I visited San Francisco for a few days back in February and one of the highlights of my trip was my visit to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, which more commonly known as the Legion of Honor (LOH). I visited SF to explore a job opportunity and my time was limited, but I did have about half a day free for sight seeing and I used that time to visit the Ocean Beach section of San Francisco, as well as the Lands End Trail and the nearby Legion of Honor. I had visited San Francisco 5 or 6 times prior to this trip, but I had never visited that part of the city previously. The LOH is located on the northwest tip of SF. The museum itself and the works of art within it are very impressive and the setting the LOH is in is spectacular.
A reader asked what the museum honors. The answer is the 3,600 men from California who died on the battlefields of France during World War I.
Here is some background from the museum’s website:
“Alma Spreckels persuaded her husband, sugar magnate Adolph B. Spreckels, to recapture the beauty of the pavilion as a new art museum for San Francisco. At the close of the 1915 exposition, the French government granted them permission to construct a permanent replica, but World War I delayed the groundbreaking for this ambitious project until 1921. Constructed on a remote site known as Land’s End—one of the most beautiful settings imaginable for any museum—the California Palace of the Legion of Honor was completed in 1924, and on Armistice Day of that year the doors opened to the public. In keeping with the wishes of the donors, to “honor the dead while serving the living,” it was accepted by the city of San Francisco as a museum of fine arts dedicated to the memory of the 3,600 California men who had lost their lives on the battlefields of France during World War I.”
This is the view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Lands End Trail.
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