Sunset Dunes: San Francisco’s Newest Park | SFM Ambassador Scott Benbow’s City Guide
San Francisco is defined by its natural edges: the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Bay to the north and east, and the steep hills in between. With the opening of Sunset Dunes, the city has added another defining feature to its landscape—an expansive new park that transforms a 2-mile stretch formerly known as the Great Highway into a large recreational space. Sunset Dunes rivals Golden Gate Park in scale and ambition, offering a sweeping new space where nature and city life intersect.
Written by SFM Ambassador Scott Benbow
Edited by Pavlína Marek
A Space for People
Once dominated by cars, the wide, paved roadway is now a multi-use promenade where runners, walkers, skaters, and cyclists share the space. Early mornings bring joggers pacing in the fog, while afternoons see families on bicycles, skaters gliding in long arcs, and neighbors out for a stroll. The roadway’s generous width allows for easy coexistence, creating an urban corridor dedicated entirely to movement and exercise rather than traffic.
The creation of Sunset Dunes involved some controversy. It started as a temporary highway closure during the Covid-19 pandemic. Residents of San Francisco, including me, took full advantage of the new recreation area as a way to deal with the difficulties of lockdown. But some residents in the Sunset neighborhood were concerned that removal of the highway would result in higher traffic on the smaller streets east of the coast.
A Classroom of History and Ecology
The park also reimagines how San Franciscans interact with their coastal edge. Instead of treating the dunes as an inaccessible buffer, Sunset Dunes makes them central to the city’s recreational life. Interpretive signs trace the history of the dunes, from Ohlone land management to the encroachment of city development, while habitat zones are planted with dune grasses, lupine, and buckwheat that attract butterflies and shorebirds. In an era of climate anxiety, Sunset Dunes doubles as an ecological classroom, reminding visitors that urban parks can be both playgrounds and conservation zones.
For San Francisco, a city always negotiating between growth and preservation, Sunset Dunes represents a bold experiment: reclaiming space for recreation that was once dominated by automobiles. Its controversies may linger, but the daily reality of joggers on roadway, children tumbling down sandy slopes, and neighbors gathering for sunsets across the Pacific suggests something more lasting.
In carving out its newest park, San Francisco has also carved out room to breathe—an expansive space that restores not just the landscape, but the city’s sense of possibility.
About Scott Benbow
Scott Benbow is a San Francisco Marathon Ambassador, attorney, nonprofit specialist, and passionate SFM runner. He lives in San Francisco and runs the hills of our incredibly beautiful city with us every year.
