Urban Transitions: A San Francisco History Tour
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Founded in 1866, Woodward's Gardens was San Francisco's first large amusement park.
Hayes Valley's eye sore becomes its unifying force.
An Historically African American Neighborhood changed by urban renewal.
The Midwinter Fair created the basis of Golden Gate Park's Main Attraction.
The vast area of San Francisco cemeteries included these two gems.
The PPIE of 1916 marked the rebirth of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
A remnant of the PPIE in the form of a train tunnel.
This controversial overpass ran from the Bay Bridge to Broadway.
On the corner of Mission and 13th Street is a worn plaque proclaiming the location where Woodward's Gardens once stood. Today, the site is an unassuming and blighted brick building on a dead-flat city block sitting adjacent to a freeway overpass, but 130 years ago the site held a zoo and museum on the side of a steep hill.
Woodward's Gardens is the first stop on an eight stop tour that include freeways, cemeteries, Corbusier inspired architecture, and a gargantuan world's fair. What do these disparate stops have in common? They were all sites that changed San Francisco's landscape on a massive scale sometimes rivaling the scale of the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The ride will be a moderately strenuous 3 to 4 mile ride and will be entirely on open streets, so reasonable physical condition and helmets are required.