
The Cliff House
Clifftop landmark rebuilt three times after a dynamite-ship explosion and two fires, overlooking the Pacific.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Cliff House in San Francisco opens in the dark of January 1887, when a crew rows away from a schooner stranded on the rocks at Lands End. From there it follows the restaurant on this headland through a Christmas night in 1894, the millionaire Adolph Sutro and the castle he put up above the surf, and the proprietor James Wilkins, who was there for more of it than he would have wished. Best heard standing at the edge of the cliff, looking out toward Seal Rocks.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Lands End Lookout
Clifftop overlook above rocky shipwreck coves, with trails to sea-battered concrete bath ruins nearby.
Sutro Baths
Concrete ruins of a vast Victorian-era bathhouse with seven seawater pools, now flooded by the tide.
Point Bonita Lighthouse
Active cliffside lighthouse reached via a hand-carved tunnel and a swaying suspension bridge above the surf.
Ocean Beach
Long sandy Pacific shoreline hiding a buried nineteenth-century clipper wreck beneath its dunes.
Conservatory of Flowers
Victorian-era wood-and-glass greenhouse holding thousands of tropical plants under a soaring white dome.
Ferry Building
Beaux-Arts transit hall with a towering 1898 clock, reborn as a gourmet marketplace on the waterfront.