Cliff House Steam Railroad
Unfinished History
Adolph Sutro's Cliff House Train at Land's End
Photo: Private Collection, San Francisco, CA
Cliff House Train, May 16, 1905.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
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Video: Sutro's railroad trundling along Land's End, c. 1905
(Golden Gate without bridge in background)
El Camino del Mar at far left, looking west towards Land's End. Sutro railroad tracks abandoned after February 7, 1925 landslide.
Photo: SFDPW, courtesy Charles Ruiz collection
Land's End is one of the weirdest and most beautiful sections of San Francisco. On the hill above and east of Land's End is the Palace of the Legion of Honor, itself built upon an old potter's field (a cemetery for unnamed and unmarked bodies). The land here is notoriously shifty and unstable; landslides have been known to appear out of nowhere and bury unwary victims; rescue parties have noted that the "molten" land continues to quiver and vibrate while they search for the bodies.
Adolph Sutro built his famous Sutro Baths between Land's End and the Cliff House, and to bring patrons to it he also had a railroad built. It ran from 33rd and Clement the coast and past Land's End to the Baths.
