St. Mary's Playground

St. Mary's Playground is defined by its steeply terraced hillside, where a massive three-tier recreation area drops down toward the city. This park occupies a site with a long history: in eighteen sixty-two, Archbishop Joseph Alemany purchased sixty acres of land here from Jesus Bernal to establish St. Mary's College. The college stood on these slopes until eighteen eighty-nine, when the students and faculty departed for Oakland, citing the cold and fog as reasons to leave their remote hillside campus behind.