Presidio Chapter, NSDAR

San Francisco, California

Welcome

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a non-profit, non-political volunteer service organization made up of over 170,000 members with 3,000 chapters. These chapters are located in all fifty states and in many countries around the world. On October 11, 1890, eighteen women met to officially organize the NSDAR for historic, educational, and patriotic purposes. Since that day, more than one million members have been admitted into membership.

Our chapter was formed in 2009 and is located in San Francisco, California. The name Presidio was chosen for its historic significance — for San Franciscans, the Presidio evokes a feeling of pride, history, and timelessness. This magnificent 1,491-acre facility has provided our chapter’s members with ongoing activities including military and ROTC exercises and parades, colonial re-enactments, Memorial Day and other veterans’ events, and “green” projects.

Our chapter meets on the weekend. If you are interested in attending a meeting as a guest, please contact us.

About Us

The Presidio

The word presidio derives from the Latin word praesidium, which is what the Romans called their fortified camps. The San Francisco Presidio was established by the Spanish in 1776 as El Presidio Real de San Francisco, the Royal Presidio of San Francisco.

Spanish military officer and explorer Juan Bautista de Anza was ordered to establish permanent northern outposts. He led a group of 240 soldiers, settlers, and monks to establish a site for a presidio and a mission in what was then called Alta California — a new colony at the bay of San Francisco that would become the northernmost point of western North America. De Anza marked the bluff overlooking today’s Golden Gate Bridge, at what is now Fort Point, as the location. His lieutenant later selected a spot about a mile inland, less exposed to the wind and closer to fresh water. A rough structure was erected of local oak and mud, a 250-yard compound circled by walls, dedicated on September 17, 1776. A more solid enclosure, completed over the following two years, held a chapel, the commandant’s headquarters, and troop barracks around a central courtyard.

As this Presidio and the nearby Mission Dolores were still under construction, colonists held their first mass under the shelter of branches on June 29, 1776 — around the same time, on the opposite side of the continent, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were drafting the Declaration of Independence. The 1776 founding date parallels the founding of our country, and this site would ultimately become the city of San Francisco as we know it today. It was the longest continuously occupied military outpost in the United States until it was transferred to the National Park Service in 1994, and in 1998 its management (excepting the coastal areas) passed to the Presidio Trust. All that remains of San Francisco’s original Presidio — the city’s oldest building — is part of a wall incorporated into today’s Army Officers’ Club.

Sources: Tom Cole, A Short History of San Francisco; Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco; James Brook, Chris Carlsson & Nancy J. Peters (eds.), Reclaiming San Francisco; Rand Richards, Historic San Francisco; George Rathmell, Realms of Gold; Frank Soulé, John H. Gihon & James Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco.

Chapter Board