The hook
A silver baron built a clifftop estate above the Cliff House, filled its gardens with two hundred statues, and opened it to the public for a dime; the mansion is gone but the parapet and the lions remain.
01Why it's worth it
Adolph Sutro made a Comstock silver fortune, became mayor of San Francisco, and in 1881 bought the promontory above the old Cliff House to build Sutro Heights. He laid out an Italian garden and imported more than two hundred concrete casts of Greek and Roman statues from Belgium, then opened the grounds to anyone who would drop a dime in the box. In 1895 he added a curved sandstone parapet, 280 feet of crenellated wall running along the cliff edge over the Pacific. The family gave the estate to the city in 1938 and the WPA tore the house down the next year, so what's left is a quiet 18-acre park of overgrown garden, the parapet with its long ocean view, and a pair of stone lions still guarding the gate. Most people walk the Sutro Baths ruins below and never climb up to this, which is exactly why it stays peaceful.
02How to experience it
It's at the top of Point Lobos Avenue above the Cliff House. Free and open; walk out to the parapet for the view down Ocean Beach and across to the Seal Rocks. It pairs naturally with Lands End and the Sutro Baths ruins right below, the three making one loop of the city's wild western corner.