Battery Townsley — Why We Climb

Before you leave the car, let me talk you into a walk — because this one's worth it. From this parking lot, a trail climbs up the ridge, about half a mile, to a place most people drive right past without ever knowing it's there: Battery Townsley. And it's one of the most jaw-dropping pieces of history on the whole California coast.

Here's the short version, so you know what you're walking toward. In World War Two, this was San Francisco's most powerful — and most secret — coastal fortress. Buried into the hillside up there are two massive concrete bunkers that once held a pair of the biggest guns the Army ever put on this coast: sixteen-inch naval cannons, the same kind that armed battleships. Each one was sixty-eight feet long, weighed a hundred and twenty tons, and could hurl a two-thousand-pound armor-piercing shell twenty-five miles out to sea — far enough to hit an enemy battleship before it ever got close to the Gate.

The original guns were scrapped after the war, but here's the payoff: the park hauled in a real sixteen-inch gun off the battleship USS Missouri and set it up there, so you can stand next to the actual monster and feel how impossibly big it is. And the whole way up and back, you've got sweeping views over Rodeo Beach and the open Pacific. It's a bit of a climb — give yourself a good forty-five minutes round trip — but it's the best-kept secret in these hills. Lock the car and let's head up; Boone's got the whole story for the walk.