Peninsula Trails. Jean Rusmore
County Park
San Bruno Mountain rises starkly from the Bay to an elevation of 1314 feet, dominating the northern Peninsula landscape, its bare, steep flanks creased by narrow ravines and a few wooded canyons. The cities of San Francisco, Brisbane, South San Francisco, Colma, and Daly City surround the mountain.
From the top of this seemingly barren mountain rising above the cities encircling it, you see the other Bay Area landmark mountains, the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco’s skyscrapers, and the ships on its great Bay.
In 1978 the mountain became San Bruno Mountain Park with the purchase by the State of California and San Mateo County of 1500 acres and the gift of 500 acres by the property owner. Later additions brought the park’s total to 2266 acres, which are managed by San Mateo County.
Guadalupe Canyon Parkway, running generally east-west across the park, leads to the park entrance. North of the parkway is a relatively level area known as the Saddle, where visitors find beautiful views and attractive picnic areas screened by Monterey cypress and sheltering low walls. A day camp nestles in the center of the Saddle and trails loop around the perimeter.
South of the parkway, trails ascend the mountain’s steep sides and a road to the summit leads to trails along its high ridges. Superb views from this mountaintop make it a fine place to take visitors for an orientation to the Bay Area, all laid out before you.
More than 11 miles of trails take the visitor over the mountain’s varied terrain: short, easy nature trails accessible for the physically limited, moderate loop hikes, and longer trips up the mountain. Although the ridges of the mountain are exposed to the prevailing winds and fog from the ocean, and buffeted by the storms of winter, the ravines in the lee of the main ridgeline are often sunny and relatively warm. After winter rains clear, the superb 360° views are worth a trip to the mountain with windbreaker, binoculars, and camera. Even in blustery weather, the hiking is good if you are prepared with proper clothing.
Considered an outlier of the Santa Cruz Mountains, San Bruno Mountain geologically is an elevated fault block composed largely of a dark gray Franciscan rock with the catchy name of graywacke (three syllables). You can see jumbled outcroppings of this rock above Guadalupe Canyon Parkway as you come up the canyon from the west.
History
Some evidence of Indian habitation has been found in Buckeye Canyon and shell mounds are known along the edge of the Bay below. A few years after the Portolá expedition discovered San Francisco Bay in 1769, Captain Fernando Rivera, the principal officer of Father Francisco Palou’s exploring party, climbed the mountain with four of his men to watch the sunrise. Humans have since greatly altered the land they saw around them, but the mountain itself remains very little changed. It is believed that the mountain was named for the patron saint of Captain Bruno Heceta, who commanded an inland party mapping the Bay and the surrounding lands.
From Spanish times the mountain was considered good pasture, and from those times until World War II cattle grazed these grassy slopes. During these war years the army set up a small camp in today’s Saddle area where they used searchlights for anti-aircraft maneuvers. The buildings are gone but some traces of its former use remain.
In one of the early grants of the Mexican regime, in 1836 Governor Luis Arguello bestowed on Jacob Lesse, a naturalized Mexican citizen, the Rancho Cañada de Guadalupe, Concepción y Rodeo Viejo. The ranch took in the whole mountain, Visitacion Valley and the old rodeo grounds near the Bay. Over the years the ranch changed hands many times as it was traded, sold and divided, until 1872 when the Visitation Land Company secured the largest holding. In 1884 H. W. Crocker acquired the company’s 3814 acres. This large holding remained for nearly a century in the Crocker Estate, until the establishment of the park.
However, in 1964 a huge development scheme had proposed slicing off the top of the mountain to fill the Bay from Hunters Point to Coyote Point, after which houses would cover the mountaintop and the Bay fill. Fortunately, the scheme did not come to fruition, although a later development plan did gain approval for some housing. The Saddle area was saved along with all the land south of the parkway up to the summit and on its southern slopes.
The Mountain’s Special Flora
The mountain, so dun-colored from a distance after its grasses dry up, is at close view colorful and lively with a great variety of plants, lichen-covered rocks, and fern-lined canyons. In spite of over a century of grazing, San Bruno Mountain is a botanical island with vegetation typical of that which once covered the San Francisco hills. A great number of native species of plants grow on the mountain— 384 have been counted, including some rare and endangered species and a few unique to this special environment. E.O. Wilson wrote in the Diversity of Life that San Bruno Mountain is one of the world’s best examples of biodiversity.
Nearly 50 varieties of grasses grow here, half of them native, including many of California’s perennial bunchgrasses. In the grasslands from February on, you can see impressive displays of wildflowers—sheets of pearly everlasting, colonies of goldfields, clumps of Johnny jump-up, slopes covered with Douglas and coast irises, and steep hillsides of brilliant, showy, scarlet, orange, and yellow Indian paintbrushes. The mountain’s most extensive and varied displays of annual flowers are found on some 150 acres of the April Brook slopes known as the Flower Garden.
Four rare butterflies, among them the endangered Mission blue, the San Francisco silverspot, and the San Bruno elfin, live and feed on the plants of San Bruno Mountain.
Habitat Conservation Plan
Long years of concern over potential effects of construction on the mountain’s flora and its rare and endangered species led to a landmark decision in 1982. Known as the Habitat Conservation Plan, it granted developers a 30-year permit to build on some of the endangered species’ habitat in return for their funding programs to enhance the species’ chances of survival on the park lands.
San Bruno Mountain, open space surrounded by urban development
This plan sets up an annual fund, the San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, which will be used to eliminate invasive gorse and eucalyptus and to seed host plants, such as lupine and violas, for food and refuge for the endangered species of butterfly.
Gorse elimination projects are ongoing; 1995 saw the beginning of eucalyptus removal. Time will tell how well these fragile native species can survive in limited space and in close contact with urban development. In the meantime, building moves right up to the boundaries of the park.
Jurisdiction: State of California and San Mateo County: 650-363-4020
Facilities: Trails for hikers, one for bicyclists and another for physically limited; picnic areas; barbecues; meadow play area; restrooms; day camp
Rules: Open 8 A.M to sunset; no dogs allowed in park; bicycles allowed on Old Guadalupe Trail and Saddle Loop Trail only
Maps: San Mateo County San Bruno Mountain Park and USGS topo San Francisco South
How to Get There: From I-280: (1) Southbound—Take Eastmoor Ave. exit and turn left on Sullivan Ave., which parallels freeway. At first street on left, turn left onto San Pedro Rd., which goes over freeway. Across Mission St, San Pedro Rd. becomes East Market St, which becomes Guadalupe Canyon Pkwy. Park entrance is on north side of parkway. (2) Northbound—Take Mission St exit. At first stop signal, turn left onto Junipero Serra Blvd., then right on San Pedro Rd. and follow directions above. From Hwy 101: Take Bayshore Blvd., turn west on Guadalupe Canyon Pkwy and go 1.5 miles to park entrance on right.
SADDLE LOOP TRAIL
Circling the northern Saddle area of the park, this is an invigorating hike when fresh breezes sweep in from the Pacific. Views stretch beyond San Francisco to its dramatic setting of Bay and mountains.
Distance: