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History of San Francisco County California
HISTORY
San Francisco County - The earliest archaeological
evidence of inhabitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the
Ohlone people resided in several small villages when a Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà
arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European discovery of San Francisco Bay. Seven years later, on
March 28, 1776 the Spanish established a fort, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission
Dolores).
Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. In 1835,
Englishman William Richardson erected the first significant homestead outside the immediate vicinity of the Mission
Dolores, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Mission Alcalde Francisco
de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract
American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the
Mexican-American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was
renamed San Francisco the next year. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was
still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.
A map from 1888The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow,
prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000
by December 1849. The promise of riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to
the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. California was quickly granted statehood
and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz island to secure the San Francisco
Bay. Silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes
of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained
notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.
A Cable Car on California Street in 1899Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold
Rush. Early winners were the banking industry, which saw the founding of Wells Fargo in 1852, and the railroad
industry, as the magnates of the Big Four, led by Leland Stanford, collaborated in the building of the First Transcontinental
Railroad. The development of the Port of San Francisco established the city as a center of trade. Catering to the
needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began
manufacturing chocolate. Immigrant laborers made the city a polyglot culture, with Chinese railroad workers creating
the city's Chinatown quarter. The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea
of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in
plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life.
The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By the turn
of the century, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions
on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene.
"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone." – Jack
London after the 1906 earthquake and fire.
At 5:12 AM on the morning of April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As
buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that would spread across the city and burn
out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain
the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in
ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people lost their lives,
though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands. More than half the city's population of 400,000
were left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio,
on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.
The Palace of Fine Arts at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale.
Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini's Bank of
Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated.
The destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose once again in splendorous Beaux Arts style,
and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market
crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that
San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco-Oakland
Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937 respectively. It was in this period that
the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing
notorious inmates such as Al Capone. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's Fair,
the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house
it.
The USS San Francisco steams under the Golden Gate Bridge in 1942, during World War IIDuring World War II, the
Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for
service members shipping out to the Pacific theater of operations. The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially
African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from
service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The UN Charter creating the United
Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended
the war with Japan.
Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s saw widespread destruction and redevelopment of westside neighborhoods
and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by
citizen-led opposition.The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, and in the 1980s the Manhattanization of
San Francisco saw extensive high rise development downtown. Port activity moved to Oakland, the city began to lose
industrial jobs, and San Francisco began to turn to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs
experienced rapid growth and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white
population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America.
The 1967 Human Be-In galvanized hippies in Haight-Ashbury.Over this same period, San Francisco became a magnet
for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the
North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the
1967 Summer of Love. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The
Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination,
along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco,
the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition
of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim its historic
downtown waterfront.
During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs
and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals that changed
the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these
companies folded and their employees left, although high technology and entrepreneurship continued to be mainstays
of the San Francisco economy.
(www.wikipedia.com)
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