Crissy Field is a public recreation area on the northern shore of the San Francisco Peninsula in California, United States, located just east of the

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Pen ...

. It includes restored tidal marsh and beaches. Crissy Field is a former United States Army airfield which is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Historically part of the

Presidio of San Francisco The Presidio of San Francisco (originally, El Presidio Real de San Francisco or The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis) is a park and former U.S. Army post on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, and is part o ...

, Crissy Field closed as an airfield after 1974. Under Army control, the site was affected by dumping of hazardous materials. The National Park Service took control of the area in 1994 and, together with the

Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Founded in 1981, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is a nonprofit cooperating association that supports park stewardship and conservation in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area—the most visited national park in the U.S. Recogn ...

, worked to restore the site until 2001, when the Crissy Field Center was opened to the public. While most buildings have been preserved as they were in the 1920s, some have been transformed into offices, retail space, and residences.

History

The land Crissy Field resides on is an ancient salt marsh and estuary. Prior to European settlement, the Ohlone people used the area for harvesting

shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...

and fish. They also lived in seasonal camps in the area, leaving behind shell

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

s in the archaeological record. The Spanish arrived in 1776 and called the area El Presidio. They began to use the area for livestock grazing and agriculture. The marsh site was filled in during the 1870s. This alteration was finished in time for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition nearby. The U.S. Army took control of the Presidio in 1846, using the tidal wetland as a wasteland for dumping and draining. After filling in the marshlands, the Army covered over it and created an aerodrome.

Air Service and Air Corps facility

During World War I the Army constructed numerous temporary buildings on the site of the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition at the

and linked it to Fort Mason with a rail spur. In July 1918 Congress passed Public Law 189 to establish eight "air coast defense stations" and appropriated $1.5 million for the construction of one of them at the Presidio, to protect

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...

. In June 1919 the Army assigned Colonel Henry H. Arnold of the Air Service as Air Officer, Western Department, and directed him to convene a board of four officers to select the site. The board chose the former exposition site as much for its sheltered beach to protect seaplane operations as the fact that the infield of its racetrack was already in use as an aviation field. Although the wartime appropriations were reduced by the end of the war, demolition of buildings posing a landing hazard began in the fall of 1919. The east–west clay and sand landing field was kidney-shaped with the outline of the racetrack still visible. The western end of the field featured hangars, workshops and a garage for the army. To the immediate east along the southern edge was the guardhouse in Classical/ Mediterranean Revival Style architecture, the administrative building in

American Craftsman American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. Its ...

/Mediterranean Revival, and a two-story enlisted

barracks Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...

Mission Revival Style The Mission Revival style was part of an architectural movement, beginning in the late 19th century, for the revival and reinterpretation of American colonial styles. Mission Revival drew inspiration from the late 18th and early 19th century ...

. The bluff overlooking the field had the row of officer's quarters. Arnold led the effort to name the facility "Crissy Field" in memory of Major Dana H. Crissy, the base commander of Mather Field, California. Crissy and his observer died on 8 October 1919 in the crash of their de Havilland DH-4B while attempting a landing at Salt Lake City, Utah, during a 61-airplane "transcontinental reliability and endurance test" conducted by the Air Service from the Presidio's field and Roosevelt Field, New York.Maurer Maurer, "Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939", United States Air Force Historical Research Center, Office of Air Force History, Washington, D.C., 1987, , page 31. Construction proceeded throughout 1920, including a seaplane ramp adjacent to the

Coast Guard Station This article contains a list of United States Coast Guard stations in the United States within the United States Coast Guard's Organization of the United States Coast Guard#Regional responsibilities, nine districts. There are currently many st ...

on the grounds, and the Army accepted the facility on June 24, 1921, as a sub-post of the Presidio. The first unit assigned to the field, the 91st Observation Squadron, arrived from Mather in August, and the first commanding officer, Major

George H. Brett George Howard Brett (born May 15, 1953) is an American former professional baseball player who played all of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a third baseman for the Kansas City Royals. Brett's 3,154 career hits are second-mo ...

, in October. In the early years, Crissy Field involved mainly the viewing of artillery fire, aerial photography, liaison flights for headquarter personnel, special civilian missions such as publicity flights and

search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

s, and a support field for U.S. Air Mail. The first Western aerial forest fire patrols took place from Crissy Field. Beech Bonanza Takeoff (5517383917)

The first successful dawn-to-dusk transcontinental flight across the United States ended at Crissy Field in June 1924. That same year, the army's first aerial circumnavigation of the world stopped at Crissy Field, and Lowell H. Smith, who was stationed at the field, led the flyers upon their return. In 1925, two Navy flying boats led by Commander John Rodgers took off from Crissy Field, marking the first attempt to fly from the continental United States to Hawaii. The flight was expected to take 26-hours, but it took twelve days when the

PN-9 The Naval Aircraft Factory PN was a series of open cockpit American flying boats of the 1920s and 1930s. A development of the Felixstowe F5L flying boat of the First World War, variants of the PN were built for the United States Navy by Douglas, ...

ran out of fuel short of land, and crew and aircraft had to be rescued at sea. Two years later Air Corps Lieutenants Lester Maitland and Albert Hegenberger flew non-stop to Hawaii in the '' Bird of Paradise'', a specially modified transport plane, after staging at Crissy Field. Originally, Crissy Field was considered ideal for air operations. However, wind and fog often made for poor flying conditions, construction of the

threatened to make local flights more difficult, and the runway was too short for more heavily loaded aircraft. The Army also considered Crissy Field vulnerable to possible enemy ship attacks due to its location on the water's edge of the San Francisco Bay. In 1936, Hamilton Field opened in

Marin County Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...

