The Lady from Shanghai

Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and... about half a mile north to south. With 13 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third most visited city park in the United States after Central Park in New York City and Lincoln Park in Chicago. In the 1860s, San Franciscans began to feel the need for a spacious public park similar to Central Park that was taking shape in New York. Golden Gate Park was carved out of unpromising sand and shore dunes that were known as the "outside lands" in an unincorporated area west of then-San Francisco's borders. Although the park was conceived under the guise of recreation, the underlying justification was to attract housing development and provide for the westward expansion of The City. The tireless field engineer William Hammond Hall prepared a survey and topographic map of the park site in 1870 and became commissioner in 1871.
more