San Francisco · Self-guided audio walk

Cables to Crooked Lanes

From the powerhouse that pulls every cable car up Nob Hill to the eight hairpin turns of Lombard Street, a walk across two of San Francisco's steepest hills.

7Stops
2.5 kmDistance
40+ minTime

Photo by Dietmar Rabich on Wikimedia Commons

This walk begins inside the working powerhouse that has pulled every cable car in San Francisco for more than a century. You watch the giant sheaves spin, then climb Mason Street to the top of Nob Hill, where the railroad barons built their mansions in the 1870s and the 1906 fire leveled nearly all of them.

Grace Cathedral rose on the Crocker family's ruined block, and its bronze doors, stone labyrinths, and Keith Haring altarpiece carry stories that span Florence, Chartres, and the AIDS crisis. Across the street, Huntington Park and the Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels mark the hilltop's second act.

The route then crosses into Russian Hill: Ina Coolbrith Park, a terraced pocket with sweeping bay views, named for California's first poet laureate; Macondray Lane, the overhung pedestrian passage that inspired Barbary Lane in Tales of the City; and finally Lombard Street's crooked block, eight hairpin turns best walked downhill.

Hear it on the street

Get the turn-by-turn audio guide in the app. The narration plays itself as you reach each stop, hands-free and offline.

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Stop by stop

The route

Interactive map of the route. The full stop list below works without it.

Local pick

Photo by User:Chmehl on Wikimedia Commons

Cable Car Museum

0:00

The working powerhouse that pulls every cable car in San Francisco. Giant sheaves spin in the basement while antique cars from the 1870s sit on display upstairs. Free, open daily, and the only place on earth where you can watch a cable car system's beating heart.

You're standing inside the Washington-Mason powerhouse, the building that has pulled every cable car in San Francisco since the system was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. Look down through the gallery windows. Those six fourteen-foot sheaves are spinning right now, pulling steel cables through channels under the street at nine and a half miles an hour. Each of the four remaining cable lines has its own five-hundred-ten-horsepower electric motor. The cables run in a figure eight around the sheaves to keep them from slipping.

Upstairs, three antique cable cars sit on the floor. Car Number 8 is the real prize. It ran on the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the very first cable car line, which opened in August 1873. Andrew Hallidie, a wire-rope manufacturer who had built aerial tramways for gold mines, invented the grip after watching horses slip and die on San Francisco's wet cobblestone grades. The Clay Street line proved the idea worked, and within a decade the city had more than a hundred miles of cable track.

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≈6 min walk to the next stop

Must see

Photo by Sam on Unsplash

Grace Cathedral

0:00

A Gothic cathedral on Nob Hill with a replica of Ghiberti's bronze doors, two walking labyrinths, and a Keith Haring altarpiece in the AIDS Interfaith Memorial Chapel. The Crocker family gave the land after their mansion burned in 1906.

You're standing at the top of Nob Hill, on ground that once held the Crocker family mansion. Charles Crocker was one of the Big Four railroad barons who built the western half of the transcontinental railroad. His house burned to the foundation in the 1906 fire, along with every other mansion on this hilltop except one. The family donated the ruined block to the Episcopal diocese, and in 1927 construction began on this cathedral. It took until 1964 to finish the last tower.

Walk up to the main entrance. Those bronze doors are exact replicas of Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise from the Florence Baptistery. They were cast in 1956 from latex molds made after the originals were hidden from the Nazis in a railway tunnel. A San Francisco philanthropist bought the replicas when the European war memorial that commissioned them ran out of money.

Inside, the floor holds two labyrinths, one indoors and one out in the courtyard. Both are copies of the medieval labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France. Then find the AIDS Interfaith Memorial Chapel in the north tower. The altarpiece is Keith Haring's last work, a bronze triptych called The Life of Christ, completed in 1990 just before he died of AIDS. His friend Yoko Ono helped bring it here.

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≈1 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by Sharon Hahn Darlin on Wikimedia Commons

Huntington Park

0:00

A quiet square atop Nob Hill on land donated by Arabella Huntington after the 1906 fire destroyed her family's mansion. The fountain in the center is a replica of the Fontana delle Tartarughe in Rome.

This park sits on the footprint of the Huntington mansion, the largest house on Nob Hill before the 1906 fire. Collis P. Huntington was another of the Big Four, and his widow Arabella gave this land to the city in 1915. For a while after the fire, the hilltop was a tent camp for people who had lost their homes.

The fountain in the center is a replica of the Fontana delle Tartarughe in Rome, donated by the Crocker family in 1955. The original turtles were stolen so often that the city eventually stopped replacing them. Around you, the buildings tell the story of what replaced the railroad barons. To the west, Grace Cathedral. To the north, the Fairmont Hotel rises above Mason Street, its Beaux-Arts façade facing California Street.

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≈3 min walk to the next stop

Free preview ends here · stops 4 to 7 continue in the app

Fairmont San Francisco

The grande dame of Nob Hill hotels, opened in 1907. Across California Street, the Mark Hopkins Hotel opened in 1926 on the site of the Mark Hopkins mansion. Both are landmarks of the hilltop's second act after the 1906 fire.

in app

Ina Coolbrith Park

A terraced pocket park on Russian Hill with steep brick staircases and sweeping views of the Bay Bridge, downtown skyline, and Alcatraz. Named for California's first poet laureate, who lived a block away until the 1906 earthquake.

in app

Macondray Lane

A narrow pedestrian lane on Russian Hill, overhung with trees and lined with gardens. Armistead Maupin used it as the model for Barbary Lane in his Tales of the City series. Wooden steps lead up from Taylor Street.

in app

Lombard Street

The famous crooked block, eight hairpin turns descending a 27 percent grade on Russian Hill. Paved in red brick and planted with hydrangeas. Walk it downhill from Hyde to Leavenworth.

in app

Good to know

Before you go

Is the Cable Car Museum worth the stop?

The Cable Car Museum is free, takes about 30 minutes, and is the only place in the world where you can watch a working cable car system from the inside. The giant sheaves in the basement pull the cables that move every car in the city. The mezzanine displays antique cable cars from the 1870s. It sits on the route between Chinatown and Nob Hill, so it costs you no detour.

Can I drive down Lombard Street?

Yes, Lombard Street's crooked block between Hyde and Leavenworth is one-way downhill for cars. The line of cars waiting to drive it can stretch for blocks on summer weekends. Walking down the flanking staircase is faster and gives you a better view of the switchbacks, the hydrangeas, and the bay. Walk it, do not drive it.

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Provenance · last verified August 18, 2026

Built from the Wayside route itself: the stops, their order, and the walk between them.

Photo by Dietmar Rabich on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by User:Chmehl on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0

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Photo by Sharon Hahn Darlin on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

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