Woodward's Gardens, c. 1860s

East bay hills looking from apx. Guerrero and 14th St. Woodward's Gardens is in the foreground.

The largest and most popular amusement grounds in the Mission, indeed in the entire city, was Woodward's Gardens which Robert B. Woodward opened at his four-acre former country estate in 1866. Woodward did not permit alcoholic beverages on the premises, but that rule did not stop San Franciscans from flocking to this botanical gardens-amusement park-museum-outdoor theater-and-zoo all rolled into one.

After paying their admission fee, the first thing that visitors saw was Woodward's former home, converted into the Museum of Natural Wonders, which held stuffed bears, birds, fish, fossils, and mineral specimens, including a ninety-seven-pound gold nugget from the Sierra Butte mine.

Next to the museum stood Woodward's Near Eastern-style conservatory, filled with exotic plants and flowers, and the art gallery, which displayed Victorian genre paintings and copies of old masters' works, plus sculpture like a copy of Hiram Powers' bust of California and a piece called Indian Girl at the Grave of Her Lover. Nearby, the rotary boat whirled around its circular track on the edge of a pond as the children on board laughed and screamed with delight.

Behind the pond stretched gravel paths that passed fountains, streams, small lakes, hillocks, even manmade grottos and caverns. Many of the trees and shrubs at Woodward's Gardens had been imported from Europe, and each one wore a name tag. Tame animals like ostriches, deer, and small barnyard animals wandered freely through the grounds, and nearly 100 animals filled the separate "Zoological Department" on the other side of 14th Street. Near this zoo, Woodward built an amphitheater where up to 5,000 men, women, and children watched spectacles like the Delhi fire eaters, Siberian reindeer, Japanese acrobats, dancing bears, Roman chariot races, even Major Burke and his rifle review.

--by Charles Lockwood

At Woodward's Gardens, poem by Robert Frost