Introduction to Geography of San Francisco
San Francisco, California, the fourth most populous city in the state. It occupies all of San Francisco County. The city lies on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the west, San Francisco Bay on the east, and the Golden Gate (the entrance to the bay) on the north. With a magnificent natural setting and architecturally distinctive buildings, San Francisco is generally regarded as one of the nation's most beautiful cities. It is also a hub of commerce, a cultural and educational center, and a city of diverse nationalities.
General Plan
San Francisco is roughly square in shape. Much of the land is extremely hilly, reaching a height of more than 920 feet (280 m) above sea level at Mount Davidson and Twin Peaks, in the central part of the city. In these and other high hilly areas, roads are laid out in a circular manner; elsewhere they form a rectangular pattern, aligned mainly north-south and east-west. The chief limited-access highways are the James Lick, Southern, and Bayshore freeways.
Downtown San Francisco, with its tall buildings, steep hills, and clanging cable cars, occupies the northeastern corner of the city. Here, Market Street runs diagonally southwestward from the Ferry Building past the financial district and the Civic Center to the base of Twin Peaks. Along the Embarcadero, a broad semicircular street skirting the downtown waterfront, are many of the city's piers, wharves, and warehouses. Nearby are Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, and Nob Hill.
Outside the downtown area, San Francisco is primarily residential. Large tracts, however, are occupied by Golden Gate Park, John McLaren Park, and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes the Presidio, a former army base covering nearly 1,500 acres (600 hectares). Industrial areas are mainly in the southeast along the bay shore flats.
San Francisco has fixed boundaries and can expand no farther It is, however, part of a vast and rapidly growing urban complex called the Bay Area, which adjoins San Francisco Bay. Cities in this area include Oakland, San Jose, Fremont, Sunnyvale, Concord, Berkeley, Hayward, and Santa Clara.
Five bridges cross the bay in the metropolitan area; two of them serve San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge, one of the world's longest suspension bridges (main span 4,200 feet [1,280 m]), connects the city with the Marin Peninsula to the north. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, with suspension, cantilever, and truss sections, joins San Francisco and Oakland.
Economy
To a large extent San Francisco is a commercial and maritime city. Much of its economic vitality stems from shipping and the business it creates in such fields as finance, insurance, wholesaling, and processing.
Several of the nation's largest commercial banks, including the Bank of America and the Wells Fargo Bank, are here, as well as a Federal Reserve bank, a major stock exchange, and numerous foreign banks. San Francisco is the headquarters of many large corporations, including insurance, utility, transportation, and engineering companies.
In wholesale trade, San Francisco is among the leaders on the West Coast. Goods from all parts of the nation are shipped here for regional distribution and for export. Much of the foreign trade is with the Far East.
Manufacturing, though important, is relatively less significant in San Francisco than in most major American cities. Because land values are high, light manufacturing industries—which require less space than heavy industries—prevail. Among them are food processing; printing and publishing; and the making of clothing, small metal articles, and machinery.
The Bay Area as a whole has widespread and diversified industries In addition to those of the city, they include petroleum refining; automobile and truck assembly; and the making of steel, heavy machinery, chemicals, space and electronic equipment, paper, and stone, clay, and glass products.
A cosmopolitan city with outstanding hotels and restaurants, entertainment, and cultural attractions, San Francisco draws many tourists and conventioneers. Tourism and the convention industry are two of the city's chief sources of revenue. For conventions San Francisco has several major facilities, including the Moscone Convention Center, the Civic Auditorium, and, in nearby Daly City, the Cow Palace.
Besides being a major center for ocean shipping, the San Francisco area, including Oakland, is a leading air and land transportation center. San Francisco International Airport, south of the city, ranks among the nation's busiest. The city is also served by Oakland International Airport, several railways, and numerous bus and truck lines. The rapid transit system, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), completed in 1972, is a 75-mile (121-km) system of high-speed subways and surface and elevated lines linking San Francisco and the major outlying cities.
Prominent Places
Union Square, which is adjoined by the St. Francis Hotel and many fine shops and stores, is the focus of downtown San Francisco. To the north, centered on Grant Avenue, is Chinatown, home to one of the largest Chinese communities outside the Far East. In the neighborhood are clustered hundreds of restaurants, food stores, and shops featuring Oriental wares.
