This past spring I visited San Francisco’s iconic–but currently shuttered for renovations–Cliff House on the windy northwestern edge of the city. The version of Cliff House that I gazed upon is at least version 3.0–some historians even argue it’s the fifth Cliff House–and was built in 1909 after the previous two Cliff Houses burned down. “In its lifetime, it has boasted everything from the largest gift shop in the world to an employee roster that included Rudolf Valentino as a dance instructor,” writes Mary Germain Hountalas with Sharon Silva in the coffee table book The San Francisco Cliff House. Offering majestic ocean views and fine dining, “the Cliff House was the place to be” (10).
A long curvy pathway hugs the cliff and leads to the restaurant; thinking that my friends and I were alone that afternoon, we meandered slowly down the path, only to be rudely interrupted by a group of tourists on Segways who were, I suppose, trying to see as much of the city in as quick and easy a manner as possible.
It was a far cry from Mark Twain’s journey to what was a newly constructed Cliff House one foggy July day in 1864. (Previously he’d been living in the Lake Tahoe-Nevada region, as Terry Beers wrote about). Twain famously moved to San Francisco from 1864 to 1866, writing, among multiple publications, for The San Francisco Daily Morning Call. (And, according to Twain scholar Robert Hirst, most likely not quipping about San Francisco’s cold, foggy summers). In fact, the closest evidence we have of Twain discussing how cold San Francisco is in the summer comes from his journey to Cliff House that started at four in the morning. No Segway for Twain and his companion; his mode of transport was a horse, and he was a cranky early riser:
No, the road was not encumbered by carriages–we had it all to ourselves. I suppose the reason was, that most people do not like to enjoy themselves too much, and therefore they do not go out to the Cliff House in the cold and the fog, and the dread silence and solitude of four o’clock in the morning. They are right. The impressive solemnity of such a pleasure trip is only equalled by an excursion to Lone Mountain [cemetery] in a hearse.
From the moment we left the stable, almost, the fog was so thick we could scarcely see fifty yards behind or before, or overhead; and for a while, as we approached the Cliff House, we could not see the horse at all, and we obliged to steer by his ears, which stood up dimly out of the dense white mist that enveloped him. But for those friendly beacons, we must have been cast away and lost.
I have no opinion of a six-mile ride in the clouds; but if I ever have to take another, I want to leave the horse in the stable and go in a balloon.
The day I visited was brilliantly sunny and so warm that I had to remove my jacket–I was lucky compared to Twain. Despite my Segway near-miss, there was no trip to Lone Mountain or poor visibility that day. And there’s a paved road to Cliff House now, after many permutations of roads, trams, and trains carrying people from the city to the shore. When Twain visited, the path was rough sand dunes that were challenging to cross. Well-known showman and poet Joaquin Miller remembered how it was before the highway was built: “The road was all sand then–tossing, terrible, moving mountains of sand,” Miller recalled later. “At one place a little mountain thrown itself right in the road before us. Our horses plunged in and wallowed belly deep . . .” (327). Such would have been Twain’s journey, and he’d have missed the hustle and bustle of the new road. Journalist Robert O’Brien explains in his 1948 This is San Francisco: A Classic Portrait of the City:
The road was an instant success, taking the carriage trade away almost overnight from the old Mission highway and the San Bruno turnpike. . . . before long well-to-do San Franciscans like Financier William M. Lent, Senator George Hearst, Leland Stanford, Charlie Crocker, James Ben Ali Haggin, Bonanza Billy O’Brien, Captain Abner Barker and dozens of others were whipping their trotters up and down the Point Lobos speedway.
Twain, however, was so miserable and cold at the near-empty Cliff House that he didn’t even stay for a cup of coffee.
Harry took a cocktail at Cliff House, but I scorned such an effectual stimulus; I yearned for fire, but there was none there. . . . We were human icicles by the time we got to the Ocean House, and there was no fire there, either. . . . We could have had breakfast at the Ocean House, but we did not want it; can statues of ice feel hunger? But we adjourned to a private room and ordered red-hot coffee, and it was a sort of balm to my troubled mind to observe that the man who brought it was as cold, and as silent, and as solemn as the grave itself. . . . (49).
Ocean House was located at what’s now the grounds of Lowell High School, and came to an inglorious end in 1882: it burned down, and despite being so close to Lake Merced, there was no way to get the water from the Lake to the burning building (“Destruction of the Ocean House”). Forced to find a new spot for lunch, we settled on the Beach Chalet Brewery and Restaurant, and were overall a much cheerier party because we’d journeyed by car and highway in the sunshine.
