Presidio

If you go Inn at the Presidio, 42 Moraga Ave., San Francisco; (415) 800-7356, http://www.innatthepresidio.com . Doubles from $195 a night, including breakfast and a nightly wine-and-cheese reception.

If you go Inn at the Presidio, 42 Moraga Ave., San Francisco; (415) 800-7356, http://www.innatthepresidio.com . Doubles from $195 a night, including breakfast and a nightly wine-and-cheese reception.

The Army has admitted that 10 more children have come forward claiming that they were sexually abused at a day-care center at the Presidio, raising the number of potential victims to more than 70. "The families of approximately 10 children have contacted Lettermen Army Hospital in the last couple of days," Presidio public affairs officer Bob Mahoney said Wednesday. "Arrangements have been made or are being made for them to be examined."

San Francisco - Many California hotels strive for the today-meets-yesterday look. But the newly opened Inn at the Presidio gets a historical leg up: Its Georgian Revival structure has stood since 1903, having served as officers' quarters until the Presidio was decommissioned as an Army post in 1994. Last year, the Presidio Trust, a federal agency, scraped out the building's insides, replacing them with a modern 22-room inn trying hard at charm. And succeeding, for the most part, based on my stay earlier this month.

A compromise added to a $286-million defense appropriations bill now before the U.S. Senate is increasing the possibility that some military functions could continue at San Francisco's historic Presidio even after most of it is closed and converted into a national park.

A pair of professional arborists, licensed to climb and care for trees, were perched high in the branches of a 110-foot Monterey cypress in the Presidio park of San Francisco. Secured by harnesses and a web of rock-climbing ropes used for rappelling down the trunk, they were awaiting instructions from the ground. "Could you try the limb below your right foot?" said their boss, landscape designer Peter Good. "Is there any way to get the nest to stand more vertically?" asked gallerist Cheryl Haines.

The Army plans to vacate the Presidio in September, 1994, a year earlier than originally scheduled, according to a National Park Service official. Brian O'Neill, superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, told local officials Tuesday that he learned of the new date from "pretty current" information. But the 6th Army public affairs office at the San Francisco base denied that any change in the target date has been decided.

Army doctors reported that a third child from the Presidio day-care center has chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, a Presidio official said Friday. Spokeswoman Kay Couch-Lopez confirmed the finding and said support groups have been set up for parents of children who used the center. Col. Joseph V. Rafferty, base commander, said the Army next week will send letters to several hundred parents whose children had been cared for there in 1985 and 1986.

The Pentagon on Thursday ratified a plan to close dozens of military bases around the nation, but a flank attack to save the historic Presidio in San Francisco was launched by two Northern California congresswomen. Reps. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) and Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said they will seek to block any funds for shutting down the 6th Army headquarters and Letterman Hospital during consideration of the military appropriations bill this spring.

Language that would prevent the closing of Army operations at San Francisco's Presidio is included in the $286-billion defense appropriations bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and pending in the Senate. A Pentagon commission had recommended that 86 military facilities, including the Presidio, be closed. But language in the bill passed by the House last week calls for maintaining the Army's Letterman Hospital, reserve activities and military housing units in the Presidio.

Come April, visitors will be able to stay inside the Presidio at a hotel that was once quarters for Army officers. The one-time Pershing Hall will be transformed into Inn at the Presidio , 22 rooms that come with access to a front porch and rocking chairs -- and one of the best locations in San Francisco. The new hotel at 42 Moraga Ave. is within the main post where neat red-brick buildings loaded with history form an impressive line. The main post also was the site of the original Spanish military base established in 1776.

The Franciscan manzanita — described by some as San Francisco's unicorn — thrives in a kind of botanical witness protection program. Only one specimen of the low-growing shrub exists anywhere in the wild; until recently, it was believed to be extinct, having fallen victim generations ago in this city's battle between nature and development. Today, the manzanita occupies a 7-square-foot patch of hillside in a 1,500-acre national park known as the Presidio of San Francisco.

If you’ve wondered whether Al Capone or Robert Stroud (the “Birdman”) haunt Alcatraz, an upcoming cruise-tour might let you glimpse a specter. The long-established Red and White Fleet plans to launch a “ City Lights Cruise ” next month that will depart around sunset. It will cruise along the San Francisco waterfront past Ft. Mason, the marina and the Presidio and then loop around the infamous former prison island, among other sights. It will also cross under the Golden Gate and Bay bridges.

A pair of professional arborists, licensed to climb and care for trees, were perched high in the branches of a 110-foot Monterey cypress in the Presidio park of San Francisco. Secured by harnesses and a web of rock-climbing ropes used for rappelling down the trunk, they were awaiting instructions from the ground. "Could you try the limb below your right foot?" said their boss, landscape designer Peter Good. "Is there any way to get the nest to stand more vertically?" asked gallerist Cheryl Haines.

For any San Franciscan worth his salt, the 1,491-acre wooded site known as the Presidio -- and its fate -- has been part of their lives for decades. In 2001, when the park changed hands from the U.S. Army -- under whose care it had rested for 148 years -- to the national park system, speculation and rumors about its future swirled. Would Lucasfilm transform a 23-acre part of the park into the Letterman Digital Arts Center? It did. Would high-end condos replace Army barracks? They didn't.

Gap founder Donald Fisher assembled a collection of some of the best contemporary art from the last 50 years and decided he wanted to build a museum for it in the heart of the Presidio, a historic landmark and national park. After a two-year battle with preservationists, Fisher, 80, abandoned that ambition last month.

At least 35 protesters were arrested for trespassing Saturday as about 500 people marched to the main gate of the Presidio of San Francisco, protesting U.S. aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua. Most of the arrests took place outside the 6th U.S. Army headquarters building. Army and city police were ready for the well-publicized noon demonstration. When the protesters marched to the Presidio's main gate soldiers closed the gate.

Twice a day every day for as long as anyone here remembers, the sharp reports of cannon fire have echoed through the affluent San Francisco neighborhoods overlooking the spectacular Golden Gate. As familiar as the area's plaintive foghorns, the ceremonial cannon signals reveille and retreat--the hoisting and lowering of the flag--at the Presidio of San Francisco, America's oldest continually active military base. Soon, however, federal budget cutters may silence the cannon by closing the base.

Back in 2007, Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt, told The Times that a new Walt Disney Family Museum -- dedicated to telling the story of the man, not the entertainment conglomerate -- was being planned for San Francisco's Presidio, a former U.S. military facility that has been turned into a national park. The idea was for the museum to renovate and occupy three historical buildings, including a former Army barracks. The news was casually dropped into a larger conversation about plans to build a new contemporary art museum at the Presidio, funded by Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of the Gap. Plans for the art museum have not yet gotten the green light.

Donald Fisher, the billionaire Gap Inc. founder who wants to build a museum for his contemporary art collection in San Francisco's Presidio national park, has agreed to revamp his project and move it to a less prominent site. Fisher told the Presidio Trust, the park's governing board, that he would follow a "preferred alternative" plan for developing the 1,500-acre park next to the Golden Gate Bridge. Under the revised plan, the new construction would be split into two structures, with lower roof lines and about half of the space buried underground.