April 19, 2000

Happy Birthday, Sharp Park

Last Sunday, April 16 was the 68th anniversary of the opening of the local golf course. It was April 16, 1932 that 400 golfers first made the rounds of the Bay Area's newest links. The course had been in the works for three years.

It was the clubhouse that had taken so much time to complete. There'd been unofficial rounds played for a couple of years, but it was a major cause for celebration among Bay Area golfers when San Francisco officially opened its new course on the then remote San Mateo County coast.

The whole country was in the midst of a major depression. The few residents of Brighton and Salada beaches were mostly on welfare. Soon a large part of the folks in the area with jobs were groundskeepers or doing other work associated with the new course. It's hard to imagine the importance of this new enterprise in a poverty-stricken community still scrounging a few bucks from time to time hauling in Canadian booze across the breakers.

Willie Goggin was club pro. In 1933 he played in the U.S. Open, only to come in second to Gene Sarazan, to the disappointment of thousands of local fans. No Sharp Park pro has ever done so well since. The course has had its ups and downs. Winter storms have lashed its beachside holes. Flooding periodically spoils the game for winter players. At one time the state highway ran on the west side of the clubhouse. Major changes were made in the early 1960's to accommodate the new freeway bisecting the community. It was some time in 1935 or thereabouts that the good folk of Brighton and Salada Beaches decided it was easier to call their communities Sharp Park than to be forced to explain repeatedly "I live in Salada Beach. It's just north of Sharp Park Golf Course." So the residents of the two old subdivisions combined their scant resources and became "Sharp Park." That was about thirty years after the death of 73 year old Honora Sharp, a wealthy and well-connected San Franciscan who had with her late husband spent most of her life residing in some of the best hotels in San Francisco.

Her 410 acre ranch on the Coastside was only a minor part of her holdings. It was worth less than $8000 at the time of her death. She wanted to build a gate at Golden Gate Park as a memorial to George Sharp, a lawyer and 49er. After years punctuated by greed on the part of her east coast cousins, as well as earthquake, fire and interminable court proceedings, it was decided to take the coastal ranch and use it as parkland. From her death to the rounds of golf on opening day it took 27 years, two months and eight days. Though the legend will not die, Honora Sharp never gave a golf course to the City of San Francisco. She gave the land to Adolph Spreckels and her lawyer, Reuben Lloyd. Lloyd willed his share to Samuel Murphey, a banker. It was Spreckels and Murphey who gave the property to the City. It was Murphey who made sure even crooked politicians could not build condos or shopping centers by inserting a line in his 1917 deed of gift restricting use of the land to "park and recreation purposes only."

Even Pacifica's most fervent partisans of open space rarely give a thought to this gem that bisects our city. My congratulations to course operator Joan Lantz and her late partner, Jack Gage, for their hard work and dedication to the service of Bay Area golfers and restaurant patrons. We're all better off for their 17 years of stewardship.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul Azevedo's website, http://www.thereactor.net/ Reach him by e-mail at Paul@thereactor.net