Fort Miley Military Reservation

Point Lobos is a headland at the outer edge of the Golden Gate's south shore, in San Francisco. The U.S. Army acquired the ground in 1893 and fortified it. The post was still part of San Francisco Harbor's seacoast defense during the opening phase of American involvement in World War II. The reservation is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

It takes its name from Lieutenant Colonel John D. Miley of the U.S. Volunteers. He died in Manila, in the Philippines, in 1899, and the reservation was renamed for him the following year.

Mortars and Battery Chester

Building began in 1899 under a broader plan for defending San Francisco Bay. The first job, started on November 27 of that year, was a battery meant to hold sixteen 12-inch mortars.

Battery Chester followed near the reservation's west end, completed between 1902 and 1903. It started with two 12-inch rifled guns and later had three. From that spot they could fire on every channel leading into the Golden Gate: the south channel, the main channel and the north channel.

How Battery Chester's service ended

The Army had already marked Chester's type for retirement by 1937. Its plan was to drop 12-inch batteries once it could modernize the harbor defenses again with newer weapons. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the United States into the war before that project was done, and Chester's guns stayed on coastal defense duty until 1943. Allied victories in the Pacific that year lowered the risk of an enemy strike on San Francisco far enough that the Army ordered the guns salvaged.

Battery 243, the late arrival

Finished in 1944, Battery 243 was built for two 6-inch rapid-fire guns. They were to sit behind steel shields, not the concrete-and-earth parapets that were the traditional choice. Guns of that type still mattered so late in the war because they covered the submarine minefields outside the Golden Gate. An enemy trying to sweep those mines would have found it difficult or impossible. Battery 243's guns finally went in during 1948, after most other types of coastal artillery had already been scrapped. The National Park Service calls the battery historically significant because it belongs to one of the closing phases of traditional coastal defense.

The 1934 hospital

In 1934 most of the post's original Army buildings came down to clear the way for the Fort Miley Veterans Administration Hospital. The ordnance storehouse was the only Army building to survive, and it ended up as a National Park Service maintenance building. Around the edge of the hospital grounds sit the remains of several batteries that predate World War I.

West Fort Miley and the USS San Francisco memorial

West Fort Miley holds three gun emplacements, Battery Chester among them, and Chester's position has a view down Ocean Beach.

Out on Point Lobos stands a granite monument to those who died at Guadalcanal on November 12-13, 1942. Two original sections of the USS San Francisco, both damaged by shellfire, stand on either side of it.

Location

The reservation sits on Point Lobos, bounded by Clement Street and Lincoln Park between 40th and 48th avenues in San Francisco. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, run by the National Park Service, administers part of it.