San Francisco

San Francisco's New Long-Awaited Tunnel Tops Park Set to Open Sunday

The park is not only intended to draw young people to nature within the city, but to also plant the seeds of exploration for bigger nature experiences in places like Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks.

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This Sunday the Presidio Trust will open its long-awaited Tunnel Tops Park, a new fourteen-acre open space featuring epic bay views, a nature-inspired children's playground, and thousands of new plantings all stretched over the top of a pair of traffic tunnels. 

The new park, connecting the historic Presidio parade ground to lower Crissy Field, owes its existence to the demise of the old Doyle Drive, which was torn down to make way for the sleek Presidio Parkway which opened in 2015. Since then, work crews have transformed the top of the parkway's twin tunnels into a sweeping park for the first time in its history. 

"When they come to the tunnel tops," said Chris Lehnertz, President of Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, "they’re just going to see the grand connection that all of this makes for park lands." 

The park's sweeping vistas span from San Francisco's skyline to the Golden Gate Bridge. Its unveiling comes on the heels of the recent opening of the Presidio's adjacent six-acre Battery Bluffs Park -- combining to revamp this swath of the city's northern edge as a public destination. 

Joe Rosato Jr.
The Presidio's new 14-acre Tunnel Tops Park opens this Sunday after nearly seven years of construction. The park is built over twin traffic tunnels of the Presidio Parkway.
Joe Rosato Jr.
A visitor walks past a bench constructed from fallen Presidio trees in the new Tunnel Tops Park opening this Sunday.

It's a dramatic transformation for the area which due to its status as a former Army base, was mostly off-limits to the public for more than a century. In contrast, the Presidio Trust hopes the new design will draw-in visitors.

"On July 17th when it opens to the public," Lehnertz said, "I think people are going to come and see the connectivity between Battery Bluff, this area and the whole waterfront." 

The newly installed landscape of the Tunnel Tops includes thousands of newly planted native plants. There are space-age looking benches crafted from fallen and removed trees from the Presidio. There's even a fire ring that will fire-up for the park's scheduled programming. 

"You’ll be able to take the bus to your campfire," observed the Presidio Trust's Chief Park Officer Michael Boland, "which I think is kind of a wonderful experience." 

For young visitors, the highlight of the park will be the new Outpost playground, which is filled with giant logs, huge boulders, swings and slides all meant to be climbed on and explored. In its prelaunch mode, the Presidio Trust has brought in student groups to test out the new facilities. 

"It’s really about challenging themselves," said Boland, "allowing young people to challenge themselves and take risks, so they fall in love with the great outdoors." 

Adjoining the playground is a new building, dubbed the Field Station, where visitors can get up close to a taxidermy owl, or pick through animal bones in the manner of an explorer. Everything is hands-on without a computer screen in sight. 

 "We’ve been very conscientious about not having screens in this space but real things," said Damien Raffa, the Senior Park Experience Specialist, "real things to experience through your senses."  

The park is not only intended to draw young people to nature within the city, but to also plant the seeds of exploration for bigger nature experiences in places like Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks. 

Lehnertz sees the power in places like Tunnel Tops Park, where people can temporarily escape into nature away from buildings and traffic, even if the traffic is directly beneath one's feet.  

"They bring a connection with yourself, they give you the opportunity to touch awe and nature," Lehnertz said of parks in general, "they connect you to history and places that are part of our shared heritage." 

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