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San Francisco’s Cliff House began as a modest coastal resort in 1863 and was rebuilt several times over the next century. Its best-known Victorian incarnation survived the 1906 earthquake but burned the following year. An earlier explosion involving the schooner Parallel also damaged the resort—but the National Park Service says the ship carried black powder, not specifically dynamite.
A remote resort on the Pacific
The first Cliff House opened in 1863 on San Francisco’s Lands End, overlooking Seal Rocks and the Pacific. It was a modest, one-story wood-frame resort. Reaching this remote stretch of coast by horse was a long journey, so the setting helped make the Cliff House a destination in its own right. The National Park Service’s Cliff House history traces the building’s origins and successive transformations.
Adolph Sutro, the schooner Parallel and the 1887 explosion
After a period of decline, Adolph Sutro acquired the Cliff House in the 1880s. He sought to restore it as a family-oriented destination and encouraged easier access to the coast.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesIn January 1887, the schooner Parallel left the Golden Gate carrying cargo that included 42 tons of black powder. Headwinds and a strong tide hampered the vessel, and its crew abandoned it near Point Lobos. The ship grounded close to the Cliff House; after midnight on January 16, its explosives detonated, destroying the schooner and damaging the resort. The National Park Service says debris traveled more than a mile. It reports that more than 50,000 spectators came to view the damage the next morning—an historical estimate, not a verified census. The Park Service’s account of shipwrecks and coastal incidents identifies the vessel and its cargo.
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The explosion did not destroy the Cliff House. The Park Service recounts that Sutro reportedly told reporters, “So long as nobody was killed it was all right.”
Three buildings, three different fates
The Cliff House’s history is not the story of one structure surviving unchanged. Its first two buildings were wood-frame; the third used reinforced concrete and steel.
| Building | Construction and opening | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| First resort | One-story wood-frame building, opened in 1863 | Destroyed by fire on Christmas Day 1894 |
| Victorian Cliff House | Eight-story wood-frame replacement, opened in 1896 | Survived the 1906 earthquake; destroyed by fire in September 1907 |
| Third Cliff House | Reinforced-concrete-and-steel structure, opened in 1909 | Remained the third building in the site’s sequence; the National Park Service acquired the property in 1977 |
After the 1894 fire, Sutro built a far grander replacement, an eight-story Victorian resort that opened in 1896. It endured the 1906 earthquake, but that survival was temporary: a separate fire destroyed it in September 1907. Sutro had died by then.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteHis daughter, Emma Sutro Merritt, arranged for a third building, made of reinforced concrete and steel. It opened in 1909. The National Park Service later acquired the property in 1977 as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The Park Service’s history of the Cliff House’s successive buildings describes this later chapter.
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What the Cliff House survived—and what it did not
The phrase “survived the 1906 earthquake” applies to the 1896 Victorian building, not to the entire history of the site. That structure survived the earthquake, then was lost to fire in 1907. The 1887 Parallel explosion damaged the Cliff House but did not end it; the first building’s destruction came later, in the 1894 fire.
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