san francisco's golden gate park and the search for a good society, 1865-80

San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and the Search for a Good Society, 1865-80Author(s): Terence YoungSource: Forest & Conservation History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 4-13Published by: Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3983814 .

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_ San Francisc&s g FGolden Gate Park

fi and the Search1 Ifor aGoodSociety,

1 865-80 Terence Young

~Terence Young

O n 4 August 1865, the Daily Evening Bulletin of San Francisco published a letter to

the editor from one "Rusticus in Urbe." The letter writer proclaimed the value of the park he sought for San Francisco by describing the positive impact that Central Park was having on New York City: "It is beyond all question that the influence of the park is exceedingly favorable to moral as well as physical health, and that it exerts a highly civilizing effect upon the population of the city. Not only the popularity with all classes, but the degree of propriety, civility, good order and decorum with which all classes meet and enjoy themselves in [Central Park], has far exceeded the most sanguine expectations of its original projectors and advocates."'

This letter gives some idea of the cultural significance of nature, as rep- resented by Golden Gate Park, for many nineteenth-century San Franciscans.2 It expresses a linked set of assumptions about what was socially desirable, the connection between cause and effect, and the rela-

tionship between humans and the natural environment.Golden Gate Park came into being partly as the result of a belief that nature and moral order were coupled.

Although other scholars have found that social factors such as politics and economics played important roles in the creation of the park,3 a broadening of that history will illus- trate how ideas about the good society that some San Franciscans said would result from Golden Gate Park also contributed to its establishment. I will illuminate the park's early history and its cultural significance through an ex- amination of the writings of some of its most outspoken advocates.

The advocates for Golden Gate Park were members of a well-edu- cated, comfortably employed, middle to upper-middle class elite. The number of identifiable park advocates is probably limited to hundreds during a time when the population of San Fran- cisco was in the hundreds of thousands, although there were other supporters of parks. The hundreds of thousands of visitors who thronged to

the new Golden Gate Park are strong evidence that users and supporters of the park outnumbered its advocates.4 The predominantly native-born, white, male members of this elite included, but were not limited to, influential residents, newspaper editors and journalists, magazine writers, municipal and park officials, and the newly emerging publicly-employed landscape experts.5 There is no evidence that the members of this elite necessarily asso- ciated with one another or that they shared mutually acceptable views on other issues. The paths of their lives crossed because they believed in the qualities that a park was said to engender throughout society, and they acted on the basis of this belief. I sur- mise that conflict and consensus within this elite were largely respon- sible for the creation of Golden Gate Park in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.6

This inquiry is not a study of the relationship between Golden Gate Park's advocates and less privileged groups. It is an illustration of how beliefs among members of a powerful

4 Forest & Conservation History 37 (January 1993)



group influenced the development of the first large urban park in the American West. There is little evidence that there was organized oppo- sition to the idea of a large park at this time. One authority noted that "the real enemies of the parks have been in- ertia and lack of interest."7 However, the widespread acceptance of the idea of a park did not mean that the speci- fications for such a park were drawn from an unambiguous definition. Non-elites and elites have disagreed about how to define "park"; a history of this class tension exists elsewhere.8

I do not imply that the version of the urban park espoused by the group I identify was the best possible version of nature in the city. Rather, this version came about primarily as a result of the efforts of a San Francisco elite. They maintained a desire for urban nature because they believed that a park would help to bring about for themselves and other San Franciscans a morally ordered, good society.

The Four Virtues and Urban Park Making

During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, advocates across America were clamoring for parks. They believed that urban nature could reform the numerous faults of the swelling, industrializing cities of the United States.9 The period 1865-80 was one of dramatic growth for San Francisco in particular.10 Although the specific faults that any group thought nature capable of remedying undoubt- edly differed by city, the San Francisco elite thought parks would engender the "four virtues" of a morally ordered society.

The virtues were ideals that park advocates believed a good society would exhibit. Two of these virtues addressed material concerns: public health and prosperity. The other two were concerned with normative traits: democratic equality and social coherence. At the time, park advocates did not seek to force the virtues upon society. They had a more paternalistic attitude toward society than their successors would after the 1880s and sought to "elevate the lower classes to

the...standard of the middle and upper-middle classes. Parks would equal- ize up, not down."11

Park advocates believed that in the absence of the enumerated virtues urban areas exhibited such social vices as disease, poverty, inequity, and crime. One of the best known and most outspoken park advocates in America, Frederick Law Olmsted, recognized such a vicious aspect to urban life when he wrote:

[I]t is...true, that to all the economical advantages we have gained through modern discoveries and inventions, the great enlargement of the field of commerce, the growth of towns and the spread of town ways of living, there are some grave drawbacks. We may yet un- derstand them so imperfectly that we but little more than veil our ignorance when we talk of what is lost and suf- fered under the name of "vital exhaus- tion,"" nervous irritation" and "consti- tutional depression"; when we speak of tendencies, through excessive material- ism, to loss of faith and lowness of spirit, by which life is made, to some, questionably worth the living. But that there are actual drawbacks which we thus vaguely indicate to the prosperity of large towns, and that they deduct much from the wealth-producing and

tax-bearing capacity of their people, as well as from the wealth-enjoying capacity, there can be no doubt.

The question remains whether the contemplation of beauty in natural scenery is practically of much value in counter- acting and alleviating these evils, and whether it is possible, at reasonable cost, to make such beauty available to the daily use of great numbers of towns- people? I do not propose to argue this question [emphases added].12

Olmsted refused to argue the question because to him it was true. He took for granted that the natural environment in a park was virtue-generating and that therefore a good society would follow. He and many other combatants of urban vices thought that a park would contribute posi- tively to the struggle for a virtuous society. The feelings and physical conditions that enfolding nature aroused in an individual and in society were held to be inherently better than those gen- erated by a city. In effect Olmsted and the park advocates of San Francisco were early representatives of the positive environmentalists that became common later in the century.13

SAN San FRANCISCO

circa 1870

0~~

co ~ ~~/

(;;;;;.;>........ . ..

