San Francisco

HISTORY

English sea captain Sir Francis Drake claimed the area where San Francisco is now for England on June 17, 1579. The natives thought they were gods and offered them their entire country. Drake accepted and claimed the land in the name of Queen Elizabeth calling it New Albion and staking to a post an engraved metal plate. (A National Park at San Francisco marks the approximate spot where he anchored the Golden Hind in 1579.)

San Francisco was founded in 1776 by the Spanish conquerors. It was called "Yerba Buena" which is Spanish for "Good Herb", because mint grew there in abundance.

The first documented discovery of gold in California occurred at Rancho San Francisco in 1842, six years before the California Gold Rush.

On July 9, 1846, an American naval captain occupied the settlement of Yerba Buena. Half a year later on January 30, 1847, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

View of San Francisco 1846–47

The first self-service restaurants appeared in San Francisco during the 1848–1855 California gold rush. A selection of free food was placed on the counter in saloons.

Congress established the United States' second mint in San Francisco. During the California Gold Rush underway, the United States Mint in Philadelphia found itself overwhelmed with the task of turning all that gold into coins. In 1854, the San Francisco Mint opened its doors and began converting miners' gold into coins, producing $4,084,207 in gold pieces by December of the first year.

In 1859, San Francisco citizen Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States of America. The people of San Francisco went along with it, accepting his currency, paying for his meals, and even got the police to salute him in the streets.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments in the United States.

Cable Car No. 13 on Powell Street

The first cable streetcar created by Andrew Smith Hallidie's invention had its initial test run on August 1, 1873 on Clay Street Hill in San Francisco. It went into operation a month later.

At the age of 15, writer, poet and civil rights activist Angelou Maya (1928-2014) was San Francisco’s first female cable car conductor.

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck San Francisco. The quake and resulting fires devastated the city, killing at least 3,000 people and leaving more than half of San Francisco's population homeless.

Arnold Genthe's photograph, looking toward the fire on Sacramento Street

The flag of San Francisco, depicting a phoenix rising from flames, was adopted in the early 1900s. It is often assumed to be a symbol of the city's recovery from the 1906 earthquake.

The San Francisco Municipal Railway, operator of the city's famed cable car system, opened its first line in 1912.

The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, California begun service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet (3,633 meters) long on February 3, 1918.

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begun in San Francisco Bay in 1933. Its four-year construction, supervised by chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss, faced many difficulties, including rapidly running tides, frequent storms and fogs, and the problem of blasting rock under deep water to plant earthquake-resistant foundations.

For 27 years after its completion in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge had the longest main span in the world, stretching 4,200 ft (1,280 m).

A view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point

At a 1945 conference in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations signed a charter establishing the United Nations.

The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco in 1951, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

FUN SAN FRANCISCO FACTS

With a a 2016 census-estimated population of  870,887, San Francisco is the 13th largest city in the United States. It is the second-most densely populated major American city behind only New York (among cities greater than 200,000 population).

In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population.

San Francisco International Airport is supported by 267 columns which each rest on a steel ball bearing, allowing them to move 20 inches in any direction in an earthquake.

During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific resulting in the city's characteristic cool winds and fog. The fog is less pronounced during the late summer and early fall. As a result, the year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.

29% of San Francisco's air pollution comes from China.

San Francisco has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Golden Gate City", "Frisco", "and "Fog City".

Parking in San Francisco is so scarce that the parking spot attached to your property can add up to 100,000 to the property's value.