San Francisco, California

When many people think of this city by the bay, they recall the lyrics “If you’re going to San Francisco / Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” from the famous folk song by Scott McKenzie. However, beyond its place in popular culture, San Francisco has a fascinating history dating back to the late 1800s.

Landscape

For such a famous city, San Francisco’s landmass is surprisingly small. It is located on a peninsula, between the Pacific Ocean, and San Francisco Bay, two bodies of water linked by the Golden Gate Strait. The strait is spanned by the famous Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge, with its distinctive “international orange” paint scheme, was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened in 1937. As of 2024, the Golden Gate Bridge was the second-longest suspension bridge in the United States, trailing only the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. It was still ranked in the world's top twenty.

Primarily, San Francisco is a city of hills. Think of a famous movie scene featuring a hill in an urban area, and chances are it was shot in San Francisco.

People

There were approximately 808,437 people living in the city of San Francisco, according to the 2022 American Community Survey by the US Census Bureau. Among California cities, it ranked fourth for highest population. However, together with its surrounding cities, collectively known as the Bay Area, the San Francisco metropolitan area is one of the largest in the country.

The city’s population is diverse and split almost evenly between men and women, young and old, with a median age of 40.4 years in 2022. Approximately 38.3 percent of San Francisco’s population is White, and Asians (of mostly Chinese descent) make up the largest minority, accounting for 34.8 percent of the population. African American and Black people make up approximately 5.2 percent of the city’s population. Approximately 15.5 percent of the city’s residents identify as having Hispanic or Latino origins, while 9.5 percent are multiracial.

Economy

Tourism is a leading industry in San Francisco, with a record 26.2 million tourists visiting the city in 2019, the year prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism dropped to a low of 11.8 million in 2020, but has begun to bounce back, with almost 23 million visitors coming to the city in 2022. Service industries are consequently higher growth sectors. The twenty-first century has also seen considerable growth in biotechnology and computer electronics jobs in the city. As of early 2023, the largest employment sectors in the area were professional and business services; education and health services; trade, transportation, and utilities; government; and leisure and hospitality.

San Francisco is also the financial center of the West Coast. Although Los Angeles has tried to make a dent in its business in recent decades, the city by the bay is headquarters to Wells Fargo, the country’s fourth-largest commercial bank, as well as several other major banks. In addition, San Francisco was home to the Pacific Exchange until 2006, when it was merged with the New York Stock Exchange. Insurance has been another significant industry in San Francisco.

The Port of San Francisco is an important part of the city’s economy, not only in terms of shipping activity, but also for tourism as the host for more than eighty cruise ship calls and three hundred thousand passengers per year.

Landmarks

The city’s bridges are perhaps the most prominent San Francisco landmarks. The first of the two major bridges, the Bay Bridge, goes to Oakland, which lies east of the city. This bridge is sometimes mistaken for the Golden Gate Bridge, which links San Francisco to Marin County and Mount Tamalpais (“Mt. Tam”), north of the city.

Not only does the Golden Gate provide a route into the city for travelers, it also draws a surprising amount of tourists to San Francisco. Made famous in innumerable movies and television shows, and appearing on posters, album covers, and the like, the image of the Golden Gate Bridge (usually seen from the top of Mt. Tam) has become an icon.

Another famous San Francisco landmark is the city’s network of cable cars. In 1964, the cable car system was distinguished as the only US landmark to be named a special moving National Historic Landmark. Many cable cars continue to operate in San Francisco, as both a tourist attraction and a convenient mode of local transportation.

Located on Telegraph Hill, one of the highest points in the city, the Coit Tower was built by Lillian Coit to thank the firemen who saved her life in a 1906 fire. Completed in 1933, the tower was built to resemble a fireman’s hose. The top of Coit Tower provides an unmatched view of San Francisco.

The infamous federal prison Alcatraz, now closed to everyone but tourists, also lies in San Francisco Bay.

History

European explorers first arrived at the site of present-day San Francisco in 1775, and they “discovered” the native Ohlone people already living there. The Ohlone had a seaside culture and lived primarily on what the ocean provided.

San Francisco Bay was first mapped in 1775, having been named almost two hundred years earlier by a Franciscan friar traveling with Spanish explorers. The Presidio was built the following year. Originally used as a Spanish military post, the buildings of the Presidio are currently the oldest structures still standing in San Francisco.

