Marin Headlands
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Marin Headlands refers to the area just north of San Francisco, California across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. Much of the area is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The headlands afford spectacular views of The City and, as such, is a very popular tourist attraction. One of the most common photographs of San Francisco is the view of The City from the headlands with the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge just reaching out of the fog. On clear days, the site affords a panoramic view of this entire region of the bay including:
- The Farallon Islands
- The Golden Gate Bridge
- Alcatraz Island
- Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill
- The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
- The Point Bonita Lighthouse
- Oakland, California
- Berkeley, California
The steep hills sometimes create their own clouds when they push moist, warm Pacific Ocean breezes into higher, colder air, causing condensation.
The centerpoint of the Marin Headlands skyline is the 920' Hawk Hill, the lookout point for the largest known flight of diurnal raptors in the Pacific states. Each autumn, from August into December, tens of thousands of hawks, kites, falcons, eagles, vultures, osprey, and harriers are funnelled by the peninsular shape of Marin County (no lift available to the hawks over water) into the headlands. Volunteers with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (www.ggro.org) count and track this fall migration using bird-banding and radiotracking techniques, all in cooperation with the National Park Service.
The Marin Headlands is a location of previous Nike Missile silos. The Marine Mammal Center has its headquarter location in the Marin Headlands and, in fact, utilizes a portion of some of the abandoned Nike installations.
