Two paved walking paths, one allowing bicycles, run the entire length of the Panhandle from east to west, and several shorter ones criss-cross it north to south.

An 1853 map of San Francisco labels the area that the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park presently occupy the "Great Sand Bank".

After much trial and error, Hall found that by first planting barley, followed months later by sea bent grass mixed with yellow lupin, the sand dunes could be stabilized enough to dump manure and top-soil without risk of wind erosion.

The land in and around the Panhandle has been so completely transformed by over 100 years of irrigation and development that the sandy, unstable ground beneath is no longer apparent.

[3] Another idea in 1928 proposed extending the Panhandle diagonally across the Lower Haight and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods and reaching Market Street further west.