CO - Charter Line of 1851

1- } a /~~~ ___ Olmsted's Proposed Park 1866

0.. Q~~~~~.........

Cs LI~~~~ Golden Gate Park 1870|

Map of San Francisco circa 1870 showing the area dedicated to Golden Gate Park. Also shown is the area that Frederick Law Olmsted proposed to use for a park. Map provided by author.

Golden GOte Park S



The belief among these advocates that there was a link between a repre- sentation of the natural world and moral order is evident even in the ear- liest official statements about Golden Gate Park. "In a material, though less appreciable degree," wrote William Hammond Hall, Golden Gate Park's first superintendent, "the careful improvement of extensive tracts as.. .rural parks has influenced the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of their neighborhood; while the great benefits derived in this respect, with their con- sequent mental bearing and marked moral influence, from the building of large urban pleasure grounds, is now generally recognized." 14

The value that Hall placed upon a societal ("neighborhood") good greater than any individual foreshad- ows Progressive attitudes toward the national park and forest services after 1890.15 What differentiated the park advocates of the 1860s through the 1880s from their successors was a Romantic's greater faith in the capacity of a natural landscape to generate virtue."6

The San Francisco park movement between 1865 and 1880 saw science and art as mutually supportive rather than separate ways of gaining knowl- edge. This perspective was an intellec- tual foundation for San Francisco's park advocates and a late expression of eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism.17 Romantics saw nature, including humanity, as the uni- versal handiwork of God. Since God was immanent in nature, the feelings that the physical world aroused in people contained moral truths placed there by God. Reverence for the physical world was reverence for God, and therefore good.18 Since people were a part of nature, city dwellers who were not in contact with the natural world needed to seek nature and discover the feelings that it aroused.

Scientific accuracy was employed by the landscape arts to represent better the natural world and therefore raise the positive feelings through the contemplation of nature God had made possible. The physical appear- ance of nature was sufficient to pro- duce uplifting feelings and encourage a moral life, an idea fundamental to

the creation of parks. If a park repli- cated the park maker's conception of the physical world outside the city, then the replication would have the same beneficial effects as the original.

For Romantics, nature was the physical world as it existed without plan for design. In certain respects this made nature a more complex idea than it is now. In the 1860s and 1870s nature had not yet been defined as the wild, untouched physical world that is usually termed natural in the 1990s. Nature encompassed such wildness, but it could also include a rural landscape of farms, fields, woods, and roads. At the time such a pastoral landscape was considered natural because it was not the unnatural civilization of cities. In fact, it was rural nature, as captured in the aesthetics of an informal Beautiful and Picturesque, that provided the models for recreated nature in many of America's first parks."9

Mid-nineteenth-century park advocates believed that people who lived in rural America were, as a rule, morally superior to those who lived in cities. Urban park supporters believed that the rural-like environment of a park engendered the virtues within urban society because the country was an inherently better environment for people than the city.20 However, not all mu- nicipalities ordered the importance of the four virtues in the same way or viewed their interrelationship simi- larly. Each city studied separately yields insights into the values it at- tached to a park.

The Case of San Francisco As early as 1854, there were San

Franciscans like the social observer Frank Soule who found their city lack- ing in virtue-generating parks:

Over all these square miles of contem- plated thoroughfares there seems to be no provision made by the projectors for a public park-the true "lungs" of a large city. The existing plaza or Ports- mouth Square, and two or three other diminutive squares, delineated on the plan, seem the only breathing holes in- tended for the future population of hundreds of thousands. This is a strange mistake and can only be attributed to the jealous avarice of the city project-

ors....Not only is there no public park or garden, but there is not even a circus oval, open terrace, broad avenue or any ornamental line of a street or building, or verdant space of any kind, other than the three or four small squares alluded to, and which every resident knows are by no means verdant, except in patches where stagnant water collects and ditch weeds grow.21

For many years, these early park advocates had little impact beyond the addition of a few more city squares.22 There are a number of possible expla- nations for this. First, the city was physically small at the time, so it was easy to escape. As John P. Young de- clared, "There was no lack of [fresh air] in the denser parts of the City at any time in the [eighteen] Sixties."23 Second, the lack of public places may have been related to the local view toward public facilities generally. This shortage was often attributed to the frequent use of such areas as living spaces by "squatters" or as dumps, the regular occurrence of official mal- feasance, the impermanence of a population bent on becoming wealthy as quickly as possible, a widespread desire to keep tax rates low, and a general "lack of regard for the future."24

A third reason that there may not have been much interest in public parks was the presence of a number of privately owned, public gardens that offered many of the opportunities that parks would later provide. For example, as early as the 1 850s, the Russ Gardens and the Willows were considered out of town "sylvan retreats" where one could obtain refreshments and enjoy singing, dancing, tightrope walking, and other diversions. Russ Gardens "boasted some trees," which unfortunately "were not always re- freshingly green," while the Willows had a small menagerie. However, according to one historian the true drawing card at the latter was not the animals but the singing and dancing.25

The most famous of these resorts was Woodward's Gardens (see illustration). From the 1860s until it was overshadowed in the 1880s by Golden Gate Park, the desire for open air recreation was satisfied primarily at Woodward's. One writer styled it

6 Forest & Conservation History 37 January 1993)



"the Central Park of the Pacific. The grounds comprise only five acres, but [are] so arranged by the disposition of galleries and buildings, and the planting of trees and shrubs as to appear fully twice the size." Begun in 1860 as a suburban home with landscaped grounds, its immediate popularity led the owner to open the grounds to visitors one day each week for a nominal charge. By 1865 the family had given up living in the house, and it had become a public facility with gardens, conservatory, and a museum.26 It was not these features, however, that most customers sought. "The real feature of the place was its attempt to provide as many and as varied forms of amusement as possible." Here one could bring children and let them play on the swings, watch live performances, drink and eat, and even observe an oc- casional balloon ascent.27

Finally, it would not have been likely for the municipal government to respond to any calls for public parks before 1865 because, as in Brooklyn, the Civil War would have delayed such constructions.28 Additionally, the city's unstable pre-1865 finances would likely have clouded any serious concern.29

As the war wound down and the city's finances stabilized, the reckless abandon and day-to-day living of San

Franciscans gave way to greater respect for law and order. "[T]here was a visible diminution of what may be termed the brazenness of evil," de- clared Young. "Instead of attempting to force all to a common [that is, low] level, there was a growing disposition to respect the man who avoided drink- ing places and refused to gamble."30 It was in such a soil of growing moral concern that the idea of a large city park germinated.

