Quick answer
Cavallo Point is a lodge at Fort Baker, the former US Army post on the Marin shore of the Golden Gate, opened in 2008. The name dates to 1775, when a Spanish explorer named the point Punta de Caballo for the wild horses that roamed there. Half of the 142 rooms sit in restored officers' quarters from 1901 to 1915; the other half are new, built for the bridge views.
Full transcript
Named for the Horses
The name Cavallo Point goes back to 1775, when the commander of one of the first European ships in the bay named the rocky point Punta de Caballo — point of the horse. Wild horses roamed this corner of Marin County then, and caballo is the Spanish word for horse. The name softened from the Spanish b to the v of Cavallo, and it stuck. Long before the horses, the Coast Miwok lived around Horseshoe Cove, on the same ground the lodge now stands.
The Army at the Gate
The U.S. Army bought the site in 1866 to defend the north side of the Golden Gate, and the post that became Fort Baker took shape between 1901 and 1915 — twenty-four buildings around a ten-acre parade ground. It had been the Lime Point Military Reservation before the 1897 renaming, and it carried the name of Edward Dickinson Baker, a senator from Oregon who died leading Union troops in the Civil War. The fort guarded the harbor through two world wars and the Cold War. Then the mission ended: the land joined the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1972, the transfer came in 1995, and by 2000 the last soldiers had moved out.
Sleep Where the Officers Slept
Walk the parade ground and you are walking an army post that time skipped: the brick quarters along the lawn were built for Coast Artillery officers between 1901 and 1915, and half of the lodge's 142 rooms are inside them now. The other half are new buildings, angled for the bridge. The lodge opened in 2008 on forty-five acres of the old fort. Stand on the lawn at the end of the day and watch the Golden Gate light up — this was the view from an army post that guarded the harbor for more than a century.