Cliff House - Lands End Tour

An aerial view of the Cliff House from the ocean.

Part of the Sutro Historic Landscape District, today's world-famous Cliff House is the third incarnation of this iconic locale popular with native San Franciscans and tourists alike. 

As early as the 1860s, Lands End became a destination for wealthy vacationers who were able to afford the long trip by horse and stay at the Cliff House, a resort built right on the water. Despite initial popularity, the Cliff House failed to hold people's attention into the 1870s. The management introduced a new strategy: the tried and true combo of booze and gambling. The rather obvious ploy backfired, and the Cliff House sank further into disfavor.

That is until 1881, when the property was bought by self-made millionaire, philanthropist and one-day mayor of San Francisco, Adolph Sutro. Sutro reimagined the Cliff House closer to its original vision of a family-oriented place for wholesome entertainment. To help facilitate his business at the Cliff House, he bankrolled the construction of a railroad that would take people from San Francisco to Lands End, greatly increasing the number of people who could travel to the coast at a reasonable price. Everything was going smoothly until a fire burned the wood-frame Cliff House to the ground on Christmas Day, 1894.

But Sutro was a lemons-to-lemonade kind of guy, and two years later opened a new 8-story castle-inspired Cliff House, complete with art galleries, a gem exhibit, ballrooms, bars and restaurants. Tragically, in 1907, fire again destroyed the second Cliff House. By that year, Sutro had died. His daughter, Emma Sutro Merritt, devised plans to build a third, less grandiose Cliff House made of fire-proof concrete and steel, which remains to this day.