Begun with a newspaper letter to the editor in August, the public discussion of a park grew heated by Novem- ber 1865.11 On the sixth of that month, "a large number of citizens and taxpayers" expressed their concern for the future by presenting a pe- tition for parkland to the Board of Super- visors. "The great cities of our own country, as well as of Europe, have found it necessary at some period of their growth, to provide large parks, or pleasure-grounds, for the amusement and recreation of the people.... No city in the world needs such... grounds more than San Francisco. A great Park...is the great want of the city." The petitioners concluded with a request to the supervisors to commu- nicate with Olmsted, the "landscape architect," about the matter.32

Less than two weeks later, the Daily Alta California joined with the petitioners and stated "A Great Public

Park Wanted in San Francisco."33 As the reporter saw it, the city was barren and lacked any real nature: "Looking at our city from the bay, or the Golden Gate, in the summer and fall, we see a mass of yellow houses on yellow hills of yellow sand or yellow rock....We want a place where, under the protection of our hills, we can have fifty, a hundred, or two hundred acres, sown with grass, planted with trees and laid off with roads pleasant for walking and driving. We need the reviving influences of beautiful nature." The paper insisted that the future affairs of the city be considered. If not, "the unwise policy of today will bear an abundant crop of evil tomor- row" (emphasis added). A few weeks later, the Daily Morning Call chimed in with support for "a magnificent public park."34

In response to these calls, Mayor of San Francisco H. P. Coon, the attor- ney for the city and county, and two supervisors were empowered to contact Frederick Law Olmsted on behalf of the city and "obtain his views and recommendations as to extent of grounds required, and suitable location for a Park."3" On 31 March 1866, after visiting San Francisco and while working as a commissioner for the new Yosemite Valley reserve, Olmsted submitted a preliminary park

In the 1 860s and 1870s Woodward's Garden was one of the most attractive outdoor entertain- ments in San Francisco. In the foreground is an amusement area with its circular sail- i ing pond, in the mid-

'~dle ground is a wooded * E _ . "retreat, " and in the

distance is the city and a - the hills. Between the

?Z i _=_ woods and the city is a high wall (the squares

*lL _e_ beyond the woods) _ whose purpose was

to eliminate any view of the city. Photos accompanying this article were provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Golden Gate Park 7



plan for San Francisco.36 He proposed curvilinear, informally designed facilities on the east side of the city in a location protected from the constant ocean winds (see map p. 5). The climate and topography led Olmsted to doubt the applicability of a large, pastoral park for San Francisco. Instead he argued for a moderately sized, ornamental pleasure ground with the largest portion a beautiful area of several hundred acres so that "[flrom within this garden, no carriage road or buildings, except those of a rural character, inviting rest, should be seen.. .no pains should be spared to make it a spot of pure and tranquil sylvan loveliness...."37

For at least two reasons this plan was never implemented. First, Olmsted returned to New York because he and Calvert Vaux had been hired to create Brooklyn's Prospect Park.38 As a result, he could not per- sonally engage San Franciscans over the merits of his plan. This was serious because there were powerful local groups fighting for alternative loca- tions south, northwest, and due west of the built portions of the city.39 A second and more important reason was that a large park elsewhere became the means by which the problem of the "Outside Lands" could be settled.

The Outside or "Pueblo" Lands referred to that area west of the Charter Line of 1851 (see map). Since the sign- ing of San Francisco's charter of incor- poration in 1851, the ownership of this land had been in dispute. In court after court, the city of San Francisco had argued that this was its land, subject to its disposal since it had been part of the original Mexican pueblo. The federal government argued in op- position to the city that the land was outside the pueblo and therefore the property of the United States. In 1864 the U.S. Supreme Court settled in favor of San Francisco, but this was not the end of the issue.40

During the years of court battles, numerous squatters had moved onto the land in hopes that a decision in favor of the United States government would mean that they could establish a homestead. When San Francisco won the case, the squatters threatened to take the city to court over land titles once again. Frank McCoppin,

one of the two supervisors involved in the earlier discussions with Olmsted, saw an opportunity in this. He calcu- lated that a park in the Outside Lands could be the means to a resolution of the question as well as the way he could gain higher public office. He was correct on both counts. In 1867 he became mayor and pressed forward the complex land and money ex- changes, which created numerous public conflicts before the issue was finally resolved. In settlement, the city agreed to respect the claims of the squatters if they would relinquish their claims on that portion of the land used to construct a park. This proposal was accepted by the litigants, ratified by the supervisors, and confirmed by the state in 1870 (see illustration on p. 10 and map on p. 5).41

The resulting 1,013.9 acre Golden Gate Park was located farther away from the area of concentrated population than Olmsted had originally planned.42 Nevertheless, the reaction of San Francisco residents indicates that the new park satisfied an immediate and widespread desire to be in contact with such a planned form, of nature. "From the numerous visitors who continually resort to those grounds, we have received the most gratifying marks of approval and interest," beamed an 1872 park commissioners' report to the Board of Su- pervisors.43 More than two hundred and fifty thousand visitors flocked to the park in the first full year of opera- tion, jumping to more than five hundred thousand by 1875.44