On nearby Nob Hill, where the mansions of San Francisco's wealthiest families once stood, are Grace Cathedral and several of the city's finest hotels. Farther north is Russian Hill, capped by high-rise apartment buildings; to the east is Telegraph Hill, with its 210-foot (64-m) Coit Memorial Tower. Between the two hills lies the North Beach district, a predominantly Italian area and one of the chief centers of the city's nightlife.
On San Francisco's north shore stands the restored Palace of the Legion of Honor, a fine arts museum in the only remaining building of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. To the east are a yacht harbor, several small parks, Ghirardelli Square, the Cannery, and Fisherman's Wharf. Ghirardelli Square (a former chocolate factory) and the Cannery (a former fruit-canning plant) house a wide variety of restaurants and specialty shops. At Fisherman's Wharf, seafood is featured in numerous restaurants and sidewalk stalls. Nearby at the Hyde Street Pier the three-masted sailing ship Balclutha is permanently moored. A short distance offshore is Alcatraz Island, site of a former federal prison.
About midway along Market Street is the Civic Center, a complex of government and public buildings built largely in Italian Renaissance style The city hall, main public library, civic auditorium, symphony hall, and opera house are here.
One of San Francisco's outstanding features is Golden Gate Park, more than three miles (5 km) long and with an area of some 1,000 acres (400 hectares) It contains a great variety of attractions, including two museums of fine art, a planetarium, an aquarium, an arboretum, and a conservatory.
Most of the northern and western coastal areas of San Francisco are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park System Included in the recreational area are several long beaches, a promenade, and such historic places as Fort Point, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz Island Seal Rocks, also a part of the recreational area, is a gathering place for hundreds of California sea lions.
Mission Dolores, in the Mission District northeast of Twin Peaks, is an adobe structure built by the Spanish as the Mission San Francisco de Asís shortly after they established their presidio (military post) in 1776 On the east side of the city is 3Com Park, home of the San Francisco Forty-Niners (football), and Pacific Bell Park, home of the San Francisco Giants (baseball).
Education and Culture
About a dozen universities and colleges are in San Francisco They include San Francisco State University, the University of San Francisco, Golden Gate University, and a medical branch of the University of California. Scattered throughout the Bay Area are more than 40 other four-year institutions of higher learning, including the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University at Palo Alto.
San Francisco has several museums of fine arts These include the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Items relating to the history of the city are exhibited in the California Historical Society's Whittier Mansion. The National Maritime Museum, in Aquatic Park, has models of old ships and various relics from the city's early years as a port. The museum also maintains several permanently moored historic ships that can be boarded by the public. At the Palace of Fine Arts is the Exploratorium, a science museum with more than 600 hands-on exhibits.
Other collections are exhibited at the Cable Car Museum, the Old Mint, and the Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard Museum.
Among the several musical organizations are the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Opera. There are also a number of dance companies, including the San Francisco Ballet. Chief among the many professional theatrical groups is the American Conservatory Theatre. Japan Center, which includes shops and restaurants, a kabuki theater, and the Japanese consulate, reflects the heritage of San Francisco's thousands of Japanese-Americans.
History
Although Spain claimed California in the mid-l6th century, colonization did not begin until the 18th. An overland expedition from Mexico discovered San Francisco Bay in 1769, and in 1776 Spanish settlers arrived at the site of the present city. A presidio (military post) was built near the entrance to the bay. A Franciscan mission, San Francisco de Asís, was established about three miles (5 km) southeast, on a stream called Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Our Lady of Sorrows). The mission came to be known as Dolores. The fine harbor soon attracted ships of various nations to the bay.
After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, the presidio was gradually abandoned, and in 1834 the mission was transferred from religious to civil authority. In 1835 a port administration was set up, with William A. Richardson, who had arrived in 1822 on a British whaler, in charge of it. A new port community, Yerba Buena, was laid out on a cove of the eastern shore. It was centered in what is now Chinatown; present Montgomery Street was part of the shoreline road.
