Since 1874: San Francisco’s Mounted Police

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San Francisco has kept police officers on horseback without a break since 1874. Only New York City has done it longer. In 2024 the unit marked 150 years.

Why a city of cable cars kept its horses

In the early years a mounted officer was simply the fastest way to cover ground. One history of Golden Gate Park records a mounted officer who chased down a cyclist breaking the park rules and lassoed him. As cars became common, the department took up the new machines, and the mounted unit turned toward Golden Gate Park, the beach and meeting the public. An officer on a horse sits about ten feet up, sees over a crowd, and is hard to miss.

The stables in the park

The horses live at the Fred C. Egan Police Stables in Golden Gate Park, next to the Polo Fields. The Works Progress Administration built modern stables there for the mounted police in the late 1930s, and they are still in use. The public riding stable that once stood beside them has closed. The police barn has not.

You can walk up to it. If the horses are near the fence, people are welcome to say hello.

Still adding horses

In 2026, during the Year of the Horse, the department swore in three new horses at the park stables. They joined Rusty, Bubba, Duke and Gus on patrols that reach Union Square, the Embarcadero, the Castro, Japantown and Fisherman's Wharf.

This is one entry in the full Bay Area horse history timeline.

Sources

• San Francisco Police Department, "3 SFPD Mounted Patrol Unit Horses Sworn In During Year of the Horse Celebration"

• KQED, "After 150 Years, Why Do San Francisco Police Still Have a Mounted Unit?"

• Living New Deal, "Golden Gate Park Police Stables"

• The San Francisco Standard, on the mounted unit

• "Home of the 10-Foot Police" (the lasso story, from Raymond Clary's history of the park)