, and while Crissy Field ceased to be a first-line air base, air operations continued until the 1970s.

After the air corps and closure

When the air corps left, the administration building served as the headquarters for the 30th Infantry Regiment, and the landing field was used as an assembly area for troop mobilization. During World War II, temporary wooden barracks and classrooms were built on site for the army's

Military Intelligence Service Language School The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other f ...

. Nisei soldiers were also trained as battlefield interpreters, as well. After World War II a paved runway replaced the grass landing field and the Sixth Army Flight Detachment used Crissy Field for light utility and passenger planes, and helicopter operations. During the Vietnam war the Army used Crissy Field for liaison flights and MedEvac flights to transport wounded Vietnam soldiers from Travis Air Force Base to the Presidio's Letterman Army Hospital, a trip by ambulance on surface roads would take too long and possibly be delayed by traffic into San Francisco. At the end of the Vietnam war in 1974 the Army closed Crissy Field to airplanes, though helicopter operations continued for several years. As part of a national reduction in the number of functioning military bases, the Army decommissioned the Presidio in 1994, leaving Crissy Field “a jumble of asphalt and forsaken buildings” in the hands of the National Park Service."

National Park Service

In 1994 the National Park Service (NPS) took over the Presidio, and Crissy Field was declared a "derelict concrete wasteland" by NPS. Due to environmental concerns about the former airfield, NPS and the

Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

used funds to monitor the area's chemical, biological and physical variables. NPS eventually worked with the

to revitalize the area and the Crissy Field Center was opened to the public in 2001.

Restoration

San Francisco landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates was in charge of restoration of Crissy Field. The principal landscape architects were George Hargreaves and Mary Margaret Jones. Hargreaves and Jones advocated an "ecological approach to planning, the preservation and restoration of natural systems, and the notion of sustainable landscape." During the planning stages of the project, Hargreaves and Associates participated in public meetings and feedback session to interface with the local community. The largest contribution for the restoration of Crissy Field came from the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. and Harold and Mimi Haas Foundations, totaling $18 million ($13.5 million from the Haas Jr. Fund and $4.5 million from Colleen and Robert Haas), surpassing the NPS's $16 million. Pledged in 1997 this grant was the largest cash gift in National Park Service history at that time. The rest of the money came from members of the public. Some 2,400 people made donations towards the $34.4 million raised for Crissy Field, of which 2,200 were $100 or less. The Haas Fund granted an additional $1.5 million in 2007 and $2.5 million in 2015. Crissy Field Center

Experts handled specialized work such as the design and construction process, removal of hazardous materials, and testing and monitoring of the estuary and marsh, but those parts of the project that could be shared were delegated to the wider community of stakeholders. Approximately 3,000 volunteers, ranging from neighbors to elementary students, spent 2,400 hours planting 100,000 plants representing 73 native species. Crissy Field presented the challenge of the “restoration of a culturally significant grass military airfield” overlapping much of the same landscape as the tidal marsh, affecting “the ability to restore the marsh to the pre-military configuration, to an idealized ‘natural’ condition." In order to create the new site, 87,000 tons of hazardous materials were removed from the site itself and the tidal wetlands were redesigned to simulate the wetlands that existed before the military appropriated the site and used the area as a dump and landfill location. The site provides great views of the San Francisco bay area, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. The completed Crissy Field reopened in 2001. New and rebuilt sidewalks, boardwalks, and trails connect the field north to Fort Point, the Warming Hut (a cafe), and south to the Crissy Field Center, an environmental education center, and the Marina District.

Today

Crissy Field is now part of an urban national park, which, due to its location and scenic views, is visited by both locals and tourists.

Features

#West Bluff — the westernmost part of Crissy Field, which includes a picnic area, the Warming Hut cafe, and connector paths and trails to the

and Fort Point. #Beach and dunes — the shoreline along Crissy Field has been restored, including the creation of sand dunes which provide habitat for several native species. #Promenade and trails — The Golden Gate Promenade runs from the Crissy Field Center adjacent to the beach to the Warming Hut. This is also a section of the San Francisco Bay Trail, which runs along the coast of the

. #Newly restored tidal wetlands — The restored tidal marsh now hosts 17 fish species and 135 species of birds have been seen there. Around the tidal marsh, native vegetation has been planted and a boardwalk across the marsh has been constructed, providing views of the wildlife. #Crissy Field Center — An environmental education center for youth that provides school-year and summer programs. #Cross Country Course — Home to the USF Men's and Women's cross country teams. #Warming Hut Park Store — Shop with books, souvenirs, drinks and snacks for sale. Purchases support the Parks Conservancy and Crissy Field Center.

Mark di Suvero Sculptures

In May 2013, SFMOMA, in partnership with the National Park Service and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, displayed eight of Mark di Suvero's sculptures on Crissy Field.

References

External links

*
Crissy Field Marsh and Beach
Information on the US National Park Service's website

Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields — Crissy Army Airfield (CSY), San Francisco, Calif. {{Coord, 37.8042, -122.4597, type:airport_region:US-CA, display=title Golden Gate National Recreation Area Defunct airports in California History of San Francisco Parks in San Francisco Wetlands of the San Francisco Bay Area San Francisco Bay Area beaches Nature centers in California Beaches of San Francisco Marshes of California Presidio of San Francisco Beaches of Northern California San Francisco Bay Trail College cross country courses in the United States Cross country running courses in California Music venues in San Francisco San Francisco Dons