Haight Ashbury Part 1: From Sand Dunes to Painted Ladies

Welcome to our series exploring San Francisco’s rich and diverse neighborhoods. There are nearly ninety of them, each with its own story to tell. Every week, we highlight a different corner of The City, diving into its history, how it’s evolved, and the local nooks and crannies worth exploring. Our goal is to celebrate the neighborhoods that shaped this city we love - and the people and stories that continue to make it what it is today.

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series exploring the history of Haight-Ashbury - a neighborhood that’s seen it all, from sand dunes and fog to rock legends and ghost stories.

When most people think of Haight-Ashbury, they picture the Summer of Love. Music, tie-dye, revolution. But the story of this neighborhood starts much earlier, back when it was nothing more than sand, sea grass, and fog.

Like the Sunset District, the Haight was once part of what San Franciscans simply called the “Outside Lands.” It was considered uninhabitable - dunes so soft they swallowed horses, winds so fierce that even Mark Twain complained about being nearly blown off his ride to Ocean Beach. The fog was so dense he said he couldn’t see 50 feet ahead. (Karl the Fog has always had a flair for drama.)

By the late 1800s, though, the city had bigger plans. San Franciscans wanted what New Yorkers had: a Central Park of their own. In 1868, the Committee of Outside Lands set out to tame the dunes, and the result was Golden Gate Park - an oasis of green lawns, gardens, and yes, even an amusement park at one point. Picture this: waterslides and a caged lion where today we picnic and jog. (Living near the Panhandle now, I can’t imagine looking out my window to see a lion pacing by.)

With the park in place, cable cars soon followed. Visitors rode in for recreation, and before long, developers realized: if you can get to Golden Gate Park, you can get downtown, too. By 1890, taverns and stables gave way to residential streets, as wealthy San Franciscans built the ornate Victorians that still line the neighborhood today.

Buena Vista Park, the city’s oldest official park, became another anchor. After the 1906 earthquake, San Franciscans gathered on its hillside to watch fires engulf the city below. Walk it today and you’ll find more than just the view. Look closely at the trails and gutters: some are lined with repurposed Victorian headstones. When the city banned burials within its limits and cemeteries were relocated, unclaimed gravestones were reused as erosion control. A haunting detail hidden in plain sight.

And that’s just the beginning. Haight-Ashbury has layers upon layers of history. From sand dunes to hippies, headstones to Hendrix.

Next week in Part 2, we’ll fast-forward to the 1960s - the Summer of Love, the birth of psychedelic rock, and the era that transformed the Haight from a quiet residential district into a cultural revolution that changed The City, and the world, forever.