If you walk a dog anywhere near Mountain Lake Park, you already know something changed this spring. The signs went up in late March, the reroutes became routine by April, and now it's the middle of August and the closure is still in effect. What's easy to miss, nearly five months in, is which direction the closure actually pushes you, and how that shift lines up with a bread-focused bakery opening this year right on the neighborhood's southern edge.
What's actually closed, and until when
On March 23, the Presidio Trust announced that two trail segments would close to all dogs, on-leash or off, starting March 27 and running through early October. The first is the Park Trail from Mountain Lake to the Presidio Promenade near Cavalry Stables. The second is a stretch of the Bay Area Ridge Trail from Rob Hill Campground to the Presidio Golf Course. The reason is coyote pupping season, the stretch of the year when coyote parents are actively denning and more likely to react to a dog wandering too close. The Trust followed up in April with a community session at the Crissy Field Center to walk residents through coyote safety, which tells you this wasn't a quiet policy memo. People showed up wanting to understand it.
None of that is a surprise if you've read any local coverage this year. What the coverage tends to skip is the geography.
The map only tells you half the story if you read it once
Look at where those two closed segments actually sit. The Park Trail closure runs from Mountain Lake to the Presidio Promenade near Cavalry Stables, which is deeper into the park's interior. The Bay Area Ridge Trail closure sits further in still, between Rob Hill Campground and the Presidio Golf Course. Both are routes that pull a dog walker away from the neighborhood and into the middle of the park.
Now look at what's still open. Mountain Lake Trail, a separate named route, traces the Presidio's southern edge instead, running from the Broadway Gate all the way to Baker Beach. It was never on the closure list. Neither was Mountain Lake Park itself, the city-owned 15.2 acre park that sits along the north side of Lake Street with its own off-leash dog run, tennis courts, a half basketball court, and a Parcourse fitness circuit that's been there since 1974. That park is a different piece of land than the Presidio trail system, and its dog run has stayed open the entire season.
Put those two facts together and the picture is fairly clear. If your normal loop used to head into the Presidio's interior toward Cavalry Stables or the golf course, that loop is gone until early October. If it stayed along the park's southern edge, the same edge Lake Street already borders, or looped through Mountain Lake Park's own paths, nothing has changed. The closure didn't shrink the neighborhood's dog-walking options so much as it pushed traffic toward the edge routes closest to home, the ones that run along or near California Street, the commercial corridor marking Lake Street District's southern boundary.
Here's what's held up all season:
- Mountain Lake Park's dog run and Parcourse, on the north side of Lake Street, unaffected by the Presidio closure
- Mountain Lake Trail, running west from the Broadway Gate to Baker Beach, not part of either closed segment
- The StoryWalk near Mountain Lake, a run of children's book pages posted along the trail from June through September, still up with about six weeks left before it comes down
- Tennis courts and the playground off 12th Avenue and Lake Street, both part of Mountain Lake Park rather than the closed Presidio trails
What's off the table until early October is anything that routes through the Park Trail toward Cavalry Stables, or the Ridge Trail segment between Rob Hill and the golf course.
The corner that's catching the extra foot traffic
Walk south from Lake Street toward California Street this summer and you'll find a storefront that wasn't part of the block plan a year ago. Loquat, the Hayes Valley bakery known for laminated babka and Jewish-diaspora pastries, announced this spring that it's opening a second San Francisco location at 4555 California Street, at 8th Avenue, this time centered on bread rather than pastry. Owners Tal Mor and Jodi Geren, who also run Four Barrel and The Mill, are building the new spot around a deck oven for challah and bialys, with a parklet planned for the corner. Pastry lead Kristina Costa, previously at Tartine, is running that side of the menu.
Loquat's first location opened in 2022 in the old 20th Century Café space on Gough Street. This one is a different kind of bet: a bread-focused shop on a wide sidewalk, in a stretch of California Street where families and longtime neighborhood businesses already mix.
Reroute a dog walker's loop and you've also rerouted their coffee stop.
That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. A bakery choosing this corner, this year, sits right on the edge corridor that's carrying more of the neighborhood's foot traffic while the Presidio's interior trails stay closed to dogs. It didn't need the closure to succeed. But the timing means anyone whose walk used to head into the Presidio's interior is now more likely to pass a fresh challah loaf instead.
The other thing slowing down your walk
Separate from the seasonal closure, Presidio crews have been thinning declining eucalyptus trees east of Arguello Boulevard, near West Pacific Avenue and the Mountain Lake and Ecology Trails. That work brings its own intermittent closures and posted detours, unrelated to the coyote season but overlapping with it. If you're rerouting around the Park Trail closure and you also hit a detour sign near the Ecology Trail, that's the eucalyptus work, not a second wildlife closure. Follow the posted signs and you'll find your way back to the main path within a few hundred feet.
What changes in October, and what won't
The coyote pupping season closure is set to lift in early October, which will reopen the Park Trail segment to Mountain Lake and the Bay Area Ridge Trail segment near the golf course to dogs again. When that happens, the loops that ran into the interior will be available again, and the neighborhood's dog-walking map goes back to its full size.
What won't reset is whatever habits formed this summer. A bakery that built its opening around wide sidewalks and a mixed, longtime customer base doesn't lose that appeal just because a trail reopens across the park. If anything, the next six weeks are a preview of how much local foot traffic Lake Street's own edge can carry, before some of it heads back into the Presidio's interior once October arrives.
For now, if you're circling Mountain Lake Park's dog run for the fourth time this week, you're not missing out on much. You're just walking the half of the map that's been open the whole time, and it happens to be the half with the new bread.
If you're weighing a move in this part of the city and want a clearer read on how a specific block, park view, or proximity to the Presidio affects value, Beverly Barnett has spent more than two decades tracking these micro-markets block by block. Schedule a private consultation to talk through what's actually happening on the ground here, beyond what a listing photo can show you.
