Discovering La Grande Tank in S.F’s McLaren Park
McLaren Park is one of San Francisco’s neglected gems — a stunning 317 acres of grassland, meadow and open space that sprawls over the southeast neighborhoods of Portola, Visitacion Valley and Crocker-Amazon.
For years, the park’s friends and neighbors have been patiently trying to get some positive attention for the park, badgering the city to include it in park bonds and explaining to residents that it’s not a danger zone (decades ago, the park was occasionally used as a dumping ground for dead cars and dead bodies).
McLaren Park is such a beautiful and underutilized space that it’s only a matter of time before it’s like any other public space in this city — overrun with sweaty joggers, camera-wielding tourists and gourmet food trucks — so take my advice and adopt the park’s blue water tower as your favorite hidden landmark right now.
Even people who are nervous about going into the park can spot it from the highway, and it’s hard to miss: a big tower that dwarfs the trees nearby and even the hill it stands on.
Litehiser, who helped to start the McLaren Park Collaborative, told me that a number of locals wanted the PUC to upgrade the tower, too — to “a more beautifully designed structure ... something really special in the southern part of town.”
“It’s an important piece of water infrastructure for the residences in that area,” said PUC spokesman Tyrone Jue.
Everyone was able to hold hands on the “arts enrichment” part of the seismic upgrade, wherein the PUC invested in upgrading the Philosopher’s Way trail.
The trail has been written up by Sunset magazine and a few fine writers in this very paper, and it may be the most popular attraction in a park that deserves a lot more love.
When the PUC was making its enrichments, it also added a bit of landscaping to the area around the water tower.