Presidio Golf Course

The Presidio Golf Course dates to 1895, making it one of the oldest courses on the West Coast. It began when the commander of the Presidio army post permitted a group of San Francisco businessmen to lay out holes on the military reservation, on the condition that both club members and officers could play. For most of the next century it was reserved for Army personnel and members of the private Presidio Golf Club, hosting the likes of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower and champions such as Byron Nelson and Arnold Palmer, for whom a clubhouse room is named. When the Presidio transferred to the National Park Service in 1994, the course went with it, and by 1995 it opened to the public for the first time, letting anyone play its hilly, cypress- and eucalyptus-framed fairways.