Lyon Street Steps

This guide to the Lyon Street Steps in San Francisco traces a small kink in the old Presidio's boundary wall back to Juana Briones, a woman born around 1802 who left a violent marriage with a bishop and the mayor's backing and built her own adobe home on this hillside, holding the land title in her own name. It follows how her claim survived as American officials swept away other Spanish and Mexican land grants, and as an army post grew up around her property line. Pause partway up the steps to pick out the notch in the wall below.