China Beach, San Francisco

This guide to China Beach in San Francisco opens with a contradiction: a bronze plaque thanking the Chinese fishermen who once camped on this cove, beside decades in which the beach carried the name of a mayor who spent his career trying to keep those same immigrants out of California. Chinese fishing crews dominated the bay's catch by the 1880s before a wave of laws and hostility pushed them out of the trade through the 1890s. Look toward the trailhead for the monument that names the men who worked these waters first.