Battery Godfrey

Battery Godfrey stands as a monument to a time when the United States feared an attack on San Francisco by foreign battleships. Completed in eighteen ninety-six, this site was the first battery in the country to be fully operational under the ambitious Endicott era defense program. Its concrete emplacements held three massive twelve-inch guns, each capable of firing a one thousand seventy-pound shell up to ten miles out to sea. These cannons were designed to match the range of the most powerful warships of the era, effectively turning this stretch of the Presidio coastline into a high-stakes defensive wall.