The first superintendent, William Hammond Hall, developed the plan for Golden Gate Park. Although he had been the topographic surveyor of the park lands, Hall's expertise in landscape analysis did not extend to landscape design. But once he was ap- pointed superintendent in August 1871, he set out to become an expert designer. Since at the time it was not possible to obtain a formal education in landscape architecture, Hall taught himself about this aspect of landscape. Determined to do a proper job, the self-admittedly amateur Hall wrote first to booksellers in Philadelphia and New York City for such things as park plans and "the most desireable

works on Landscape gardening & Park improvement."45 Then he con- tacted the one man who had prior experience with San Francisco park design, Frederick Law Olmsted. On 22 August 1871 Hall drafted a letter to Olmsted asking for his assistance and began what became a decades-long correspondence:

Please excuse the liberty I take in ad- dressing you without being even an ac- quaintance, our similarity of tastes and profession must be my excuse. You must know that landscape gardening is a thing almost wholly unknown on the Pacific Coast. There is not a single specimen of a public park treated as other than a rectangular city square....Will you aid me by sending me a list of such works or publications bearing upon the subject in all its branches as you may consider useful? I know that mere study of books does not make the landscape engineer. Study of nature-of effect-in planting and con- structing; and, above all, experience are required.46

Olmsted responded on 5 October with support but also some words of caution about trying "to meet the natural but senseless demand of unreflecting people bred in the Atlan- tic states and the North of Europe for what is technically termed a park under the climatic conditions of San Francisco... .I regard the problem as unique....It requires instruction not ad- aptation." Nonetheless, Olmsted included a list of some French, but mostly English landscape gardening texts.47 Many of these Hall ordered immediately.48 In addition, he read park reports from New York, Brook- lyn, Baltimore, Chicago, and Philadel- phia. On the basis of this education, Hall submitted a rural design that was accepted by the board on 30 Decem- ber 1871.49

The foundation for nearly all later work, this plan was largely informal. It contained curved lines and the three basic components of a pastoral, rural nature: groves, meadows, and some lakes (see illustration of Alvord Lake). There were few flowers, and the only large structures were the service buildings. These last were confined to the park's perimeter.S? Later in life Hall described what his goal had been in the plan:




Whenever and wherever in these United States, it has been thought to provide a main park for a large or rapidly-growing or prosperous city, the foremost and most forcefully used argument in favor of the proposition has been an urging of necessity for that which can possibly be provided only by a tract of land having an attractive country-like character.

Nature makes woodland parks. They are grounds so formed and grown and verdure-clad that they are and on first sight seem to be just adapted for human occupancy in the pursuit of relief from urban hard-line surroundings and dis- turbing city-like influences. Such a place is recognized by an intuition when one comes into it in the country. When man undertakes to make a woodland park, his object and sustained endeavor must be to cause the result to seem to be a work of nature of this kind. And so, the most artistically and practically success- ful woodland park making may not challenge the widest praise, simply because those who see it do not realize that it is the work of man. They instinctively take it for granted that nature made it. One of the most difficult tasks in mind control is to make ones self fully realize and accept as art that, man-made, which closely simulates pleasing and restful nature. It is much a simple result that the mind invol- untarily rejects the idea that man has concemed himself in the making.5"

This quote discloses that Hall thought the visually important ele- ments of nature were known and that an expertly designed park would have an improving impact upon society.

The Virtes and Gkiden. Gate Park

From one perspective, the establishment of Golden Gate Park was a local issue unlikely to be found elsewhere: it was a novel means for settling what had been a difficult struggle over the Outside Lands. A settlement meant that the city and a number of its residents could avoid further litigation and that there would be a new, desirable improvement. Many of the advocates of a large park were especially pleased to have Golden Gate Park because the four virtues now seemed more likely to occur in San Francisco. Of these virtues, the material ones, public health and prosperity, were

more frequently discussed than the normative ones, social coherence and democratic equality.

In the 1860s and 70s, the residents of San Francisco did not suffer as badly from disease as did the residents of many eastern cities. In cities like Baltimore, Brooklyn, New York, and Philadelphia, parks were considered a means to prevent common epidemic diseases like cholera."2 San Franciscans believed that the climate itself lowered the likelihood of such events. "It should be a source of gratification to the community to know, that owing to our invigorating climate, the death record will compare favorably with any city in the Union, of comparative population, notwithstanding the well- known fact that San Francisco is the City of Refuge for the halt, the lame, and the blind of the Pacific coast."53 As a result Golden Gate Park was only occasionally referred to as "the lungs of the city" where people could enjoy fresh air and escape the "miasmas" that supposedly caused epidemics elsewhere.54

The public health issue that most exercised the minds of San Francisco's park advocates was the relationship between commerce and the enervation of individuals. Park supporters argued that many of the city's adult males were exhausted by the hectic pace of

burgeoning commercial activity. They thought that a visit to a public park would refresh these tired businessmen by raising in their minds pleasant, en- ergizing thoughts of rural nature. If their minds were energized then their bodies should be also, and Golden Gate Park thereby contributed both to personal health and the struggle toward financial success.55

According to Olmsted, enervation was much too common in San Fran- cisco, and the municipal government had a responsibility to provide means for personal improvement. In the report that accompanied his 1866 plan he said:

While an unusually large proportion of the population of San Francisco is en- gaged in no useful industry, the more important part of it is wearing itself out with constant labor, study, and business anxieties, at a rate which is unknown elsewhere. This is to a great extent, per- haps, a natural and necessary result of the present circumstances of its commerce; but that there should be so little opportunity and incitement to relief-to intervals of harmless and healthy recreation, as is the case at present-is not necessary, and is not wise or economical. Cases of death, or of unwilling withdrawal from active business, com- pelled by premature failure of the vigor of the brain, are more common in San Francisco than anywhere else, and cause

i... 7~~~~~~~~~~

The seating around Alvord Lake, a typical small lake in the park, is arranged so that visitors may easily contemplate the lake. A fence keeps people from intruding upon this "uplifting" scene.