Our table had a majestic view of Cliff House and Seal Rocks. As guide book writer Stanley Wood writes in his 1899 Over the Range to the Golden Gate: A Complete Tourist’s Guide to Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Puget Sound and the Great North-West,
The rocks are conical in shape, three in number, and vary in height from twenty to fifty feet. These rocks are the haunts of seals, and it is said that there is never a moment when scores of these curious marine mammals may not be seen basking in the rays of the sun on these rocks, or struggling among themselves for a place thereon (169).
A warmer description than Twain’s grumbles: “We could scarcely see the sportive seals out on the rocks, writing and squirming like exaggerated maggots, and there was nothing soothing in their discordant barking, to a spirit so depressed as mine was” (48). During my visit, I could only see rocks–no seals (or more accurately, as the National Parks Service points out, sea lions) that day.
I could, however, easily imagine some of the scenes that took place on the rocks in the 1860s. The festivities surrounding the Seal Rocks kicked off with an event that took place on September 28, 1865: acrobat and contortionist James Cooke strung a rope between Cliff House and Seal Rocks, successfully making it across the four-hundred-foot crossing. Others followed suit, including a Miss Millie Lavelle who “rigged up a wire cable between the two points, attached a trolley to the cable, and fixed the bit into the trolly. Then, with her teeth firmly gripping the bit, she slid along the cable, arriving without incident at her sheer rock destination” (Hountalas 26-27). A strong-jawed woman, to say the least. And perhaps my favorite, on April 6, 1884, the suspension bridge that was hanging between Cliff House and Flag Rock was overturned by some young boys looking for amusement. The tide was fortunately out, as many fell into the water. No one died, but there were plenty of broken bones (27). A year later, not to be outdone, Thomas Baldwin ascended in a hot air balloon to Golden Gate Park.
I suppose that in the end, given the sheer joy of our party and delight in poking around these Gilded Age stomping grounds, we inadvertently took Twain’s advice:
If you go to the Cliff House at any time after seven in the morning, you can not fail to enjoy it–but never start out there before daylight, under the impression you are going to have a pleasant time and come back insufferably healthier and wealthier and wiser than your betters on account of it. Because if you do you will miss your calculation, and it will keep you swearing about it right straight along for a week to get even again. (50)
And we’ll look forward to visiting after seven in the morning once again when its latest restoration is complete.
Sources
“Beach Chalet Brewery and Restaurant.” https://www.beachchalet.com/. Accessed 10 Aug. 2025.
Beers, Terry. Rewriting California, “Mark Twain’s Roughing It at Lake Tahoe,” https://rewritingcalifornia.com/mark-twain-roughing-it-at-lake-tahoe/. Accessed 29 August 2025.
Britton and Rey Lithographers. “Post Card of Holiday Crowd at the Ocean Beach and Cliff House, San Francisco, California,” Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 1909. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocean_Beach_and_Cliff_House.jpg. Accessed 29 August 2025.
“Destruction of the Ocean House.” Daily Alta California, Vol. 34, No. 11748, 21 June 1882, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18820621.2.14. Accessed 10 Aug. 2025.
Flynn, Dana. “SF’s Historic Cliff House Reopening Delayed Until 2025.” https://secretsanfrancisco.com/cliff-house-reopening-delayed-2025-sf/. Accessed 10 Aug. 2025.
LaBounty, Woody and David Gallagher. “Outside Lands Podcast: Ocean House.” Outside Lands Podcast, Episode 210, 4 February 2017. https://www.outsidelands.org/podcast/WNP210_Ocean_House. Accessed 10 Aug. 2025.
O’Brien, Robert, This is San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1994.
“San Francisco Summer Revives Famous non-Mark Twain Quote.” NBCBay Area, 1 Aug. 2025, https://www.nbcbayarea.com/video/news/local/san-francisco-summer-mark-twain-quote/3927384/. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
“Seal Rocks.” https://www.nps.gov/places/000/seal-rocks.htm. Accessed 10 Aug. 2025.
Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s San Francisco, edited by Bernard Taper, Heyday Books and Santa Clara University, 2003.
Wood, Stanley. Over the Range to the Golden Gate: A Complete Tourist’s Guide to Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Puget Sound and the Great North-West, Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, 1899.
Want to be notified when new posts are added? Subscribe to our newsletter.
