Fort Miley's origins lie in the 1885 Endicott Report, issued by Secretary of War William C. Endicott, which called for modernizing the coastal defenses of American harbors. San Francisco Bay, with its narrow entrance at the Golden Gate, was a natural choke point that any invading fleet would have to navigate. By 1890, the Army had begun constructing fortifications on the headlands flanking the strait, with Fort Miley anchoring the southern defenses. The fort's batteries, including 12-inch guns capable of firing shells across the Golden Gate channel, represented the state of the art in late 19th-century harbor defense.

By 1937, the Army had concluded that the 12-inch batteries at Fort Miley were obsolete and should be abandoned when funds became available for modernization. Then Pearl Harbor changed the calculation. The Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, revived interest in coastal defense along the entire Pacific coast, and Fort Miley's batteries were kept active through the war years. The threat of Japanese naval attack on San Francisco -- however remote -- kept soldiers manning guns that military planners had already written off. When the war ended, the fort's military purpose ended with it.

The conversion of Fort Miley's buildings to a VA Medical Center gave the headland a new military purpose: caring for the veterans who had served at installations like it. The hospital complex occupies the eastern portion of the former reservation, while the western grounds have been absorbed into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where hikers walk trails that were once patrol routes. The views from Fort Miley are among the most dramatic in San Francisco: the Golden Gate Bridge to the north, the Pacific to the west, the Cliff House and Seal Rocks below. The guns are gone, but the headland still serves the people who once manned them.