Like a phoenix across
centuries, San Francisco falls to earthquakes, fires and economic busts and
always rises anew, brighter and reinvigorated. The history of San Francisco,
California, a beloved seaport of dreams and disaster, is rich with the virtues
of vices of generations, making San Francisco's history as vibrant as the
characters that have colored its foggy hills and valleys.
SAN FRANCISCO EARLY HISTORY
The first inhabitants of the San Francisco area
arrived around 3000 B.C. By the 16th century, when the first Europeans sailed
along the california coast (always missing the Golden Gate due to fog),
the area was inhabited by the Ohlone-speaking Yelamu tribe. The first
westerners to see the bay were members of the 1769 Portola expedition. Seven
years later, Juan Bautiza de Anza marched north from San Diego with a
settlement party to establish a Spanish presidio and mission. By 1808 Mission
San Francisco de Asis was the center of spiritual and material life for more
than 1,000 neophytes drawn from local tribes.
SAN FRANCISCO: GOLD RUSH AND RAPID GROWTH
On January 24, 1848, the first gold was found at
Sutter’s Fort, in the California foothills. Within months, San Francisco
(renamed from Yerba Buena in 1847) became the central port and depot of the
frenzied Gold Rush. Over the next year, arriving “forty-niners” increased the
city’s population from 1.000 to 25.000.
SAN FRANCISCO: EARTHQUAKE AND RECOVERY
On April 18, 1906, the San
Andreas Fault slipped more than 10 feet, unleashing a massive earthquake later
estimated at 7.8 on the Richter scale. The tremors broke water mains and
triggered fires that raged for four days, killing 3,000 people, destroying
25,000 buildings and leaving 250,000 homeless. The city rebuilt quickly with an
improved city center and hosted the lavish Panama International Exposition just
nine years later.
SAN FRANCISCO: CONTRACULTURE
The new developments in San
Francisco's infrastructure came alongside a radical development in San
Francisco's culture. San
Francisco Chronicle columnist coined the phrase "Beatnik" to describe
the wave of poets, thinkers and writers sharing a common disenchantment with
American values and the established order that flourished in San Francisco's
cafes, fueled by espressos in havens such as North Beach's City Lights.
SAN FRANCISCO TECH BOOM
If 1950s and 1960s San Francisco was the decade
of Counterculture, San Francisco in the 1990s rushed in the era of
Cyberculture. Seemingly overnight, San Francisco bustled with digital-age
miners looking to strike it rich on technology's vast frontier. The city
swelled with money, restaurants and bars overflowed with "yuppies"
living in swank new lofts and high rent apartments (the byproduct of mass
evictions and displacements), while the fat of venture capital fueled spending
and digital dreams. The tech bubble burst in 2001, and San Francisco, just as
soon as it had filled, drained in months.
