F I R S TP R E V872NEXTLAST

High Atop Mount Davidson
The tallest of San Francisco's 42 hills is the 938-foot Mount Davidson, near the center of the city. The peak was originally called Blue Mountain but was renamed for a San Franciscan, Professor George Davidson who surveyed it in 1862. A brilliant man, Davidson headed the U.S. Survey for eight years during the 1800s and published more than 3000 books, treatises, and reports on a wide variety of subjects. Davidson also has another mountain named for him in Nevada as well as an island in Alaska.

In 1997 the city ended a 65-year old controversy by selling a small part of Mount Davidson to an Armenian religious group who had erected this massive 103-foot cross as a monument to the Armenian war dead in 1932. BTW, California has the largest population of Armenians outside their native republic.

Fans of Dirty Harry (and really, who isn't) will also recognize the cross as the location where Clint Eastwood, as Inspector Harry Callahan, struggles with the Scorpio Killer and stabs him with a hidden switchblade.
[ MAP N-10 ]