Fort Funston

Bold, wind-swept headlands and soaring sand dunes characterize Fort Funston, an unusual stretch of shoreline that extends south from Ocean Beach. Sunset Trail, the California coast’s first wheelchair-accessible pathway, explores this unique pocket of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

For the first half of the twentieth century, the military outpost named for Frederick Funston guarded the Bay from potential assaults from air and sea. When Funston was founded in the early 1900s, it resembled a West Coast-style frontier fort, with barracks, lookouts, and plenty of wind-battered soldiers wondering why the Army always seemed to send them to the foggiest, sandiest places on earth.

By the 1930s, the defenses had grown serious. Battery Davis bristled atop the bluffs, its twin 16-inch naval guns so massive that their barrels weighed 146 tons apiece. These fortifications were meant to deter Japanese battleships and became the blueprint for coastal defenses nationwide. In World War II, the armament escalated, and in the Cold War era a Nike missile site was added-because nothing says “welcome to the beach” like a nuclear warhead buried in the dunes.

Today, the guns are gone, the missiles mothballed, and the fort is better known for its armies of dogs. If Fort Funston has a mascot, it’s a muddy Labrador. This is San Francisco’s off-leash dog haven, where canines sprint joyfully across sand flats, chase frisbees down the dunes, and plunge headlong into surf cold enough to freeze a seal. For many locals, “walking the dog” here is as iconic as riding a cable car.

Humans enjoy the fun, too. The cliffs and steady Pacific winds make Fort Funston one of the country’s premier hang-gliding launch sites. From the viewing platform near the parking lot, you can watch bright wings soar over the breakers.

There’s nature here beyond the canine circus. The bluffs support rare dune ecosystems and are a refuge for the San Francisco lessingia, a small endangered wildflower, and the threatened bank swallow, which digs its burrows into sandy cliffs. Native plants like yellow lupine and beach strawberry are slowly reclaiming areas once trampled by troops.

Fort Funston is a mash-up of history, recreation, and city life at the ocean’s edge. Where else can you walk past World War II bunkers, dodge ecstatic retrievers, watch hang-gliders loop through the fog, and still be back in the city in time for brunch?