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San Francisco

San Francisco

State

Northern California

Country

United States

Continent

North America

Size

10,329 KM2

Population

881,549

Spending Budget

$476 - $3,075

Famous For

  • Alcatraz Island
  • Golden Gate Bridge

Best Time to Visit

  • January
  • September

History

The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. The first maritime presence occurred on August 5, 1775, when San Carlos—commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala—became the first ship to anchor in the bay. The following year, on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, William Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth, erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with 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 on January 30 of the next year, and Mexico officially ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war in 1848. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.

Present Day

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a cultural, commercial, and financial center in Northern California. San Francisco is the 16th most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 881,549 residents as of 2019. It covers an area of about 46.89 square miles (121.4 square kilometers), mostly at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the 12th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States by population, with 4.7 million people, and the fourth-largest by economic output, with GDP of $592 billion in 2019. With San Jose, it forms the fifth most populous combined statistical area in the United States, with 9.67 million residents as of 2019. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include SF, San Fran, The City, and Frisco. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later.

Future

In coming years, San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood will look vastly different than it does today. Once made up of industrial warehouses and shipyards, the 303-acre waterfront area started redeveloping in the late 1990s — adding thousands of new housing units, public plazas, a state-of-the-art medical center, and 580,000 square feet of office space. And in 2019, the Chase Center, an 18,000-seat arena, will open along with a nearby new subway stop and 100,000 square feet of retail space. It's a long-term redevelopment project for the city, and is expected to last at least two more decades. Mission Bay is not the only mega-project set to transform San Francisco, however. Here is a look at some of the most substantial projects to come to California's tech hub. The 5M Development — $1 billion Comprised of three towers, the 5M development will cover four acres between 5th, Mission, and Howard streets in downtown San Francisco. Developers say 241 of its 688 housing units will be offered below-market-rates. It will also add 807,600 square feet of office space, 50,000 square feet of public space, and 35,000 square feet of retail like restaurants and shops. Construction was slated to begin in late 2016, but in January 2016, two months after San Francisco approved the project, local activists sued the city over it. According to Curbed, they claimed that the 5M Environmental Impact Report did not show how much the project could increase the city's traffic, generate shade on city parks, and lower the amount of open space. The lawsuit was denied in early 2017, and an appeal was recently filed. (Though, as the San Francisco Business Times notes, it's not clear if the suit will proceed.) Developers Forest City say that construction will start in 2018 (though no exact timeline has been announced). The Business Times pegs 5M's cost anywhere from $700 million to $1 billion.
Must Visit Places ------------

Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km) strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula—to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco and California. It was initially designed by engineer Joseph Strauss in 1917. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Frommer's travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world." At the time of its opening in 1937, it was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of 4,200 feet (1,280 m) and a total height of 746 feet (227 m). Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. A ferry service began as early as 1820, with a regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for the purpose of transporting water to San Francisco. The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito Ferry Terminal in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost $1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.

Alcatraz Island

Alcatraz Island is located in San Francisco Bay, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison, and a federal prison, the latter operated from August 11, 1934 until March 21, 1963. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape all but impossible.[5] Since the late 20th century, it has become a major tourist attraction. Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Native Americans, initially primarily from San Francisco, who were later joined by AIM and other urban Indians from other parts of the country, who were part of a wave of Native American activists organizing public protests across the US through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz was transferred to the Department of Interior to become part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Today, the island's facilities are managed by the National Park Service as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Visitors can reach the island in fewer than 15 minutes by ferry ride from Pier 33, located between the San Francisco Ferry Building and Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Hornblower Cruises, operating under the name Alcatraz Cruises, is the official ferry provider to and from the island.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum's current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts, and moving into the 21st century. The collection is displayed in 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) of exhibition space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall, and one of the largest in the world for modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1935 in the War Memorial Building, the museum opened in its Mario Botta designed home in the SoMa district in 1995. SFMOMA reopened on May 14, 2016, following a major three-year-long expansion project by Snøhetta architects. The expansion more than doubles the museum's gallery spaces and provides almost six times as much public space as the previous building, allowing SFMOMA to showcase an expanded collection along with the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection of contemporary art.

Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres (412 ha) of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation

California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research. The institution is located at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Completely rebuilt in 2008, the Academy's primary building in Golden Gate Park covers 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2). In early 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Academy of Sciences had around 500 employees and an annual revenue of about $33 million. The California Academy of Sciences, California's oldest operating museum and research institution for the natural sciences, is governed by a forty-one member Board of Trustees who are nominated and chosen by the California Academy of Sciences Fellows. The Academy Fellows are, in turn, "[n]ominated by their colleagues and appointed by the Board of Trustees...the Fellows remain members of the Fellowship for life." The Board of Trustees are then responsible for appointing the executive management of the Academy, who in turn are responsible for overseeing the Academy's overall operation and the hiring of its other managers and employees.

Muir Woods National Monument

Muir Woods National Monument is a United States National Monument managed by the National Park Service, named after naturalist John Muir. It is located on Mount Tamalpais near the Pacific coast, in southwestern Marin County, California. It is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and is 12 miles (19 km) north of San Francisco. It protects 554 acres (224 ha), of which 240 acres (97 ha) are old growth coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests, one of a few such stands remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Muir Woods National Monument is an old-growth coastal redwood forest. Due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, the forest is regularly shrouded in a coastal marine layer fog, contributing to a wet environment that encourages vigorous plant growth. The fog is also vital for the growth of the redwoods as they use moisture from the fog during droughty seasons, in particular the dry summer. The monument is cool and moist year round with average daytime temperatures between 40 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 21 °C). Rainfall is heavy during the winter and summers are almost completely dry with the exception of fog drip caused by the fog passing through the trees. Annual precipitation in the park ranges from 39.4 inches (1,000 mm) in the lower valley to 47.2 inches (1,200 mm) higher up in the mountain slopes.