Twin Peaks

The two summits sit about six hundred and sixty feet apart, the northern one sometimes called Eureka and the southern one Noe, both grassy domes that were open range and quarry land in the city's early decades before roads and houses crept up their flanks. The great figure-eight scenic drive that loops the top was laid out to give motorists the view, and it still delivers it, though the finest panoramas belong to whoever walks the trails to the true summits, where the view opens a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

The overlook's odd name comes from a Roaring Twenties publicity stunt. In 1927 the San Francisco Examiner set out to give the city a giant civic Christmas tree, and its crews cut a fir well over a hundred feet tall up in Mendocino County, sawed it in half so it could be hauled south, trucked it to San Francisco, and reassembled and lit it on the northern peak. The spectacle stuck in the public memory, and the overlook has been Christmas Tree Point ever since, long after the tree itself was gone.

Twin Peaks holds a special place in natural history: the Mission blue butterfly, San Francisco's only endangered butterfly, was first discovered here, on hills then counted as part of the Mission district, which is how the little insect got its name. Its caterpillars will feed on nothing but certain native lupines, so the butterfly's fate is tied entirely to those wildflowers, and when a wet winter in the late 1990s brought a fungus that killed off most of the lupine on the peaks, the local population all but vanished.

Rather than let it disappear, the city's parks staff and their partners tried something bold. They replanted lupine across the slopes and then, beginning in 2009, carefully carried adult butterflies over from a thriving colony on nearby San Bruno Mountain, releasing them to breed on the restored hillside. The reintroduction took hold, and more than a decade on the peaks again support their own small, self-sustaining population, counted each spring by biologists. It is a rare thing to watch an endangered species clawing its way back on a hilltop in the middle of a major city.

For visitors, all of this means the grassy slopes off the trail are not scenery to trample but a living habitat. Staying on the paths, and letting the lupine and its butterfly do their work, is the small price of admission to one of the most hopeful pieces of ground in San Francisco.

Because Twin Peaks stands so high and so open, it makes its own weather. The neighborhoods at its foot can be sunny while the summits are wrapped in cold, racing fog, or the reverse, with the peaks poking up into sun above a sea of low cloud. That variability is part of the drama, but it means a little planning pays off: come on a clear day if the view is your goal, and mornings, before the afternoon marine layer builds, are often the crispest.

It is almost always windier and a good ten or fifteen degrees colder up here than down the hill, so a warm layer is not optional even in summer. Bundle up, though, and the reward is one of the great free experiences in the city, a place where you can take in the entire sweep of San Francisco, watch the fog pour through the Golden Gate, and stand in real wildness a few minutes' drive from downtown.

Twin Peaks is open daily from early morning until midnight, and there is a parking lot right at the Christmas Tree Point overlook, though it fills at sunset and on clear evenings. Many visitors reach it by car up the winding Twin Peaks Boulevard, but you can also walk or bike up from the surrounding neighborhoods, and the effort is repaid the moment the city opens up below you.

Give yourself more than the overlook. Take the short, steep trail up to the actual summits for the full panorama, keep an eye out for hawks and, in season, wildflowers and the Mission blue, and stay for the shift in light as the sun drops and the city begins to glitter. It is that unusual combination, a world-class urban view and a fragment of genuine wild California on the same windy hilltop, that makes Twin Peaks worth the climb.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.