Candlestick Park was an outdoor stadium on the West Coast of the United States, located in San Francisco's Hunters Point area.

Due to Candlestick Park's location next to the bay, strong winds often swirled down into the stadium, creating unusual playing conditions.

As part of the agreement regarding the Giants' relocation to the West Coast, the city of San Francisco promised to build a new stadium for the team.

The result was that the wind speed dropped marginally, but often swirled irregularly throughout the stadium, and the view of San Francisco Bay was lost.

The first was in January 1982 when Dwight Clark caught a game-winning touchdown pass from Joe Montana to lead the 49ers to Super Bowl XVI by defeating the Dallas Cowboys.

The last of these came in January 2012, when Lawrence Tynes kicked a field goal in overtime to defeat the 49ers and send the New York Giants to Super Bowl XLVI.

The final postseason game hosted by the 49ers at Candlestick Park was the 2012 NFC Divisional Playoff matchup between the 49ers and the Green Bay Packers, won by the 49ers by a score of 45–31.

The 49ers' record in NFC Championship games at Candlestick Park was 4-4; they defeated the Cowboys twice, in 1981 and 1994, the Chicago Bears in 1984, and the Los Angeles Rams in 1989.

The play called "The Catch III" came in the 2011 NFC Divisional Playoffs, when Alex Smith threw a touchdown pass to Vernon Davis with nine seconds remaining to provide the winning margin against the New Orleans Saints.

On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake (magnitude 6.9) struck San Francisco, minutes before Game 3 of the World Series was to begin at Candlestick Park.

The authority pushed reluctant officials to get this done between the 1988 and 1989 baseball seasons, which prevented a "collapse wave" that could have killed thousands of fans and led to there being very few casualties of any kind in Candlestick Park after such a massive natural disaster.

During this time, the 49ers moved their game against the New England Patriots on October 22 to Stanford Stadium, where they had defeated the Miami Dolphins 38–16 to win Super Bowl XIX on January 20, 1985.

[11] After planned renovations in preparation for the game were not made, the NFL owners instead awarded Super Bowl XXXIII to the Miami area during their meeting on October 31, 1996.

The league promised to award Super Bowl XXXVII following construction of a new football stadium, which was approved by voters in 1997, but the forced sale of the team by owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. caused plans to fall through.

For its last several years as home to just the 49ers, Candlestick Park was the only remaining NFL stadium to have begun as a baseball-only facility which later underwent an extensive redesign to accommodate football.

After the Giants played their 1999 season and moved away from Candlestick, this grandstand was left permanently in its football position, and the unusable seats were eventually removed.

[15] At approximately 5:19 p.m. local time on December 19, 2011, Candlestick Park experienced an unexpected power outage just before a Monday Night Football game between the 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The 49ers played their final game at Candlestick Park on Monday, December 23, 2013, against the Atlanta Falcons, winning 34–24 after a NaVorro Bowman interception that would be called The Pick at the Stick by some sports columnists.

Mays was used to playing in difficult and absurdly sized field conditions, beginning his career at the Polo Grounds in New York, which featured an enormous outfield where he made a famous World Series-saving catch.

It was initially built with a radiant heating system of hot water pipes under the lower box seats in a space between the concrete and the ground.

As a result, the Giants played more day games than any Major League Baseball team except the Chicago Cubs, whose ballpark, Wrigley Field, did not have lights installed until 1988.

Many locals, including Giants' broadcaster Lon Simmons, were surprised at the decision to build the park right on the bay, in one of the coldest areas of the city.

While the wind is a summer condition (hot inland, cool oceanside), winter weather is right in line with the rest of sea level Northern California (mild with occasional rain).

A relatively small amount of black-and-white footage was shot by local TV news in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento.

To showcase the event, McCartney contacted Barry Hood and used a portion of his original 1966 Beatles film on a big screen at this last concert.

[29] Candlestick Park was home to dozens of commercial shoots as well as the location for the climactic scene in both the 1962 thriller Experiment in Terror and the 1974 Richard Rush comedy Freebie and the Bean.

Just over a month later, however, a measure passed in the November 2 election stipulated that the stadium name revert to "Candlestick" permanently after the contract with Monster expired in 2008.

[32] The City and County of San Francisco had trouble finding a new naming sponsor due in part to the downturn in the economy, but also because the stadium's tenure as 3Com Park was tenuous at best.

[36] On November 8, 2006, however, the 49ers announced that they would abandon their search for a location in San Francisco and begin to pursue the idea of building a stadium in Santa Clara.

On September 28–30, 1999, tens of thousands of fans received the pin for attending the Giants' final three-game home stand at Candlestick, against the team's archrival, the Los Angeles Dodgers.