Disgusted by increasing corruption and crime, a group of San Franciscans formed a Committee of Vigilance in 1851, and again in 1856. This was exacerbated by squabbling in the United States Senate, where the Compromise of 1850 was igniting a fierce fight over slavery. Like many mining towns, the political situation in early San Francisco was chaotic. clothing, Ghirardelli chocolate, and Wells Fargo bank. Many businesses started at that time to service the growing population are still present today, notably Levi Strauss & Co. The Chinatown district of the city is still one of the largest in the country the city as a whole is rougly one-third Chinese, one of the largest concentrations outside of China. Between January 1848 and December 1849, the population of San Francisco increased from 1,000 to 25,000.
The California gold rush starting in 1848 led to a large growth in population, including considerable immigration. Much of the present downtown is built over the former Yerba Buena Cove, granted to the city by military governor Stephen Watts Kearny in 1847. The first of many environmental transformations was the city's reliance on filled marshlands for real estate. These natural disadvantages forced the town's residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a nineteenth century settlement.
It was then renamed "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Sloat took it in 1846 in the name of the United States. Yerba Buena remained a small town until the Mexican-American War broke out and a naval force under Commodore John D. The area first began to develop as a city under the name of Yerba Buena in 1822, when what is now the downtown area was first settled by William Richardson, an English whaler. A Spanish party led by Juan Bautista de Anza arrived on Maand established the sites for the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asis (named for Saint Francis of Assisi and now popularly known as "Mission Dolores"). When Europeans arrived, they found the area inhabited by the Yelamu tribe, belonging to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people") living in the coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay.Įuropean discovery and exploration of the San Francisco Bay Area began in 1542 and culminated with the mapping of the bay in 1775. Widely recognized landmarks include the San Francisco cable car system, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid.Įuropean visitors to the Bay Area were preceded 10,000 to 20,000 years earlier by Native Americans. It was a center of the dot-com boom at the end of the century. Long enjoying a bohemian reputation, the city became a counterculture magnet in the second half of the 20th century. The phoenix on the city's flag represents San Francisco's "rebirth" from the ashes of the fire that resulted from the quake. The city was devastated by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but was rebuilt quickly. The city grew rapidly due to the California gold rush starting in 1848. The first Europeans to settle in San Francisco were the Spanish, in 1776. census data show that San Francisco has the highest population density of any major U.S. The city is a focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, and part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA), whose population is over 7 million. The city-county also includes several islands in the bay and the Farallon Islands 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. It is a consolidated city-county (the only one in California) situated at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula that forms San Francisco Bay. The City and County of San Francisco (estimated population 799,263) is the fourth-largest city in the state of California, United States, in terms of population.