San Francisco

History

The fog that rolls in off the Pacific Ocean hid the present-day site of San Francisco from Spanish conquistadors for two centuries after they first discovered California. A small party of explorers traveling overland from Mexico toward Canada and led by Sergeant José Ortega first stumbled on the area in 1769, and settlement began in 1776. A small town, called Yerba Buena, was established, but for over half a century it attracted little attention and was populated mostly by missionaries. The United States claimed it in 1846, during the Mexican War, and its population nearly doubled with the arrival of over 200 Mormon settlers.

The town's situation changed dramatically with the discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutters Mill, about 225 kilometers (140 miles) away, and the onset of the California Gold Rush. The Gold Rush brought wealth and expansion to the city as it grew to accommodate the thousands of prospectors arriving to seek their fortunes, many of whom later settled permanently in the area. However, the Gold Rush also created a wave of lawlessness as saloons, gambling joints, and brothels were opened to serve thousands of temporary settlers who considered themselves outside the law. San Francisco was incorporated in 1850, and the city's permanent residents began forming vigilante groups in the 1850s to clean up the town, eventually restoring order.

San Francisco continued to grow in the latter half of the nineteenth century, receiving a major boost from the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1869, as well as a silver boom in Nevada. By the turn of the century, it was home to about a third-of-a-million people. The new century, however, soon brought disaster in the form of the great earthquake of April 18, 1906, in which over 500 people perished. Ten square kilometers (four square miles) of the city were destroyed as fires raged out of control for three days. However, the people of San Francisco forged ahead in the face of tragedy and rebuilt their city, with the help of donations that poured in from many quarters following the disaster. By 1915 the city triumphantly hosted its first world's fair, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in honor of the completion of the Panama Canal.

The first half of the twentieth century was a period of continued growth spearheaded by the completion of major buildings and infrastructure projects, including the damming of the Tuoloumne River at the Hetch Hetchy Canyon and the construction of two great bridges completed within a year of each other: the San Francisco-Oak-land Bay Bridge (1936) and the Golden Gate Bridge (1937). With the growth of industry came the development of an active labor movement, which became one of the dominant powers in the city. The longshoremen's strike in 1930 was the largest in U.S. history. World War II (1939–45) further boosted industrial production in the city, although the period was marred by the forced relocation of thousands of Bay Area Japanese Americans and their detention in internment camps for the duration of the war.

The postwar period has seen continued economic growth and civic expansion, but the city has also had to confront problems typical of major urban areas, including flight to the surrounding suburbs, and the blight and decay of downtown areas. Urban renewal began in the 1960s and 1970s; the downtown area was redeveloped, and the Rapid Transit System was introduced to make the central city more accessible to those on the periphery. During this period, the Bay Area became a focal point of the youth counterculture that was sweeping the nation, and a center for student protest against the Vietnam War (1945–1973) and other types of activism, including the struggle for gay rights. The 1970s ended on a somber note with the 1979 assassination of Mayor George Moscone and the city's first openly gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk. That same year San Francisco elected its first woman mayor, Dianne Feinstein.

In 1989 San Francisco experienced another major earthquake. However, the city moved forward in the following decade. Its city hall was refurbished, and important new facilities were built,