History
Baker Beach is part of the Presidio, which was a military base from the founding of San Francisco by the Spanish in 1812 until 1997. In 1904, it was fortified with disappearing gun installations known as Battery Chamberlin, which can still be viewed today. When the Presidio was decommissioned as a U.S. Army base, it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is administered by the National Park Service.
From 1986 to 1990, the north end of Baker Beach was the original site of the Burning Man art festival. In 1990, park police allowed participants to raise the traditional large statue but not to set it on fire, since the beach enforces a limit on the size of any campfires. Subsequent Burning Man events have taken place in Black Rock Desert, Nevada.
A fatal shark attack occurred on Baker Beach on May 7, 1959 when 18-year old Albert Kogler Jr. was attacked by a great white shark while he was 15 feet deep in water. This was the only shark attack recorded on Baker Beach.
Large outcrops of serpentine cliffs occur along the Pacific coast near Baker Beach. When rising from the land surface, serpentine produces a low-calcium, high-magnesium soil that can allow for rare species of plants to develop in the vicinity. This may explain the presence of Hesperolinon congestum (the Marin Dwarf Flax, a threatened plant) in surrounding areas.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)