Rancho Potrero de San Francisco

The area around you was once known as Potrero Nuevo, a Spanish term for new pasture. Long before the city streets were carved into these slopes, this entire landscape served as a vast, open grazing ground for cattle and horses belonging to the nearby Mission Dolores. The natural topography, surrounded by water on several sides, made it an ideal, self-contained enclosure for livestock. Today, the name remains a direct echo of those colonial days when the land was defined by herds rather than houses.