A garden staircase drops from up here near Coit Tower, more than 300 feet down the eastern face of Telegraph Hill toward the Embarcadero, one of San Francisco's most dramatically beautiful descents you'll take. The Filbert Steps drop more than 300 feet from the crest of the hill near Coit Tower to the Embarcadero below, passing through a private garden of bougainvillea, roses, and fruit trees that has been tended by volunteers and a few legendary dedicated residents for decades. Telegraph Hill got its name from a semaphore station built at the summit in 1849, which used signal arms to relay messages from the Golden Gate to the city below — announcing the arrival of ships and their cargo in the days before telegraph cable reached California.
The eastern face of the hill was quarried aggressively in the early twentieth century by the Gray Brothers company, which blasted rock from the cliff face to use as fill material around the bay. Residents sued repeatedly to stop the quarrying; the cliff face you see is where the quarrying stopped. The wild parrots — a flock of about 200 cherry-headed conures descended from escaped pets — roost in the trees along these steps and are audible before they are visible.