The area was named Yerba Buena by the Spanish and was not renamed until 1847. San Francisco was incorporated as a city three years later.

Gold was discovered in California in early 1848, leading to the California gold rush. It took nearly a year for the word to get around, but once it did, the population of San Francisco skyrocketed. The year the actual gold rush began, 1849, is forever etched in local memory—the area’s National Football League (NFL) franchise, the San Francisco 49ers, is named for it.

Following the chaotic period of the gold rush, San Francisco saw several years of steady growth. In 1860, the first Pony Express rider left the city on the service’s inaugural cross-country trip. Another milestone in the city’s history came in 1869, when the first train arrived from the East.

As San Francisco’s diverse population grew, so did intolerance. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, thanks in part to pressure from San Francisco residents. The legislation effectively stopped Chinese immigration to the United States for more than fifty years. Angel Island opened in San Francisco Bay in 1910, and at first glance, it seemed to be an immigration center, like New York’s Ellis Island. However, the facility was actually used to enforce the Exclusion Act and acted as a prison for any Chinese citizens attempting to enter the United States.

The American conservation movement was born in San Francisco in the late nineteenth century. The Sierra Club was founded by John Muir to preserve the rugged beauty of California. Although the organization has grown more political in recent years, it continues to perform its important work and has played a role in the conservation of many US national parks.

One of the most destructive earthquakes in history occurred in San Francisco on April 18, 1906. The quake was caused by the San Andreas Fault, which runs across California. The earthquake of 1906, along with the many fires it caused, destroyed nearly five square miles of the city, including city hall. In the aftermath of the disaster, looting became such a problem that the mayor ordered the police to shoot to kill anyone caught in the act. Most accounts state that seven hundred people were killed in the Great San Francisco Earthquake, but it has been estimated that as many as four times that number actually perished.

Disaster struck the city again in 1916, during a Preparedness Day parade leading up to the United States’ entry into World War I. Antiwar protestors set off a bomb in a suitcase, killing ten bystanders. The incident remains the worst terrorist act in San Francisco history.

The San Francisco Ballet, the country’s first professional ballet company, was founded in 1933. Three years later, on November 12, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was opened, followed closely by the Golden Gate Bridge. Within a single year, the city gained two of its most famous landmarks, and San Francisco was suddenly more accessible than it had ever been before.

During World War II, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese American residents of San Francisco were rounded up and interned in remote camps.

The 1950s saw the emergence of the literary movement known as the “beat generation,” centered in New York and San Francisco. Several prominent poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, operated out of San Francisco. Ferlinghetti was the owner of the City Lights bookstore, which remains a literary landmark today.

San Francisco’s reputation as an “alternative” haven continued to grow during the 1960s, thanks in large part to the “hippie” movement and the popularity of local band the Grateful Dead. The city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was a favorite haunt among hippies and other devotees of the 1960s counterculture.

In September 1981, the first Kaposi's sarcoma clinic was established in San Francisco to treat AIDS patients with the rare cancer. The city would go on both to be greatly affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to play an important role in research on the disease.

Another earthquake, called the Loma Prieta earthquake, struck San Francisco in 1989. Many buildings were damaged, particularly in the city’s Marina district, and the Embarcadero Freeway collapsed and had to be demolished. Sixty-seven people were killed. Earthquake damage also delayed the start of the World Series that year, but thankfully the destruction did not approach the magnitude of the 1906 quake.

San Francisco became the first US jurisdiction to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, before it was technically legal within the state of California. The city made legal history again in 2018 when it decided to dismiss and seal marijuana convictions that predated state legalization of the drug, going back to 1975.

The Bay Area technology boom of the 2000s and 2010s exacerbated housing woes in San Francisco. Homelessness has plagued the city for several decades. In the 2020s, San Francisco has dealt with an increase in crime, causing several major retailers to leave the city's downtown area.

Trivia

• Although there is considerable disagreement regarding the actual wording and circumstances of the event, it is agreed that in 1848, a man ran through San Francisco’s Portsmouth Square yelling the now-famous phrase “There’s gold in them thar hills!”
• The first mountain bike was built in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, in the 1970s. The fat-tire bicycle, designed by Joe Breeze, was tested on the slopes of nearby Mount Tamalpais.
• Fort Point, completed in 1861, has never been fired upon.

Bibliography

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