Hyde Street Pier - Where Cars Took the Ferry

Hyde Street Pier - Where Cars Took the Ferry

Photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.

Before the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, this was where cars crossed the bay. Auto ferries ran from the foot of Hyde Street to Sausalito and Berkeley until the bridges of the late 1930s put them out of business.

Today the pier belongs to San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park and is lined with historic vessels. The tall square-rigger Balclutha, built in Scotland in 1886, rounded Cape Horn carrying grain and later worked the Alaska salmon trade. The 1895 schooner C.A. Thayer hauled lumber down the Pacific coast, and the paddlewheel ferry Eureka once carried commuters across the bay. A steam tug, a scow schooner and smaller craft round out the fleet.

You can walk the pier and see the ships from outside; boarding requires a ticket, so check the park's website for current hours.

More on Wikipedia: Hyde Street Pier · Balclutha

Stops on this tour

  1. Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
  2. Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
  3. Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
  4. North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
  5. Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
  6. Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
  7. The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
  8. Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
  9. Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
  10. Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
  11. The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
  12. The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
  13. Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
  14. South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom