About San Francisco, California (courtesy of Wikipedia)

The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth-largest city in California and the fourteenth-largest in the United States, with a 2005 population of 739,426. It is located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula and has traditionally been the focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, whose population is seven million. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major American city, after New York.

In 1776, the Spanish became the first Europeans to settle in San Francisco, which they named for St. Francis. With the advent of the California gold rush in 1848, and the Comstock Lode and silver mines in 1859, the city entered a period of rapid growth. After being devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt and is today one of the most recognizable cities in the United States.

San Francisco has a unique mix of physical characteristics, including its months-long episodes of fog, its steep rolling hills, its eclectic mix of architecture (including Victorian style houses and modern highrises), and being surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. Famous hallmarks and landmarks include the San Francisco cable cars, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island.

The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people, Native Americans, inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula from at least 8000 BCE until the early 19th century; the major villages on the land that would become San Francisco were Chutchui, Amuctac, Tubsinte, and Petlenuc. Within two generations of European contact, effects associated with the Spanish Mission system[2][3][4], including oppression and disease, drove the Yelamu people to extinction.

The first Europeans reliably known to visit San Francisco Bay arrived on November 2, 1769[5]. The English sea captain and explorer Sir Francis Drake may have sailed into the Golden Gate while circumnavigating the globe in 1579, but no concrete evidence of an English landing has been found. The Spanish exploration party lead by Don Gaspar de Portolà was seeking to expand the Spanish colonial territory from the south, in opposition to the Russian expansion from the north. The first Spanish mission in the area, Mission San Francisco de Asís, was established six years later. An associated military fort was also established in what is now the Presidio, as well as a small village called Yerba Buena. Though Spain held the port until the Mexican independence, (the earliest European explorer of California Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 had missed San Francisco entirely). Russians also coexisted near the Spaniards, having colonized the north Pacific coast as far south as Fort Ross in Sonoma County.

San Francisco in 1860In the 1830s the first city street plan was laid out by William Richardson, who also erected the first significant European built home. Richardson received a large Spanish land grant in Marin County and Richardson Bay to the north bears his name.

The area became Mexican upon its independence and fell into isolation. It was during this period that American and European settlement increased. The United States claimed the city on January 30, 1847, during the Mexican-American War. At that point, despite its useful location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. But two years later, the California gold rush brought a wave of migration and immigration, raising the population from 1,000 to 25,000 by December 1849. The railroad, banking, and mining industries became major economic forces in the city.

The influx of Chinese workers created a sizable Chinatown district, and Chinese Americans remain one of the city's largest ethnic groups. Hostility toward immigrants contributed to lynchings and race riots in the 1850s, and to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which drastically restricted immigration from China until 1943.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the fires that followed it (burning out of control due to the loss of water supply), destroyed approximately 80% of the city, including almost all of the downtown core. At least 3,000 died, while refugees settled temporarily in Golden Gate Park and in undeveloped areas.

The opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1936 and 1937, respectively, made the city more accessible, and its population grew faster in the 1940s due to its importance as a military base in World War II. Urban planning projects in the 1950s further transformed the city, tearing down and redeveloping many neighborhoods and introducing major freeways.

In April 1945, the UN Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco. In 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco was also drafted and signed.

In the second half of the 20th century, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture, drawing artists, Beat Generation writers, rock musicians and hippies. It also became a center of the Gay Liberation movement; San Francisco has a higher percentage of gay men and lesbians than any other major U.S. city.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged many of the city's freeways, as well as the Marina District and the South of Market.

A further wave of economic expansion and physical development began in the mid 1980s with a boom in construction of skyscrapers and condominiums that some referred to as "Manhattanization". During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer software professionals moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals that changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified, driving up rents, housing prices and the cost and standard of living. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, it had a major impact on the city's employment and venture-capital markets as many of these companies and their employees left. High technology continues to be a mainstay of San Francisco's economy in the early 21st century. In addition, another wave of Manhattanization has started in the city in the mid-00's, with highrise condos sprouting in places like South of Market and Rincon Hill (also see One Rincon Hill). This second wave of highrises will significantly alter the San Francisco skyline once again and possibly take back the title of the tallest building on the West Coast from Los Angeles. Unlike the first wave of towers, this second wave has met little in the way of opposition from citizens and the city itself.

Homelessness has been a highly prevalent, controversial, and chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1980's. The city has the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major city in the United States. In 2002, San Francisco had as many homeless people as the city of New York even though it has one-tenth of its population, and the number of people who died on the streets was twice that of the entire state of Florida. The problem is a source of much discussion, and has become a significant factor in the politics of the city, most importantly in the mayoral campaigns of Frank Jordan and Gavin Newsom.

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