Market Street at Dolores
Mission/Castro
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California Volunteers by Douglas Tilden – Bronze on a granite base
Dedicated August 12, 1906
Erected by the Citizens of San Francisco
In Honor Of
The California Volunteers
Spanish American War
1898
First to The Front
At the end of the Spanish-American War, when the troops returned, San Franciscans went wild. Sixty-five thousand dollars was raised, $25,000 of which was allocated for a memorial. Douglas Tilden won the national competition. California Volunteers, a bronze work sixteen feet high and ten feet long mounted atop a granite base ten feet high, stands at the corner of Market and Dolores Streets. The monument shows an American soldier, with pointed gun in one hand and a sword in the other, standing over a fallen comrade, a cannon nearby. Above them the goddess of war, Bellona, is astride the winged horse Pegasus.
This sculpture originally sat at the corner of Van Ness and Market but as the city of San Francisco grew, the sculpture had to be moved from its original location. In 1917 it was moved about eleven feet and in 1925 it was moved from Van Ness and Market Streets to Market and Dolores Streets.
It is maintained by the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Tilden remained a recluse for most of his life and died in 1935. In 1987, many of Tilden’s personal artworks were discovered in an abandoned storage facility.