Panhandle (San Francisco)

The ground beneath your feet was once part of a vast, shifting expanse known as the Great Sand Bank. In the mid-nineteenth century, this entire area consisted of moving dunes that were hostile to any form of plant life. To transform these barren hills into the green space you see today, the park's first superintendent, William Hammond Hall, used this strip of land as a massive outdoor laboratory. He discovered that by planting barley to hold the sand in place, followed by sea bent grass and yellow lupin, he could stabilize the soil enough to eventually introduce trees. Every tree standing in this park today is a descendant of those early, experimental plantings that made the entire Golden Gate Park system possible.