'The "Cliff House"', 1872. Hotel on the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco, California, USA. The first Cliff House was built in 1858. 'This is emphatically the most picturesque part of San Francisco, both in its surroundings and in its seal-cliffs, where the sea-lions bark and whine and roar, with none to make them afraid. The distance from the city is about five miles...the Cliff House is built, as its name imports, upon frowning basalt; and the road that winds from it to the ocean hence has been cut through solid rock. The bluff of the hotel is about one hundred and thirty feet in perpendicular height...Detached bowlders lie at its base, and are tormented by the fierce rollers'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1872]