Baker Beach

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Baker Beach with the Golden Gate Bridge as its backdrop.

Baker Beach with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. 2008.

Baker Beach is a state and national public beach on the Pacific Ocean coast, on the San Francisco peninsula. It is roughly a half mile long, beginning just south of Golden Gate Point (where the Golden Gate Bridge connects to the San Francisco Peninsula), extending southward toward the Seacliff peninsula and the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Sutro Baths.

Baker Beach is part of the Presidio, which was a military base from the founding of San Francisco by the Spanish in 1776 until 1997. When the Presidio was decommissioned as a U.S. Army base, it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is administered by the National Park Service. Baker Beach is the site of one of the few existing colonies where Hesperolinon congestum, (the Marin Dwarf Flax, a threatened plant), can be found.^{[citation needed]}

Baker Beach was the original site of the Burning Man art festival. Its north end (nearest the Golden Gate Bridge) is a well-known nude beach.

A shark attack occurred on Baker Beach on May 7, 1959^[1] when 18-year old Albert Kogler Jr. was attacked by a Great White Shark while he was fifteen feet deep in water. ^[2] This was the only shark attack recorded on Baker Beach. This attack was rare, because great white sharks generally do not go into the San Francisco Bay. Most of the sharks in the San Francisco bay are bottom-dwellers, or other species that are not known to attack humans under wild conditions^[3].