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March 4, 2010

Urban Outings: Corona Heights and the Randall Museum

If you want the excitement of mountain climbing without the danger, ascend to the top of Corona Heights Park. At 520 feet, it's not San Francisco's highest peak. Yet nowhere in the city are the Franciscan chert rock formations more dramatic, nowhere is the soaring vista more vertiginous.

The original hill once extended from Buena Vista Park to Market Street. Its shape was determined by the Gray brothers, who owned a quarry and brick factory here. The Gray brothers, who also had quarries at Telegraph Hill and Billy Goat Hill, blasted away at Corona Heights from 1899 to 1915, cutting streets out of the rock to support their quarrying operations.

The brothers were widely hated because of their inferior work (substandard bricks used in cable car beds had to be ripped out and replaced) and because their blasting injured children and collapsed homes. In 1915, an unpaid worker shot and killed George Gray, ending the quarry operations.

The Heights
Enter the park at the corner of Roosevelt Way and Museum Way. Before you begin your climb, look up at the dazzling rock formations. Follow the path to your left past a fenced-in dog run, with exquisite views. You will ascend a combination of steps and path toward the summit. Strategically placed benches offer respite from the climb. Hawks soar overhead. The best wildflower display is in the spring, but on my early February visit, footprints-of-spring flowers already lined the steps.

As you approach the summit, the view opens even wider. Just when you are fantasizing your approach to a wilderness peak, you see an incongruous sign directing you to the Castro's rainbow flag, the dog play area and the summit. Continue to the top, where you can practice your rock scrambling skills or cross over on the path to descend on the other side.

You will come to a stairway that leads to the back of the Randall Museum. You can descend to the museum or continue on the path, completing a loop that leads you back to your starting point at Roosevelt and Museum Way. To get to the museum, just walk down Museum Way.

The museum
The Randall Museum (199 Museum Way) opened in an old city jail on Ocean Avenue in 1937, and at its current location in 1951. It was the dream of Josephine D. Randall, San Francisco's first superintendent of recreation, to create a place where city children could experience "a day in the country" and learn to love natural history, science and crafts. Today, the museum offers science exhibits, art and ceramics classes, a theater and a carpentry workshop. The museum is home to animals and birds that have been injured, born in captivity or for other reasons cannot survive in the wild.

For adults, the museum offers lectures and classes in photography, natural history and science (www.randallmuseum.org). Of special appeal is an exhibition of photographs of a coyote on Twin Peaks taken by an amateur photographer with a digital point-and-shoot camera.

The museum gardens also offer breathtaking views. A path from the back of the museum leads down to the tennis courts, children's playground and restrooms. The museum is free and open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Getting there
By Muni, take the K, L or M line to the Castro Station. Cross Market Street and walk uphill (north) on Castro to States Street. Turn left on States. You will come to the playground entrance on the right. Walk up the driveway and turn left at the trail to the Randall Museum.

Or take the No. 24 Muni bus to Castro and 14th streets. Walk uphill (west) on 14th to Roosevelt Way. Turn left, and continue to Museum Way.

By car, from Fell Street, turn south on Divisadero Street and veer onto Castro Street just past Waller Street. Turn right at 14th Street and then left onto Roosevelt Way to Museum Way.

Urban Outings are presented by Greenbelt Alliance, the Bay Area's advocate for protecting open spaces and creating vibrant places. To suggest an Urban Outing, contact Gail Todd, tour leader for S.F. City Guides and author of "Lunchtime Walks in Downtown San Francisco." To find out more about Greenbelt Alliance's work, visit growsmartbayarea.org.

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