Grand View Park
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Grand View Park is a small, elevated park in the Inner Sunset District, San Francisco, California. It is surrounded by 14th and 15th Avenues, as well as Noriega Street.
Despite its small size of 4,500 m² (1.1 acres), about the size of a city block, the park is important geologically and botanically. It is also worth visiting because of the stupendous views it offers over downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Park, to the Pacific Ocean, the Marin headlands, and across to the Sutro Tower.
The park covers the peak of a hill that rises to about 820 feet (250 m) above sea level. It is an outcrop of Franciscan rock, the chert on which the city of San Francisco is founded, covered with a thin layer of sand. It provides one of the last remaining habitats within the city for a number of native plants, including the endangered Franciscan wallflower and dune tansy, and also bush lupin, beach strawberry, bush monkey flower, and coyote bush. The hill is topped with Monterey cypress trees, though these are now seen as damaging to the plant community.
Because of the fragility of the environment, visitors to the park are asked to keep to paths. An active restoration program is under way, led by the California Native Plant Society and the city of San Francisco's Recreation and Parks department.
Some residents of the Inner Sunset refer to Grand View Park as Turtle Hill.
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