United States Marine Hospital Cemetery Near 15th Avenue and Lake
Street, behind the Presidio Landmark Building, off the Mountain
Lake Trail GPS coordinates: 37° 47’ 20” N 122° 28’ 28” W
Presidio National Park San Francisco, California Number of
interments: As many as 600 A Marine Hospital was established on
San Francisco’s Presidio in 1875. The hospital provided health
care to maritime laborers who had come to the US from all over
the world. Shipboard medicine being what it was, many of them
arrived in San Francisco in time to die at the hospital. Records
indicate that the hospital began burying indigent sailors,
without family or funds to send their bodies home, on its
grounds in 1881. Where they were buried before that is unknown,
although the nearby City Cemetery – now the Lincoln Park Golf
Course surrounding the Palace of the Legion of Honor Fine Arts
Museum – is a possibility. In 1883, the Ladies’ Seamen’s Friends
Society purchased a plot for sailors in City Cemetery. The
monument they erected continues