Coyote Point Recreation Area is a park operated by San Mateo County, California in the United States. Located on San Francisco Bay, it is south of San Francisco International Airport on the border of Burlingame and San Mateo. Facilities within the park include a large playground, the CuriOdyssey junior museum, a sandy bathing beach, a marina and yacht club, hiking trails, and picnic areas. In addition, the San Mateo County Sheriff's office has a shooting range on-site for training of law enforcement. It is adjacent to the Peninsula Humane Society and the municipal Poplar Creek Golf Course. The distinctive point, covered by a grove of eucalyptus trees, can be seen from airplanes approaching San Francisco International Airport and is a good location for aircraft spotting and birdwatching. The site has been used for the large Pacific City amusement park in the early 1920s, as the basic training facility for the Pacific branch of the United States Merchant Marine service during World War II, and as the campus for College of San Mateo during the decade that followed the war. The county completed its acquisition of the park lands in 1962. History Precolumbian Coyote Point was originally an island in San Francisco Bay rising to a height of above mean sea level with a marsh connecting it to the mainland. Because it has no fresh water, it is doubtful that Native Americans lived here, but shell mounds on the point indicate that it was at least occasionally used, possibly for special ceremonies or feasts; skeletal human remains were discovered in 1987 during routine dredging of the marina and dated to be approximately 4,000 years old, indicating a long presence of humans at the Point. Spanish settlement Coyote Point was part of the Presidio and Mission lands until it passed to Mexico. The Governor of Mexico then granted the land, then known as Rancho San Mateo, to Cayetano Arenas, from whom the name can probably be traced. The Arenas family sold it to the firm of Mellus and Howard, and William Davis Merry Howard purchased it from the firm in 1850. After his death in 1856, the land passed to his brother George, who ordered a road and pier built on the land. At approximately the same time, Chinese immigrants established a fishing village near Coyote Point to harvest bay shrimp for San Francisco restaurants in the 1860s. By 1868, the pier