Welcome to the latest in The Frisc’s periodic column, Get Out Now!, in which we encourage readers to explore the city’s less heralded outdoor places. Our first installment climbed to the top of Tank Hill for a taste of city history and panoramic views. — Editors
San Francisco’s bayside waterfront has no shortage of parks. The entire northern lip of the city’s shore is green on a map — the Presidio, Crissy Field, the Marina Green, Fort Mason, and Aquatic Cove Park — before curving south along the Embarcadero, which isn’t a park but might as well be with all its benches and open space.
But for all these parks offer — ample green lawns, towering cypress trees, ambling waterfront paths, internationally celebrated vistas — none can show you San Francisco Bay as it once was. For that, you must go to Heron’s Head Park in the Bayview.
That glimpse of the past is no utopian fantasy. But that’s what makes Heron’s Head Park, next to a cement plant and a native plant nursery, and just south of a gritty recycling center, one of San Francisco’s most unassuming — and most interesting — green spaces. The first thing you’ll notice at the park is that the air smells wild. The toasted-wheat perfume of drying grasses mingles with the fresh salt marsh tang and almost tricks you into thinking you’re in Point Reyes National Seashore. (And were it not for the nearby warehouses and distant whine of trucks’ brakes, Heron’s Head could be Point Reyes.)
It smells different from the city’s other parks by design. “It’s intended to be a more natural, less ornamental, landscape,” says Carol Bach, environmental affairs manager at the Port of San Francisco, which owns the land. California native plants, like bunch grasses and ceanothus, line the park’s walkways and fill the dry land above the marsh, while pickleweed and other plants indigenous to salt marshes populate its wetland areas.
The park was repopulated with native plants because it not only serves as green space for the Bayview and wider community, but also as crucial wetland habitat for numerous species, including more than 100 varieties of indigenous and migratory birds. It was christened Heron’s Head because the spit of land jutting into the bay is shaped like the head of a great blue heron, one of the species found here.
Salt marshes that flood with the tides play a crucial role in the lives of many species and also help guard coastlines from erosion. City slickers be warned: They also can emit a pungent smell, caused by bacteria in the low-oxygen soil. (If the wind blows hard out to the bay, as it was doing on my recent visit, however, you might be spared.)
Natural time machine
Visiting Heron’s Head is like stepping back in time to when Mission Bay was an actual bay and the Financial District was a shallow marsh. San Francisco’s terra firma used to be much smaller, but since the Gold Rush, wetlands and coves were infilled, stretching the city’s borders out and out and out. In 1959, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warned that unless this approach changed, by 2020 the San Francisco Bay would be no more than a sizable river. Soon thereafter, the state passed legislation that strictly limited future infilling. Still, approximately 85% of the Bay’s historic tidal salt marshes are now gone.
Heron’s Head easily could have met the same fate. In the 1970s, the land was slated for development as the Pier 98 shipping terminal, but the project was never completed. Instead the land lay empty for decades, slowly returning to the wild. What came next was “what happens when mother nature teams up with the community,” says Brenda Cartagena, a San Francisco Recreation and Park Department youth volunteer services manager who oversees the programs and activities at Heron’s Head.
Concrete, asphalt, metal, and other debris were steadily removed, transforming the site. The 22-acre park opened in 1999 with a picnic area, bird-viewing spots, and a fishing pier. Dirt trails front the expanded and restored salt marsh, providing prime vantages for viewing Canada geese swimming with goslings, American avocets wading through the shallows, and great blue herons standing reed-still scanning for prey.
The park ends at the point of the heron’s beak, about half a mile’s walk from the parking lot. Beyond a pile of riprap, you can observe cargo ships anchored in the Bay, admire the East Bay foothills, and get pushed around by winds so gusty and cold that they recall the good old days of catching a game at Candlestick Park. It isn’t quiet, but it is peaceful, because out at Heron’s Head nature feels closer than almost anywhere else in the city.
A fine balance
The park’s biggest asset, that closeness to nature, is also its biggest challenge. It “walks a very fine balance between being a habitat and being an urban park,” Bach explains. Its wetland is by no means untouched. On Earth Day last year volunteers removed a whopping 314 pounds of trash from the park. Dogs are allowed, but only on-leash to reduce the chance that they disturb nesting birds. Despite these incursions, the Port ultimately felt that it was better to use the park to educate the public about the importance of salt marshes than to fence it off, Bach says. (Another restoration project, about a ten-minute walk to the north at Pier 94, has brought back a smaller patch of wetland, but without the amenities of Heron’s Head.)
The Heron’s Head EcoCenter — an off-the-grid building with solar panels, a living roof, rainwater catchment, and its own wastewater recycling — is ground zero for this education. Built in 2010 by the nonprofit Literacy for Environmental Justice the EcoCenter helps visitors understand the unique salt marsh ecosystem, lending binoculars, leading tours, and providing field guides to the local plants and animals. The Rec and Park Department, which now manages the building, envisions it developing into a community space, where like-minded organizations could host meetings or events.
Southeast San Francisco has a deep history of environmental activism. Residents have long fought various polluters in their backyards, and the struggle is far from over, as longtime activist Marie Harrison, recently deceased, reminded the Board of Supervisors last June. It’s easy to imagine the EcoCenter as a hub for environmental justice work. But the next wave of activism may well be pushing back against places like Heron’s Head: As the Bayview and surrounding neighborhoods gentrify, some in the community question whether parks are being built for their benefit or to make the neighborhood more attractive to newcomers. When the city decided Heron’s Head should remain open to people, not fenced off to protect the fragile habitat, it sent a message that it would be a park for all San Franciscans, no matter their neighborhood or zip code. We would be remiss not to heed their advice.
How to get to Heron’s Head Park
Heron’s Head Park is open daily from dawn to dusk and is located where Cargo Way ends at Jennings Street. On public transit, catch the 44-O’Shaughnessy, get off at Middle Point and West Point Roads, then walk a quarter-mile up Jennings. By bike, take Cargo Way for the last bit of the trip; it has a protected bike lane. Heron’s Head has a small parking lot and ample street parking is also available.
