Our Work

Take a virtual tour of the Alcatraz Historic Gardens

Here are some extras from the Fall 2023 issue of Gateways, the member newsletter of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. If you're a member, you got the entire colorful newsletter delivered straight to your mailbox. Not a member? Join today!

After three decades of consistently and meticulously tallying the daily fall raptor migration at the Golden Gate, we have a lot of great data, and we have an amazing ability to see a kind of baseline raptor migration story for the 19 species that are seen here annually.

For example,

Resident families introduced roses to Alcatraz during the military era, between 1850 and 1934. Surprisingly, roses thrived under these conditions and soon filled Alcatraz’s first gardens.

For more than a century, gardens were an important part of everyday life for officers, families, and prisoners confined to Alcatraz.

Learn more about visiting the historic gardens of Alcatraz.

Alcatraz gardeners needed tough plants that could survive with little water or care. The first ornamental plants that arrived to Alcatraz in the mid 1860s were typically favorite garden plants brought by soldier's families that called Alcatraz home.

Here are some extras from the Summer 2023 issue of Gateways, the member newsletter of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. If you're a member, you got the entire colorful newsletter delivered straight to your mailbox. Not a member? Join today!