TWHP


San Francisco, The City and Port   

Juan Bautista de Anza founded the first settlements of San Francisco in 1776 in the form of a fort near the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a mission--named after Saint Francis--several miles south. The City proper really grew around an inlet now covered by the financial district. Yerba Buena Cove was first named in 1822, after William Richardson, an English whaler, identified it as one of the best sites in the area to establish an anchorage. He built the first structure there in 1835, when General Mariano Vallejo, the Mexican administrator of Northern California, appointed him as harbormaster.

Sand dunes surrounded Yerba Buena, a cold, unpleasant place devoid of trees, swept by wind and covered by fog. The early population seldom exceeded a few dozens until Sam Brannan arrived in 1846 with a ship full of Mormons possessed of badly needed skills--carpentry, blacksmithing, printing; that was the same year that California became American territory as a result of the Mexican War. Shortly thereafter, the City's name was changed to San Francisco, in order to avoid the confusion threatened since the new town of Benicia originally planned to call itself "Francisca;" both names derived from Vallejo's wife, and city fathers hoped to create the impression that it was the primary city of the San Francisco Bay.

After the discovery of gold in January 1848, the population boomed from about a thousand people to some 25,000 within a year. Quickly becoming the largest city west of the Mississippi, San Francisco's booming population contrived myriad ways to profit from the miners and the gold flooding the region, prices skyrocketing. Hotels, banks, saloons, casinos and music halls proliferated as the harbor filled with derelict ships, abandoned by crews in search of gold. Several fires ravaged it in the first five years, many apparently set by thugs who hoped to loot it during the panics. The first Vigilance Committee--a formation of respectable citizens pledged to fight crime--was formed in 1851 to rid the City of thuggery, and the second convened in 1856, for the same purpose. In both cases, the citizens relinquished their authority to civic authorities after the crises.

From the beginning, San Francisco was, perhaps, the most widely diverse city seen to that point, for the first time mixing together large numbers of Americans, Chinese, Mexicans, South Americans, Pacific Islanders and every type of European. The City really began to take shape after William Ralston opened the Bank of California in 1864, initially exploiting the silver finds of Nevada, and using the proceeds to finance factories, railroads, real estate deals and impressive buildings, most notably, the Palace Hotel, the largest, most luxurious hotel in the world. The City boasted a frenzied stock market in the Ralston Era, engaging people from every station of life in the pursuit of instant riches; most were ruined. That speculation starved local businesses of much needed capital, and the completion of the Transcontinenal Railroad starved them of business as well when cheap goods from the East undercut local producers. Over the ensuing years, railroads crippled the state's economy with exorbitant rates, but San Francisco propspered as the funnel for growing industries: shipping, agriculture, lumber.

The old City suffered destruction in the earthquake and fire of 1906, but it was rebuilt anew by 1915, the year of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, conceived to show off the new San Francisco and celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.


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