Drives.
The Cliff House Road.—Stretches westerly from the city limits, now the west end of Bush street, to the Pacific Ocean beach—originally a mere trail over shifting sand hills. It has become the broadest, hardest, smoothest and longest track in the State. If you want an idea of California horseflesh, and San Francisco turnouts, trot out this way almost any day. The track has a fine, hard surface wide enough, in places, for twenty teams abreast, and is often nearly filled from side to side with smooth-rolling or friendly racing teams, from the natty single buggy to the elegant coach, or the stately four-in-hand. A million dollars' worth of legs and wheels flash by a man in a very few hours on this fashionable drive, especially on a race-day. Along this road are one or two wayside inns, which, like the majority of California inns, are chiefly drinking-houses under another name. At the end stands the Cliff House, so named from its site, the solid top of a precipitous rocky bluff or cliff, overlooking the Seal Rocks, a few hundred feet west; then a thirty-mile horizon of the Pacific Ocean, broken only by the sharp rocky points of the Farallones low down under the western sky, visible only when fogs and mists and haze are wanting. Attached to the house are long horse sheds which shut off the wind from your horse while his driver goes in to interview Foster, mine host of the Cliff. South of the Cliff the road goes down to and out upon the Ocean House, which differs little from the popular eastern beach drives, except that it is not as wide even at the lowest of the tide, and that the ocean view thence is far more seldom diversified with sails. The beach and surf are good, however, and a brisk drive of two or three miles upon it, seldom fails to put the oxygen into the lungs—the iodine into the blood, and the exhilaration into the spirits. Some two or three miles south of the Cliff House, the road bends east, leaves the beach and starts back to the city by another way, known as the
Ocean House Road, named, like the other, from the house standing near its seaward end. Approaching the city by this route, one reaches a greater height than by the Cliff House road, and when about two miles from the city, enjoys a beautiful view of the southern and western city, the shipping, the bay, the opposite shore, the trailing cities and towns, whose houses gleam between the trees of Contra Costa and Alameda counties, with their grassy foot-hills, the whole view backed and bounded by old Mt. Diablo beyond. Returning by this road, one enters the city suburbs upon the southwest by Seventeenth, or Corbett street, passes directly by the Mission with the famous old church which named it, and pursues his way back to the centre by Market, Mission, Howard or Folsom streets. Between the Cliff House and Ocean House roads, and nearer the latter, private enterprise has recently constructed a third track, known as the Central Ocean Drive.
Bay View Road.—Drive from Market street along Third to the Long Bridge, cross that to the Potrero, keep straight on through the deep cut, over the Islais bridge, thence through South San Francisco, up a little rise, from whose summit you look down into a little valley or green bay of vegetable gardens, between which and the water stands the Bay View House, on one side of the Bay View race track. From several points as you drive out, you will readily understand why they used the phrase "Bay View" so frequently in naming localities hereabout. If you wish to return by another way, drive half a mile beyond the track, where your way runs into the older road of early times. If you have time, drive on to the brow of the hill and look down into Visitacion Valley; if not, at the acute angle where the roads become one, you turn sharply back, and after two miles of slightly uneven road, enter the city between the eastern edge of the Mission flats and the western foot of the Potrero hills.
The best time for all these drives, as already said concerning the promenades, is morning, the earlier the better. Besides the greater purity and freshness of the air, everywhere accompanying the morning hours, one then escapes the wind and dust which, on nearly every afternoon, constitute the chief drawback from the full enjoyment of outdoor pleasure during those hours.