Fort Point, San Francisco

Fort Point, known historically as the Castillo de San Joaquín (Spanish for "Saint Joachim's Castle") is a masonry seacoast fortification located on the southern side of the Golden Gate at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It is also the geographic name of the promontory upon which the fort and the southern approach of the Golden Gate Bridge were constructed.

The site was originally fortified by the Spanish in 1794 as a complementary defense outpost to the Presidio of San Francisco. The current structure was completed by the United States Army after the U.S. conquest of California and just before the American Civil War, to defend San Francisco Bay against hostile warships. The fort is now protected as Fort Point National Historic Site, a United States National Historic Site administered by the National Park Service as a unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now popular as a tourist viewing point of the Golden Gate Bridge directly on top of it.

Text adapted from “Fort Point National Historic Site” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fort Point, San Francisco ranks #2,360 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #49 of the 106 mapped in United States. Founded 1848, it is older than 9% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 607 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 4,266 times in the last 60 days, more than 82% of the atlas. Wikidata records about 880,000 visitors in 2020. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how United States compares in the castle statistics.

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