If you want to see one of the coolest places in San Francisco, I recommend this place.
Fort Point is one of those places that not many people outside of the City know about. Probably because you can't really see it unless you look really hard. And once you're there, you have the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Fort Point was built between 1853 to 1861 by the U.S. Army to guard the entrance of San Francisco Bay. Made of brick with multiple gun ports staring out into the Pacific and into the harbor, it is one of the only forts of its kind built on the entire North American West Coast. Built with the idea of protecting the city from the British and later the Confederates (who thankfully never came), the fort saw no military action, and after the turn of the century, became a depot and training center.
When the Golden Gate Bridge was built during the 1930s, several of the engineers plans included demolishing the fort altoether, since it lay right below where the bridge would lay. But a solution was found by building an arching overpass over the fort. Thanks to that plan, the fort is still here today.
Walking around the fort is like stepping back into time. Inside, several century old naval cannons aimed out at the ocean stand behind thick, thick brick walls. The soldiers and officers quarters are also open to visitors, where you snoop around in their sparse rooms. The federal National Park Service do their job by showing that this was not a comfortable place to be stationed at. It was cold, windy, relatively isolated, and probably at times, excruciatingly boring.
If you close your eyes, you can imagine soldiers in their Civil War-era blue uniforms, marching up and down the corridors and the inner court of the fort, loading and unloading cannonballs, greasing their guns and drilling more, all at the same time with a howling wind and chill-to-the-bone air.
With the military long since gone and now a low-key tourist spot, it's probably one of the best places to get pictures of both the bridge and the City. Check it out.
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