This secluded San Francisco park has some of the city’s best views

As I clamored up the steep, rocky mound of dirt, I grumbled to myself about what a waste of space this was for San Francisco. This was a park? A genuine, designated city park? 

What started as a quest to visit all 37 of San Francisco’s mini parks left me plopped down in a cloud of brown dust, wondering why I had picked one of the hottest days of the year for this excursion. There wasn’t even a bench for me to rest on.

But after I’d caught my breath from the steep ascent to Lake View and Ashton Mini Park in Ingleside, the quiet drifted over me. Four residential streets dead-end into this hill, meaning there’s not much car or foot traffic nearby. As I stood up and turned a full 360, I realized I could see all the way to the Farallon Islands — and then Mount Davidson, Sutro Tower and Mount Tamalpais. On this clear day, it was one of the most beautiful views I’d encountered in San Francisco, a city with a lot of great views. 

Also known as Orizaba Rocky Outcrop, this park is exactly that — a rocky outcrop. The sandstone ridge it sits on is punctuated by craggy peaks, creating a brow of dirt, grasses and native plants. Well-trodden trails circle the summit, surrounded by vibrant blooming wildflowers or dry grasses, depending on the season. In many cities, this half acre of seemingly wild and abandoned land may not meet the designation of “park” at all. The ground could easily (OK, maybe not so easily) have been graded to make way for a mansion with an excellent panorama, but instead, it’s accessible for all San Francisco residents to enjoy.

The land was established as Lake View and Ashton Mini Park when San Francisco Recreation and Parks acquired five separate parcels in 1977 for $38,550. Establishing mini parks — typically defined as being less than 5,000 square feet in size, though that’s not always true — in underserved areas was popular at the time, an urban development tool that had been proliferating since 1968.

Until then, the mound may have been most commonly known by the nickname Pansy Hill, a reference to the wildflowers that grew there. A 1958 San Francisco Chronicle article that mourns the hill’s undocumented history said that this hill and the surrounding ones never had official names “perhaps because no one cared about the ridge during the city’s early years and no one lived there to perpetuate a name.”

It may have also been called Columbia Heights or Lakeview Ridge, and at one time, there reportedly were two water tanks on the hill. Others called it Merced Heights, now the term generally used to describe the neighborhood itself.

Anything before that is fragmented, as is much of the early history of the city’s “suburbs.” The area surrounding the mini park was part of a seasonal campsite for the Ohlone people before it was sectioned off into Mexican land grants in the early 1800s. Rancher Jose de Jesus Noe (and later mayor of Yerba Buena) sought to expand his grazing lands in the area and applied for a huge tract of land, establishing Rancho San Miguel.

Noe eventually sold off all his parcels to early homestead associations, which transformed the land into gridded blocks of homes, though most weren’t constructed until after the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Today, the mini park can often be the victim of trash and vandalism, but neighborhood stewards from the Friends of the OMI (Ocean View-Merced Heights-Ingleside) Mini Parks group help maintain local green spaces, including this one. When I spoke with Johanna Lopez Miyaki, project director of OMI, she said she almost didn’t want me to write about the mini park because she was afraid it would become popular. I shared her sentiment.

Add a bench or two, and this place might gain more popularity than I want it to. But given its location in the southwestern part of the city, I’m not that concerned. Mostly, I’m jealous of the homeowners surrounding the mound, who, most days, likely have this special spot all to themselves.