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Friday Slide Show: The Great Highway Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

6 June 2025

On the western edge of San Francisco, the four lanes of the Great Highway have run alongside Ocean Beach for several miles since 1929. It's built on a berm that once hosted a railroad to the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, providing an elevated view of the ocean.

On the city side of the Great Highway there is a paved path that dips down to the streets of the Sunset district as it winds along the highway. We'd often bike that, skirting around the two-abreast strollers using a small dirt path on the ocean side.

You could bike on the Great Highway but we saw a lot of front wheels get trapped in the storm drains, throwing their riders. So the paved path was not only a better view but safer.

When the highway was closed for sand removal, which happened several times a year when winds blew the dunes over the roadway, you could bike on the Great Highway without dodging cars.

And it was closed to vehicles during the pandemic, too, reopening in 2021 on weekdays only. That, to many of us (your editor included), was an ideal arrangement. It has been an important corridor for traffic as well as a unique experience along the coast but on weekends everyone else could use it.

But earlier this year, it was closed after a local proposition to convert the Great Highway into a park was passed.

We visited the new park earlier this week to see what it looks like.

Ocean Beach is not the most hospitable of environments. The sun and the waves are the good parts. The fog and the wind and the sand are the brutal parts. And the undertow, which still manages to take lives each year. Waves coming in along the straight three-mile stretch of beach have to have a way to return and they do that under the waves coming in, taking the unsuspecting with them.

So as a site for open space, the beach itself was always plenty. There has never been a need or much of a desire for a park there. Golden Gate Park, after all, is at the northern end, amenable to picnics and play in a way the beach is not.

But the idea of a park apparently appealed to people who do not live in the Sunset. The eastern half of the city voted for the park that the western half, which lives there, voted down. And the fight continues in court and with a recall of the Supervisor Engardio who supported the plan over his constituents' desires.

So there are strong feelings against it. And curiosity about it. Some 3,400 people visit it daily at the moment, although we didn't see anywhere near that number.

We started at the southern entrance and walked halfway up the three mile stretch of straight roadway before coming back. We shot Raw with our Canon Rebel XTi with its 18-55mm kit lens because that's what we rely on in harsh environments.

The first thing we saw was the colorful octopus facing north (which seems the opposite direction it should face) parked next to a construction zone of some sort.

As we walked north we came across some skateboard tracks that were unused. Skateboarding has been big in the city and the kids are skilled. These looked like beginner tracks relocated from a playground that wouldn't challenge anyone after one ride.

We saw the two giraffe sculptures. The zoo is nearby but we could divine no other reason for them being on the Great Highway. No one paid them any attention.

A Jitney Elopement. Charlie Chaplin filmed on the Great Highway before it was paved but it didn't look like a park then either.

Then we came across the hammocks. Finally we saw something being used. It was a nice day, though, no fog, no wind. And then we saw a "nature study area" which featured stumps as benches on which you could sit and experience nature, apparently. There were no exhibits or signs to tell you what you might encounter.

Just before we turned around we saw a gaggle of girls surrounding a piano they had extracted from a protective case. It had been covered in canvas as well, suggesting how inhospitable an environment it has been left in. We knew it was a piano because we heard one of the girls playing it briefly before they shoved it back in.

There was an exercise pad too, drawing no interest. Presumably this is just the beginning of the "attractions" you will find if you wander up the miles of the Great Highway, although the big attraction remains crossing it from the Sunset streets to the beach.

We found our visit to the new "park" disturbing, frankly.

It isn't really a park at all. It's a highway that has been let go to seed as "exhibits" are dumped along its meridian.

What most affected us was seeing the decay encroaching on the area. The winds had already blown sand over the roadway (which makes it impassable for bikes and strollers). Even the old paved path we used to bike along seemed unkempt.

As if to emphasize the inhospitable nature of the place, the new water fountains, which cannot be used to wash the beach sand from your feet, were full of sand.

We got back in our car and drove away (surely an irony there). One thought lingered. San Franciscans deserve better than this. It's a mistake. Simple as that.

How long before the idealists who thought otherwise realize that?

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