Golden Gate Park 9



losses of capital in the general business of the city, as much as fires or ship- wrecks. Such losses may be controlled by the [municipal government] to a much greater degree than losses by fires, and it is as much its duty to take mea- sures to control them, as it is to employ means to control fires.56

Other park proponents claimed that the presence of a large urban park would contribute to local prosperity in at least three other ways as well. First, according to the editor of the Daily Alta California, the large urban park was a part of all "great cities" like New York, Paris, and London. These cities drew crowds of tourists who spent freely while they were in town to visit the park and other cultural features. "We must give our city the at- tractions of the chief watering place, as well as the great commercial and manufacturing centre of Pacific America."57

Second, the experience with Cen- tral Park in the 1850s and 1860s had demonstrated that once a park was constructed, property values in the vi- cinity would increase and enrich the landholders.58 This point was not lost in the following years. "It is a well- known fact," touted P. J. Sullivan's 1880 real estate brochure, Homes For All, "that REAL ESTATE ADJOIN-

ING LARGE PUBLIC PARKS always becomes the most valuable for resi- dences, and what was true of the surroundings of Central Park in New York will be equally demonstrated in the neighborhood of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco."59 It seems likely that the potential of increased real estate values had helped to per- suade many of the Outside Land homesteaders whose property did not become part of Golden Gate Park to drop their lawsuits and settle with the city.

Third, increased property value meant an increased property tax base for the entire city. This enhanced tax base was supposed to pay off the park's indebtedness and help defray the cost of other municipal services.60 The Second Biennial Report trum- peted this point on its first page: "[I]t has been thoroughly proved in all other cities where Public Parks have been made that the increase in the amount received from taxation, on the enhanced value of property resulting from Park improvements is largely in excess of the interest on the money ex- pended."61 This argument probably helped convince even those residents who lived far away from Golden Gate Park to view it as an asset.

In addition to health and prosperity, the normative virtues of social coherence and democratic equality were also proclaimed by park advocates. They claimed that Golden Gate Park would help to overcome the undesir- able rise of unequal social divisions within the city's populace. For example, they viewed the park as an arena for numerous "healthful recre- ations" such as strolling, picnicking, and croquet playing. Hall wrote that these quiet, outdoor pastimes ap- pealed to all segments of the population, from the wealthiest to the poor- est. He argued that these different groups of people would normally not see nor take part in most of these ac- tivities, only the one or two that they knew and enjoyed best. In the pleasant and uplifting setting of the park, Hall claimed that the various groups would grow to appreciate each other's amusements, take part in them, grow socially homogeneous, and thus pro- mote greater equality. He assumed that similarity and equality were beneficial to a functioning democracy.62

Many of San Francisco's park-sup- porting elite believed in the value of social homogeneity. They accepted this argument because they feared that vice would result from heterogeneity.

"City of San Francisco, Birds Eye View From

The Bay Looking South-West." . . .. . .

Golden Gate Park is in A -':

the center distance. U& o

From its eastern 5 _ branch (now known as

"The Panhandle" and previously called "The

Avenue"), the park extends away from the

western edge of the city across the sand

dunes of the Outside Lands to the ocean.

The park can be distinguished by its

curvilinear roadways. . . ,,,,

The two areas with 4 4 .

curvilinear roads to the _ north (right) of the

park are cemeteries. . . . . . I I * | I

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .. .

10 Forest & Conservation History 37 (January 1993)



Park proponents said that crime would be reduced and public spiritedness promoted outside the park if residents from all the city's groups could mingle in parks. "Rusticus in Urbe" had early on recognized this quality when he wrote that there had been very few crimes in New York's Central Park. By 1865 the park had come to be seen as so safe that even women and children could gather there. As he stated it, "Not an instance is known where they have met with insult or annoyance. "63

In the minds of such advocates as "Rusticus in Urbe," residents of the city would be uplifted in a park by social intercourse and together progress toward a higher state of civilization.64

Acceptance of one virtue, however, did not necessarily entail the acceptance of all of the others. Not every- one who supported the park for its contri'bution to one virtue was concerned with or even accepted the park's positive correlation with another. For example, at least one observer felt that some arguments in favor of the park served purposes other than those purported. "The Park Commissioners have been rather over- doing the business of praising the advantages which are to flow from [Golden Gate Park]," remonstrated one cynic.

We are told that it will exert a potent influence upon the moral condition of society and prove a great moral reformer, all of which is 'flabbergast' pure and simple. The Park is, of course, a great benefit, and it will pay well as an aid to increase of real-estate values; beyond that it is for the rich few, and it is used almost entirely by them....When the object is to secure a large appropriation from the legislature, calling the Park a great influence in the direction of moral reform is dust that may be thrown into the eyes of our lawmakers at Sacra- mento, but it would not be tolerated at any other time.65

Golen Gate Park and a Good Soiety

By 1880 Golden Gate Park was an established and popular San Francisco institution. Like the large parks of Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere, the park had been designed as a pastoral landscape into which urban

dwellers could escape. The park's advocates viewed its connection to the virtues as clearly deterministic: nature was a cause and moral order its effect. The park was a mechanism for em- bodying within the city of San Fran- cisco the sort of nature that its elite of champions understood to be virtue- generating. Without a park the virtues seemed to this elite to be far more elusive.

The park's advocates included citi- zen petitioners, editorial letter writers, social observers, newspaper people, city and county supervisors, a mayor, park commissioners, and professional landscape designers. These people publicly advanced the struggle for Golden Gate Park, and they got the park they desired. The depth and breadth of individual support remains uncertain. For example, at least one contemporary was skeptical of such public enthusiasm,66 and Mayor McCoppin used the park primarily for personal gain and as a solution to the problem of the Outside Lands. Nonetheless, the Hall-Olmsted correspondence indicates that at least some advocates believed deeply in the moral benefits that could be derived from a well- designed and well-executed park.

