page_title: Golden Gate Park
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Golden Gate Park / History / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial view from the west of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
context_page_description: Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development of Golden Gate Park. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape to but 20 percent larger than Central Park in New York City, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a mile north to south. With 24 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third most-visited city park in the United States after Central Park and the Lincoln Memorial.
context_section_description: During the Great Depression, the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department ran out of public funds. Thus, the duties of the department were transferred to the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a government program designed to provide employment and community improvements during the economic woes of the 1930s. Within the park, the WPA is responsible for the creation of several features such as the Arboretum, the archery field, and the model yacht club. In addition, the WPA reconstructed 13 miles of roads throughout the park and the built the San Francisco Police Department's horse stables. Another WPA contribution, Anglers Lodge and the adjoining fly casting pools, is still in use today. It is home to the Golden Gate Angling & Casting Club (formerly known as the San Francisco Fly Casting Club). The horseshoe pits were also entirely created by WPA employees. The pits also came with two sculptures, one of a gentleman tossing a horse shoe and one of a white horse (which has since crumbled), both created by artist Jesse S. "Vet" Anderson.
  Most of the water used for landscape watering and for various water features is now provided by groundwater from the city's Westside Basin Aquifer. In the 1950s, the use of this effluent during cold weather caused some consternation, with the introduction of artificial detergents but before the advent of modern biodegradable products. These "hard" detergents would cause long-lasting billowing piles of foam to form on the creeks connecting the artificial lakes and could even be blown onto the roads, forming a traffic hazard.
  A sliver of park at the far east end of Golden Gate Park, the Panhandle, lies north of Haight-Ashbury, and it was the site of the Human Be-In of 1967, preceding the Summer of Love.
caption: Aerial view of Golden Gate Park from the west, with the Bay Bridge in the background
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