winning parks will be announced on Wednesday, April 17. According to a news release from the Mayor’s Office, the park was initially known as Outside Lands when the first Park Superintendent William Hammond Hall first began designing it in 1870.
The 1,017-acre park has been transformed into a world-class park with areas for picnics, athletic fields, art installations, 1.5 miles of car-free promenade, live music, festivals, sporting events, museums, lakes, gardens, bison, monuments, memorials, children’s play areas, and more.
Golden Gate Park has served as a backdrop for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, the first World’s fair held in the U.S. west of the Mississippi. During the 1906 earthquake, the park a campsite for some 200,000 displaced San Franciscans.
The park has several unique gardens including the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the Japanese Tea Garden, Queen Wilhelmina Garden, the Conservatory of Flowers, the Rose Garden, and the Shakespeare Garden, among others. Commemorative trees groves include the National AIDS Memorial Grove, Heroes Grove, Redwood Memorial Grove, and Phil Arnold-Oak Woodlands Trail.
Golden Gate Park is home to Koret Playground, the nation’s first public playground, and the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Tennis Center, previously known as the Golden Gate Park Tennis Center and established in 1894. Cultural institutions within the park include the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. Events held at the park each year include Hardly Strictly Opera in the Park, Outside Lands and Comedy Day.
Golden Gate Park recently had the creation of a permanent car-free JFK Promenade. A car-free portion of JFK Drive previously existed since 1967 on Sundays, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mayor of San Francisco made the remaining 1.5 miles of JFK Drive to become car-free seven-days-a-week.
JFK Promenade is now a permanent, car-free street providing public space for bikers, walkers, joggers, kids, and seniors. To learn more about Golden Gate Park visit this link.