At a collective level, the connections among all four virtues and the park emerged. No individual seems ever to have stated her or his faith in the capacity of the park to foster every virtue, but on occasion individuals imag- ined it might encourage two or even three.67 In any case, the virtues clearly embodied a universe of moral qualities that were said to be characteristic of a good society. Park advocates identified a direction for social progress (the virtues), conceived what they considered a park's role in that progress (as virtue- generating nature), and then created Golden Gate Park in the hope that San Francisco would become a good place characterized by a healthy, wealthy, harmonious, and democratic society.

Notes 1. Rusticus in Urbe, "Letter to the editor,"

Daily Evening Bulletin, 4 August 1865. According to Frederick Law Olmsted in The California Frontier, 1863-1865, ed. Victoria Post Ranney (Baltimore, Mary- land: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 425-32, "Rusticus in Urbe" was no other than F. L. Olmsted himself.

Other authors have both directly and indirectly recognized many of these issues. Therefore, a referenced work in these notes without page numbers indicates that the author discussed the issue frequently or throughout the work. The term "park" refers to large (over five hundred acres) public urban parks.

2. The literature is vast on the history and meaning of "nature." Useful texts include Arthur 0. Lovejoy, Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948), pp. 69-77, 136-65, 308-338; Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Fran- cisco, California: Harper and Row, 1980); Raymond Williams, Problems in Material- ism and Culture (London, England: Verso, 1980), pp. 67-85; Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 219-24; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pan- theon Books, 1983); Kenneth Olwig, Nature's Ideological Landscape: A Literary and Geographic Perspective on Its Devel- opment and Preservation on Denmark's Jutland Heath (Boston, Massachusetts: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).

3. Some social, economic, and political aspects of Golden Gate Park have been developed elsewhere. Marjorie Phyllis Dobkin, "The Great Sand Park: The Origin of Golden Gate Park" (M.A. thesis, University of California, Berke- ley, 1979) examines first the ideological role of the park in the development of social control by one class even while that class aimed to eliminate social barriers; and second, the park's role in urban expansion, commercial development, and the alleged alleviation of health problems. Her analysis touches upon issues similar to those in this article, but it does not examine them as a linked set of concerns about the characteristics of a good society. Raymond H. Clary, The Making of Golden Gate Park, The Early Years: 1865- 1906 (San Francisco, California: Don't Call It Frisco Press, 1984) and Raymond H. Clary, The Making of Golden Gate Park, The Growing Years: 1906-1950 (San Fran- cisco, California: Don't Call It Frisco Press, 1987) are not theory-informed histories. They are popular, local histories concerned largely with the relationship between the park and several important individuals. Filled with anecdotes, Clary's books take for granted the social value of Golden Gate Park and focus upon the changing person- alities, physical aspects, and perceived destruction of the park.

4. See Galen Cranz, The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America (Cam- bridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,1982), pp. 157-206, for an extensive discussion both of park advocates and users.

semnsePe.k 11



S. For an analysis of the limited role women played in park making during this period, see Galen Cranz, "Women and Urban Parks: Their Roles as Users and Suppliers of Park Services," in Building for Women, ed. Suzanne Keller (Lexington, Massachu- setts: Lexington Books, 1981), pp. 151-71.

6. The composition and goals of the advocates for a large park in San Francisco were not unlike those in many other American cities. For examples of specific cities, see Donald E. Simon, "The Public Park Movement in Brooklyn, 1824-1873" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1972); Michael P. McCarthy, "Politics and the Parks: Chicago Businessmen and the Recreation Movement," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 65 (Summer 1972): 158-72; Marilyn Weigold, Pioneering in Parks and Parkways: Westchester County, New York, 1895-1945 (Chicago, Illinois: Public Works Historical So- ciety, 1980); Cynthia Zaitzevsky, Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1982); Stephen Hardy, How Bos- ton Played: Sport, Recreation, and Commu- nity, 1865-1915 (Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press, 1982); Virginia L. Fitzpatrick, "Frederick Law Olmsted and the Louisville Park System," Filson Club His- tory Quarterly 59 (no. 1, 1985): 54-65; M. M. Graff, Central Park, Prospect Park: A New Perspective (New York: Greensward Foundation, 1985); and Daniel M. Bluestone, "From Promenade to Park: The Gregarious Origins of Brooklyn's Park Movement," American Quarterly 39 (Winter 1987): 529- 50. For other, more general discussions of the American experience see Thomas Bender, Toward An Urban Vision: Ideas and Institu- tions in Nineteenth-Century America (Balti- more, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); Cranz, Politics; Robert R. Weyeneth, "Moral Spaces: Reforming the Landscape of Leisure in Urban America, 1850-1920" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, 1984); and David Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, 1986).

7. Cranz, Politics, p. 159. 8. Roy Rosenzweig, "Middle-class Parks and

Working-class Play: The Struggle over Recre- ational Space in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1870-1910," Radical History Review 21 (Fall 1979): 31-46. Rosenzweig does not argue that the two groups disagreed about whether there should be parks, but rather how they should be defined. He found that the struggle led to the creation of two types of parks, one for each class of users.

9. See Bender, Urban Vision, pp. 159-87; Schuyler, New Urban Landscape, pp. 59-148; and James L. Machor, Pastoral Cities: Urban Ideals and the Symbolic Landscape of America (Madison: University of Wiscon- sin Press, 1987), pp. 167-74 for discussions of the national movement toward "pastoral- izing" the American urban landscape.

10. San Francisco's population swelled from 56,802 in 1860 to 233,997 in 1880. Super- intendent of Census, Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), p. 28; and United States Census Office, Report on the Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), p. 11. See also Gunther Barth, Instant Cities: Urbanization and the Rise of San Francisco and Denver (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); John P. Young, San Francisco: A History of The Pacific Coast Metropolis (San Francisco, California: S. J. Clarke, 1911).

