The Presidio. You're standing in the oldest continuously operated military post on the West Coast. Two hundred and fifty years of soldiers, and it was conquered three times without anybody firing a shot.
In seventeen seventy-six — the same year a bunch of guys in Philadelphia were arguing about independence — thirty Spanish soldiers marched up this hill and planted a flag. Thirty. That was the entire garrison defending the western edge of the Spanish Empire. They built an adobe fort, said a prayer, and hoped for the best.
Then Mexico won independence from Spain in eighteen twenty-one, and the Presidio just — changed flags. No battle. No siege. Seven artillerymen were running the place at that point. Seven guys guarding the entrance to the largest natural harbor on the Pacific Coast. When the Americans showed up during the Mexican-American War in eighteen forty-six, Captain John Montgomery sailed into the bay, walked up the hill, and took it. The Mexican garrison had already left.
Th
ree empires. Zero combat. The most peacefully conquered military base in American history.
The Presidio spent the next hundred and fifty years as a working Army post, and it saw some things. During World War Two, one point six five million soldiers shipped out from San Francisco, and the last thing most of them saw before crossing the Pacific was the Golden Gate Bridge. If you're walking through
