by Richard Brandi originally published in The Argonaut, Vol. 14,
No. 1, Spring 2003 View of Twin Peaks looking north standing on
Mt. Davidson in 1903. The road running left to right is present
day Portola Drive. Tower Market stands near the white farmhouse
on the left. Photo: Greg Gaar Collection, San Francisco The
Sunset and Richmond districts are known for fog and sand. These
features made the land west of Twin Peaks untouchable as the
rest of San Francisco boomed in the nineteenth century. In 1880,
Adolph Sutro bought hundreds of acres west of Twin Peaks and
planted thousands of trees during the next twenty years. He
created a huge forest in the middle of San Francisco. The forest
might have been turned into rows of tightly packed houses on
rectangular street grids, with little regard for the contours of
the land, had it not been for Sutro’s long stewardship – a
stewardship marked by farms and fires – and the twenty-year
probate after his death. Today some of San Francisco’s most
desirable neighborhoods co