I 1. Cranz, Politics, p. 183. It was not that park advocates did not wish to have their views predominate in society. But there is a distinction between dominance with affection and dominance without it. Yi-Fu Tuan wrote in Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (New Haven, Con- necticut: Yale University Press, 1984) that dominance without affection creates victims and dominance with affection creates pets. The first park advocates seemed to encourage, even "train" their fellow residents to be "better" individuals. Admittedly these advocates thought that they as well as others would benefit from this change. After the 1880s, it was more common to find park advocates who feared the non-elites and who sought the imposition of a moral order.

12. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Consideration of the Justifying Value of a Public Park (Boston, Massachusetts: Tolman & White, 1881), pp. 19-20.

13. See Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 220-32, on positive environmen- talist ideology; on parks see pp. 235-42. On other types of environmental reform see Martin Melosi, Pragmatic Environmental- ist: Sanitary Engineer George E. Waring, Jr., Essays in Public Works History, Essay Number 4 (Washington, D.C.: Public Works Historical Society, 1977); Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930, ed. Martin Melosi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980); Martin Melosi, Gar- bage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and Environment, 1880-1980 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981); Judith Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Mil- waukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1982).

14. William Hammond Hall, "Appendix C: Report of the engineer upon the plan for the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco," Second Biennial Report, 1872-73, Board of Park Commissioners (hereafter SFBPC) (San Fran- cisco, California: B. F. Sterett, 1874), p. 63.

1 S. Government, expertise, and social benefit were each primary factors in the development both of urban and national parks. Compare the similarity of the urban movement with that of the park service and forest service by reading Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellow- stone: The Destruction of America's First National Park (Boston, Massachusetts: The

Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986) and Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Effi- ciency: The Progressive Conservation Move- ment 1890-1920 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 267 ff.

16. These romantic notions were not later forgot- ten. The National Parks Act of 1916 stated that it was the duty of the National Park Service to "conserve the scenery...therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." 39 Statutes at Large, 535.

17. The innovation and diffusion as well as the definition of Romanticism is complex. For some insightful examinations of the many types see Lovejoy, Essays, pp. 99-253; Wil- liam Thomas Jones, The Romantic Syndrome: Toward a New Method in Cultural Anthro- pology and History of Ideas (The Hague, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961).

18. As Barbara Novak put it in Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875 (New York: Oxford University Press,1980), p. 17, "The unity of nature be- spoke the unity of God. The unity of man with nature assumed an optimistic attitude toward human perfectibility. Nature, God, and Man composed an infinitely mutable Trinity within this para-religion."

19. See Andrew Jackson Downing, "The Philoso- phy of Rural Taste," in Rural Essays (New York: Leavitt and Allen, 1857), pp. 102-103. Downing was an influential American who died in 1852. For more on his life see the Schuyler reference below; Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964) on the pastoral landscape's mediation of technology and nature; Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (New York: Archon Books, 1967) on aesthetics; Yi-Fu Tuan, Man and Nature, Resource Paper Number 10 (Wash- ington, D.C.: Association of American Geog- raphers, Commission on College Geography, 1971), pp. 24-26, 34-38, on the relationship of wilderness, garden, and city; Frederick Law Olmsted, Creating Central Park, 1857-1861, ed. Charles Beveridge and David Schuyler, vol. 3 of The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, 1983), pp. 119-130, on "The Beau- tiful," passim on "The Picturesque"; and David Schuyler, "The Washington Park and Downing's Legacy to Public Landscape Design," in Prophet with Honor: The Career of Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1 832 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989), pp. 291-311.

Park advocates were not alone in their belief in the moral superiority of rural life. See Morton White and Lucia White, The Intellec- tual Versus the City from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright (Cambridge, Massachu- setts: Harvard University Press and MIT Press, 1962), especially pp. 21-74; Peter J. Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

20. Schuyler, New Urhan Landscape, pp. 24-36.




21. Frank Soule, Annals of San Francisco (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1854), p. 89.

22. According to San Francisco Board of Super- visors (hereafter SFBS), Municipal Reports (San Francisco, California: Board of Supervi- sors, 1862), p. 262, these squares ranged in size from 1.38 to 17.09 acres.

23. Young, San Francisco, p. 410. 24. Daily Evening Bulletin, 16 April 1856; See

also SFBS, Municipal Reports (1864), p. 170; Dobkin, "Great Sand Park," p. 45.

25. Young, San Francisco, p. 262. 26. "Woodward's Gardens, San Francisco,

Cal.," The California Horticulturist and Floral Magazine 1 (November 1870): 9.

27. Young, San Francisco, p. 410. 28. Graff, Central Park, p. 111. 29. Young, San Francisco; Barth, Instant Cities;

William Issel and Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco, 1 865-1 932: Politics, Power and Urban Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

30. Young, San Francisco, p. 449. At the time "recreation" referred to any pleasant occu- pation, pastime, or amusement. It had not yet become the equivalent of athletics and vigorous outdoor activity that it would by the 1920s. For more on this transformation see T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981); Hardy, How Boston Played; and Donald J. Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983).

31. Daily Evening Bulletin, 4 August 1865. 32. SFBS, Municipal Reports (1866), p. 395. 33. "A Great Public Park Wanted in San Francisco,"

Daily Alta California, 18 November 1865. 34. Daily Morning Call, 22 December 1865. 35. SFBS, Municipal Reports (1866), p. 395. 36. For a discussion of Olmsted's Yosemite

work see Frederick Law Olmsted, "Prelimi- nary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove," in California Frontier, 1863-65, pp. 488-516; and Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, 1973), pp. 271-90.

37. Olmsted, Vaux & Co., Preliminary Report in Regard to a Plan of Public Pleasure Grounds for the City of San Francisco (New York: Wm. C. Bryant Co., 1866), p. 24; Olmsted, Califor- nia Frontier, 1863-65, pp. 518-45.

38. Roper, FLO, pp. 291-302. 39. William Hammond Hall, "Chapter III: The

Site Location Controversy," in "The Story of A City Park" (Unpublished manuscript, William Hammond Hall Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, n.d.).

