Panhandle (San Francisco)

Panhandle
The Panhandle from Clayton Street
Type	Municipal (San Francisco)
Location	San Francisco
Created	1870
Status	Open all year
Parking	Street parking

The Panhandle is a park in San Francisco, California, that forms a panhandle with Golden Gate Park. It is long and narrow, being three-quarters of a mile long and one block wide. Fell Street borders it to the north, Oak Street to the south, and Baker Street to the east. Only two streets run through it - Stanyan Street at the western end between it and Golden Gate Park and Masonic Avenue through the middle. Two paved walking paths run through it from Golden Gate Park to Baker Street, one allowing bicycles. There are basketball courts, a public restroom, and a playground in the section between Stanyan Street and Masonic Avenue.

The William McKinley Monument is at the foot of the park, facing the DMV across Baker Street. It was dedicated in 1904 by President Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded McKinley after his assassination in 1901.

The park forms the southern boundary of the Western Addition neighborhood and the northern boundary of the Haight-Ashbury.

An 1853 map of San Francisco labels the area that the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park presently occupy the "Great Sand Bank". In 1870, the Panhandle's footprint occupied large, shifting sand-dunes with little vegetation in between it and the Pacific Ocean known as the "Outside Lands". The large hills of sand, semi-arid conditions, and powerful winds generated by the Golden Gate effect conspired to make agriculture and gardening nearly impossible—except for in a few small valleys protected from the constant winds.

William Hammond Hall's long-term plan to create a vast recreational park in San Francisco was first implemented in The Panhandle in 1870, which became part of Hall's experimental laboratory for finding suitable vegetation for reclaiming the dunes. After much trial and error, Hall found that by first planting barley - followed months later by sea bent grass mixed with yellow lupin - the sand dunes could be stabilized enough to dump manure and top-soil without risk of wind-erosion. On top of this layer, Monterey Pines, Monterey Cypresses and Eucalyptus—all known for quick growth and shallow root structures—could take root.