Creation of Golden Gate Park
On April 4, 1870, the state legislature passed “An Act to provide for the improvement of Public Parks in the City of San Francisco” Soon after, the newly-formed park commission advertised bonds to fund park improvements. Enough bonds were sold to finance a topographical survey of Golden Gate Park and its approach. Surveyor and engineer William Hammond Hall won the contract to survey park land, completed his report on February 15, 1871, and in August that year was appointed as engineer of the park. Initial work completed in 1871 included grading, fencing, drainage and irrigation work, and development of a park nursery. The following year, 22,000 hardy and quick-growing trees were planted, park roads were built, and visitors began to arrive by the thousands.
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Famous quotes containing the words creation, golden, gate and/or park:
“The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion—
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean.
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of shoes and floors.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his “comb” and “spare shirt,” “leathern breeches” and “gauze cap to keep off gnats,” with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)