40. SFBS, Municipal Reports (1865), pp. 190- 200; Richard Gibson, "Golden Gate Park," Overland Monthly 37 (March 1901): 735-47.

41. An example of this controversy ran in the 29 January 1868 Daily Evening Bulletin, under "Violation of Pledges," charging that the Democratic supervisors were selling out the people's park to private interests. For the details of the final settlement see SFBS, Municipal Reports (1870), pp. 605-610; Chapter DXXXVIII in The Statutes of Cali- fornia Passed at the Eighteenth Session of

the Legislature, 1869-70 (Sacramento, Cali- fornia: D. W. Gelwicks, 1870), pp. 802- 804; Anonymous, "Reminiscences of Golden Gate Park, An Interview with the First Engineer and Superintendent" (Unpub- lished manuscript, Hall papers, n.d.), pp. 3-6.

42. For comparison, according to Schuyler, New Urban Landscape, p. 77, New York City's Cen- tral Park was approximately 843 acres and was begun in 1858. According to Clay Lancaster, Prospect Park Handbook (New York: Green- sward Foundation, 1988), p. 30, Brooklyn's Prospect Park was 526 acres and was begun in 1866. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed both of these urban parks.

43. Quoted in William Hammond Hall, "Chapter X: Early Use of Golden Gate Park," in "The Story of a City Park" (Unpublished manuscript, Hall papers, n.d.), p. 2.

44. The approximate population of San Francisco was 150,000 at the time. United States Super- intendent of Census, Ninth Census, Volume I, The Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Print- ing Office, 1872), p. 14. The visitor figures come from SFBPC, Third Biennial Report (San Francisco, California: Edward Bosqui and Co., 1875), pp. 13-14.

The appeal of Golden Gate Park was widespread but not as great as the appeal of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, where there was a greater population outside the city from which to draw. In its first full year, 1868, Prospect Park attracted 2,136,342 visitors. Brooklyn Board of Park Commissioners, An- nual Report for 1868 (Brooklyn, New York: Board of Park Commissioners, 1869), p. 303.

45. Hall to Edward Pennington, Bookseller, 16 August 1871 (Hall papers), p. 1; Hall to D. Van Nostrand, Publisher, Importer and Bookseller, 29 November 1871 (Hall papers). The latter letter refers to a letter mailed to the bookseller "several months" earlier asking for prices and discounts. There is no record of this earlier letter.

46. Hall to Olmsted, 22 August 1871 (Hall papers), pp. 1-3.

47. Olmsted to Hall, 5 October 1871 (Hall papers). The text of this portion of the letter from Olmsted to Hall, pp. 2-3, was:

Much the most valuable work for you will be Alphand's Les Promenades de Paris; Rothschild edition, Paris... Much has been compiled and condensed from it in Mr. Robinson's Parks & Prom- enades of Paris, published two years ago in London. A very valuable work. Sir Uvedale Price On the Picturesque Repton's Landscape Gardening Loudons (sic) Encyclopedia of Gardening; " Cottage Gardener; " Horticultural Magazines (serial) " Arboretum Britannicum. (8 vols) Sir Henry Steuart's Planters Guide; John Arthur Hughes' Garden Architecture; Smith's Landscape Gardening. Kemp's How to Lay Out a Garden. As to general principles and spirit of design all of Ruskin's works are helpful.

48. He wrote directly to a book publisher in New York for nearly every book on Olmsted's list: Hall to Van Nostrand, 29 November 1871 (Hall papers).

49. William Hammond Hall, "Chapter 2," in "The Romance of a Woodland Park" (Unpublished manuscript, Hall papers), p. 8. Clary, Golden Gate Park, The Early Years, p. 21.

50. Hall, "Appendix C," pp. 61-84. S. Hall, "Romance," chapter 3, p. 1. S2. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years:

The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Dobkin, "Great Sand Park," pp. 27-30; Leavitt, Healthiest City; Schuyler, New Urban Landscape.

53. SFBS, Municipal Reports (1867), p. 266. S4. SFBPC, Second Biennial Report, p. 63. S5. "Cars for the Park," Daily Evening Bulle-

tin, 25 January 1873. 56. Olmsted, Vaux & Co., Preliminary Report,

pp. 9-10. 57. "Great Public Park Wanted," Daily Alta

California, 18 November 1865. S8. Rusticus in Urbe, "Letter." S9. P. J. Sullivan, Homes for All (San Fran-

cisco, California: P. J. Sullivan, 1880), p. 1. 60. Rusticus in Urbe, "Letter." 61. SFBPC, Second Biennial Report, p. 3. 62. SFBPC, First Biennial Report (San Fran-

cisco, California: Francis and Valentine, 1873), pp. 63-64. Olmsted was also deeply concerned that parks be an institutional success in the promotion of democracy. See Charles E. Beveridge, "Introduction," in Olmsted, Creating Central Park, pp. 6-10.

63. Rusticus in Urbe, "Letter." 64. Geoffrey Blodgett, "Frederick Law Olmsted:

Landscape Architecture as Conservative Re- form," The Journal of American History 62 (March 1976): 869-89. Blodgett has characterized this attitude as a form of conservative reform in which the non-elite were encour- aged by the natural setting to become similar to the more "culturally advanced" elite who supported parks.

6S. "The Park and Moral Reform" (1875), clipping in "Newspaper Scrapbook" (Hall papers), p. 6.

66. "The Park and Moral Reform." 67. For example, according to the unknown

writer of an article about Golden Gate Park in the Daily Evening Bulletin for 25 January 1873:

The steady improvement of the Park, and the furnishing of easy and economical means of reaching that resort and the ocean side, will largely further the prosperity of the city, while their sanitary and moral influence can hardly be overrated. We need something near at home that will tempt our hard-working population to break off in the daytime and seek a bit of nature.

Golden Gate Park 13



san francisco's golden gate park and the search for a good society, 1865-80

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