Presidio of San Francisco (California Historical Landmark #79)

The Presidio of San Francisco stands as a rare witness to over two centuries of shifting empires. It began in seventeen seventy-six as the northernmost military outpost of the Spanish Empire in the New World. Soldiers and their families from northern Mexico lived here in a remote, windswept adobe fort, guarding the Golden Gate under the flags of Spain, then Mexico, and finally the United States.