Crissy Field

Crissy Field, named for Major Dana Crissy, was approved as an Air Coast Defense Station in 1921 under Henry "Hap" Arnold's supervision. The original grassy, kidney-shaped site retained the visible outline of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition racetrack, with a cluster of structures to the east including an administration building, enlisted barracks, flagstaff, and a guardhouse. Early operations here included aerial photography, and pilots went on to identify archeological sites in remote southwestern deserts and participate in the dedication of Lassen National Park from the air. Research conducted between the World Wars contributed to the air power essential to the Allied victory in 1945.

Crissy Field, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and San Francisco's newest national park, was designed by Hargreaves Jones roughly twenty years ago on the site of the military's first Air Coast Defense Station on the Pacific coast. The park retains historical features including the Crissy Field Center and remnants of old airfield structures, the same grounds where pilots once conducted the first Western aerial forest fire patrols. Future plans call for an expanded tidal marsh adapted to three feet of sea level rise, a feature worth documenting alongside the current shoreline.

Crissy Field's 4.3-mile oceanfront promenade offers unobstructed sightlines of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, and Alcatraz, with the century-old Warming Hut Park Store on Torpedo Wharf serving as a western anchor point. The site, converted from a former U.S. Army airfield into a national park area beginning in 2001, sits just across the street from Presidio Tunnel Tops, completed in 2022. The landscape preserves four historical layers—an Ohlone tidal marsh, 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition fill, U.S. Army base, and the 1994 transfer to the National Park Service—which provide varied textures and built elements for composition.