Hyde Street Pier: The Fleet of Gold Rush Sails and Steam

Why is it significant?

Walk out onto the creaking wooden planks of Hyde Street Pier and breathe in the salty tang of Pacific sea air mixed with tar and old cedar.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk out onto the creaking wooden planks of Hyde Street Pier and breathe in the salty tang of Pacific sea air mixed with tar and old cedar. Moored along the pier are magnificent historic vessels: look up at the three towering masts and sprawling rigging of the Balclutha, an eighteen eighty-six square-rigged Scottish iron ship that rounded Cape Horn seventeen times carrying Welsh coal and California grain.

Before the completion of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges in the late nineteen thirties, this pier was the bustling automobile ferry terminal for Highway One Hundred and One, where thousands of cars queued daily to board paddle-wheel ferries bound across the bay to Sausalito and Berkeley.

Step aboard the Eureka, an eighteen ninety wooden paddle-wheel steam ferry: her walking-beam steam engine drove fifty-foot side paddles that could transport over two thousand passengers and one hundred automobiles on a single crossing.

Stroll eastward along the waterfront promenade into the bustling sights and sounds of Fisherman's Wharf.