Golden Gate Park – Turtle Sun Dial

This sundial by Melvin Earl Cummings was named by the North American Sundial Society ‘Navigator’s Dial’ because on the dial face there are the images of three explorers of the California coastline.

The memorial sun dial was given to San Francisco by the California members of the National Society of Colonial Dames, in honor of the first navigators who approached the Pacific coast.  These pioneers were Fortun Jiminiez, who came to the coast in 1533; Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo, 1542, and Sir Francis Drake, 1575.

The base of the dial is of Utah stone.  The dial is bronze in the form of a half globe, resting on the back of the turtle.  The inscription on the face translates to “I tell not the hours when the sun will not.”  On the outside of the half globe is a relief map of the Western Hemisphere, the cost at the time was about $3000.

M. Earl Cummings (given name Melvin Earl Cummings) was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 13, 1876. As a teenager Cummings was apprenticed to a wood carver in decorating the Mormon Temple. After moving to San Francisco in 1896, he won a scholarship to the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art where he was a pupil of Douglas Tilden.