San Francisco - Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park is 3mi/5km long, 0.5mi/800m wide and occupies 1,017 acres/4.1sq.km. It is San Francisco's "lungs", the city itself having only one or two small parks. Before development began in 1871 this was an area of arid dunes, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that what was then the largest man-made park in the world was brought to its present appearance. The credit for this lies chiefly with one man, John McLaren, Park Commissioner for 56 years from 1887 to 1943.

Nowadays visitors to the park enjoy a grand network of footpaths and cycle tracks, more than 5,000 different kinds of plants and dozens of species of trees, several lakes, bridle-paths, a buffalo paddock, three museums, a Japanese tea garden, greenhouses,