Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is analogous to Central Park in NYC, not only because they are such centrally located parks in similarly coast bounded cities, but because of what might have been. Central Park is 843 acres and Golden Gate Park is 1017 acres.
It is impossible to imagine selling off the Golden Gate Park for residential development now but one of it’s initial functions was to earmark land for housing as San Francisco expanded west to the pacific coast.
By declaring a park (very much influenced by Central Park) the land could be reserved and random haphazard unzoned development could be avoided. Shantytowns and businesses were built and dispersed in the early days, and thanks to some excellent choices in personnel the Golden Gate Park got started on it’s current history.
In 1876 the whole crazy idea very nearly got dumped in favour of a horse racing track, supported by well known local millionaires.
There was a lot of back room dealing etc. going on, but I’ll skip over that to the part where they start planting on the sand and shore dunes that made up 75% of the land. ‘What trees should we plant?’ they asked.
They decided on a nice incendiary mix of Eucalyptus globulus (Tasmanian bluegum), pinus radiata (Monterey pine) and Cupressus macrocarpa (Monterey cypress), with some fillers. ‘How many should we plant?’ they further enquired. ‘20,000 each in the first year another 20,000 in the next year.
It’s a good thing San Francisco is so damp. They have eucalyptus bush fires, in the middle of a mid city park that… These pictures capture a series of fires in Golden Gate Park in November 2018.
All news and photo credits as due http://www.ktvu.com/news/officials-6-separate-fires-in-golden-gate-park-in-less-than-24-hours
rodgerinnewyork.com 