In 1846, after the beginning of the Mexican War, Yerba Buena was occupied for the United States by a naval detachment under Commander John B. Montgomery. Three weeks later a party of about 240 Mormons, fleeing the United States, sailed into the harbor and decided to stay. In 1847 the town changed its name to San Francisco. The population was less than 500, not including residents of Mission Dolores and its surrounding community and the American garrison at the presidio.
The discovery of gold near Sutter's Mill (Coloma) in 1848 nearly emptied San Francisco, as residents rushed off to the diggings. The news spread quickly to Latin America, Pacific islands, and the Far East, and the harbor was soon filled with foreign ships.
In 1849 the Gold Rush from the eastern United States began. San Francisco became a vast tent city, with large numbers of transients to be fed and outfitted. Merchants, gambling-house proprietors, and real-estate speculators made fortunes. With the population sometimes doubling in 10 days, the city soon reached almost halfway across the peninsula. More land was gained by taking sand from the hills and filling in the areas around Yerba Buena cove, Mission Bay, and North Beach inlet.
Lawlessness was a serious problem and was met at various times by formation of citizens' committees. In 1851 a group calling itself the Vigilance Committee hanged four men during its 10 weeks' existence. The Second Vigilance Committee, formed in 1856, hanged four more.
By 1856 the first economic boom had ended, but prosperity and growth resumed after the 1859 Comstock Lode silver strike in Nevada. San Francisco, again the supply center, became the home of the “bonanza kings,” who made the city known for luxury and elegance. Meanwhile, near the waterfront an area known as the Barbary Coast became notorious for vice.
A transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, and the builders of the Central Pacific Railroad joined the bonanza kings in San Francisco's hierarchy of wealth. The city's shipping trade dropped drastically because of railroad competition, worsening the economic depression that had followed the Civil War. Thousands of Chinese coolies, imported to help build the railroad, glutted the city's labor market. In 1876 Chinatown had an estimated population of about 47,000. Anti-Chinese hostility was intense; riots and legislation forced many Chinese to leave. Tong wars—feuds between rival Chinese associations over control of vice—gave Chinatown an unsavory reputation.
San Francisco's reputation suffered from political corruption that developed under dominance of the railroad interests. Labor unionism, especially among maritime workers, brought strikes and violence.
On April 18, 1906, San Francisco experienced a severe earthquake, followed by fires that destroyed 28,000 buildings in the heart of the city and caused some 500 deaths. San Franciscans rushed to rebuild their city.
In 1908 Abe Ruef, San Francisco's political boss, was convicted on charges of graft, and a period of civic improvement began. A world's fair, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, was held in 1915 to celebrate completion of the Panama Canal. Violent labor troubles broke out in 1916. After a bomb was thrown among spectators at a “Preparedness Day” parade (favoring national military strength), two labor leaders—Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings—were convicted on what later proved to be perjured testimony.
World War I brought an influx of workers to San Francisco's shipyards and war industries of the metropolitan area. An increased water supply was urgently needed, and in 1934 a system that brought water from reservoirs 150 miles (240 km) away was completed. Two great bridges were built—the Bay Bridge to Oakland (completed in 1936) and the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County (1937). The Golden Gate International Exposition was held in 1939–40.
During World War II there was another vast increase in population, as local industry expanded to meet wartime needs. The conference at which the United Nations was founded took place in 1945 in San Francisco. Beginning in the 1950's, the city undertook a far-reaching rehabilitation program. Major waterfront projects included the Golden Gateway Center and the Embarcadero Center. Several skyscrapers were built, among them the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bank of America building.
In 1978 Mayor George Moscone was shot to death by a disgruntled former member of the city board of supervisors. His successor was Dianne Feinstein, who became the city's first woman mayor.
In the 1990s, numerous Internet and multimedia companies started up in the San Francisco Bay area. This created many new jobs, which helped boost the city's economy yet also contributed to a severe housing shortage that sent real estate prices skyrocketing.
Population
San Francisco ranks fourth among California cities. Until 1920, when Los Angeles surpassed it, San Francisco was the largest city in California. The population by census years has been as follows:
