This San Francisco park has had bison since 1891, and the herd is entirely female on purpose
You’re driving down John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park, nowhere near a ranch, a rodeo, or anything resembling the Great Plains — and there’s a bison. Not a statue, not a mural. An actual thousand-pound animal, grazing in a meadow a few blocks from the ocean.
This isn’t a recent stunt for social media. Golden Gate Park has kept bison since 1891 — years before the Golden Gate Bridge existed, decades before the San Francisco Zoo opened its gates.
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Park superintendent John McLaren brought in the first bison, a bull named Ben Harrison, from a conservationist’s ranch in Kansas. The idea was part homage to the vanishing Old West, part rescue mission — by 1889, hunting had pushed the entire species down to roughly 1,000 animals left in the country.
A female named Sarah Bernhardt joined Ben Harrison within two years, and the pair had a calf soon after. The herd first grazed near where the park’s Music Concourse sits today, then moved to its current meadow — just west of Spreckels Lake — in 1899.
By 1918, the herd had grown to 30 animals. Over the following century it was rebuilt twice, with fresh bison brought in during 1984 and again in 2011.
Here’s the part most visitors don’t know: every bison in the paddock today is female, and that’s a deliberate choice. Bulls used to live here too, and they did not handle city life well.
One tried to maul a mounted police officer. Another bolted for the Sunset District mid-escape attempt. Park staff eventually decided a calm, all-female herd beat the alternative, and stopped bringing bulls back.
That means no calves are born here anymore. The current group of 10 arrived as young animals, including five that joined in March 2020 as a gift for the park’s 150th anniversary, with support from longtime donors Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blum.
It’s one of the strangest free things to do in San Francisco, and that’s saying something in a city with a crooked street and a former prison island. A live bison cam went up in 2020 too, for anyone who’d rather check on the herd without leaving the couch.
The paddock has seen its share of chaos anyway — a streaker was once arrested for sprinting straight into it during the Bay to Breakers race. The bison, presumably, were unbothered.
Where else does a major American city let you watch bison graze on the way to a Japanese tea garden or a pair of Dutch-style windmills? The paddock sits right off JFK Drive, and there’s no ticket, timed entry, or app required. Just show up and look for the fence.
Trip tips: grab a rental car to get out here from wherever you’re staying, or lock in your hotel before the good rooms near the park are gone.
