San Francisco National Cemetery

San Francisco National Cemetery is located at 1 Lincoln Boulevard, Presidio of San Francisco, California. The national cemetery has office hours from 8am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday. Visiting hours are daily from 7am to 5pm. At this time burial space is closed to new interments. Only eligible family members with existing sites are able to be buried at the San Francisco National Cemetery.

Historically, the area the cemetery is located at was once a fort for Spanish colonies. Families who traveled north from Mexico also ended up at the area building the first settlement in 1776. By 1821 the fort was no longer as important and many abandoned it. The presidio was inhabited throughout the Mexican American War, and through World War I. After World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor soldiers inhabited the area again. In the 1950s the land was used for the Nike Missile Defense program.

By 1994 much of the land was given over to the National Park Service, though the original cemetery was started in 1884. It was the old post cemetery, which became the first national cemetery on the west coast. The cemetery is enclosed with stone walls and slopes down a hill to over look Golden Gate Park.