Site of Blossom Rock Navigation Trees

The trees stood some sixteen miles from the rock they marked. Captain Frederick Beechey of HMS Blossom, charting the bay in 1826 and 1827, found a rock a fathom under the surface between Alcatraz and Yerba Buena, with seven fathoms beside it so that a sounding lead gave no warning. His marks for finding it: the north end of Yerba Buena against two tall trees in the redwood wood above Rancho San Antonio. Loggers took them in the early 1850s. In 1870 Army engineers and the contractor A. W. von Schmidt blasted the rock's top away.

What the plaque says

Site of Blossom Rock Navigation Trees Until at least 1851, redwood trees on this site were used as landmarks to avoid striking the treacherous submerged Blossom Rock in San Francisco Bay west of Yerba Buena Island. Although by 1855 the original stems had been logged, today's trees are sprouts from their stumps. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 962 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the East Bay Regional Park District, August 23, 1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muir Woods National Monument — 22 mi
  A redwood canyon saved from a reservoir by a gift, and named for a man who had been there once.
• Muir Beach Overlook — 23 mi
  A cliff edge on Highway 1, and the concrete dugouts where two-man crews watched the sea after Pearl Harbor.

More markers nearby

• Joaquin Miller Home — 1.0 mi
• Rainbow Trout Species Identified — 1.8 mi
• Mills Hall — 2.2 mi
• Joaquín Moraga Adobe — 2.5 mi