Bayview Park is a hilltop park of more than 40 acres in the southeast corner of San Francisco. Wikipedia says the hill is known as Bayview Hill or Candlestick Hill and sits west of the former Candlestick Park site and east of Highway 101. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub called it the city’s most underrated open space and “a speakeasy of a park,” with one concealed entrance.

The walk

The Chronicle says there is no proper trailhead, just an unmarked road at the end of Key Avenue in the Bayview. The route climbs through eucalyptus, old oaks and groves of cherry trees, then loops around the top. As the trees part, the views take in downtown, the Hunters Point crane, the Cow Palace and the old Candlestick site below. Stone walls and staircases built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s remain, along with jagged rock outcrops.

A century of near misses

Wikipedia says Daniel Burnham’s 1905 plan proposed the hill as “Visitacion Park,” but the park wasn’t created until 1915. Before that, the Bay View Land Company planned luxury homes there. The Chronicle says nearby slaughterhouses ended that idea. Around 1901–02, the company sold part of the hill to the city for a “pest house” for patients with contagious diseases such as leprosy. The Chronicle says Charles Crocker, worried about his nearby development land in Visitacion Valley, put a stop to that in 1915 by donating his 17 acres of the hill. Wikipedia says the donation came from the Crocker Land Company.

The threats kept coming. The Chronicle says the southern 1.5 acres were cut away in the 1950s to supply fill for Candlestick Park’s parking lot. In a 1965 column, Chronicle sports editor Art Rosenbaum suggested leveling the entire hill to divert the ballpark’s winds. Wikipedia says that after the windy 1961 All-Star Game, city planners proposed cutting through the middle of the hill. The Chronicle says the immense cost stopped the idea. Wikipedia also notes that William Randolph Hearst had Julia Morgan design a radio transmitter building for station KYA on the hilltop in the 1930s.

Below the hill, see our Candlestick Point State Recreation Area guide. Nearby, see our McLaren Park guide.