San Francisco, USA

On Wikipedia, there is a list of all the songs written about San Francisco, 247 at the moment - and it keeps growing. It’s no wonder, the city is perhaps the most mythologized in all of the United States. Once the hippie capital of the 1970s, it is today a global center for computer science and technology.

Spanish explorers

Like every city in the U.S., San Francisco began modestly, in the latter half of the 18th century. Long before Spanish explorers arrived in 1769, indigenous peoples had lived in the area for more than 3,000 years.

San Francisco Bay is a natural harbor. In 1776, the Spanish established a mission there, Mission San Francisco de Asís, and later built a fort on the southern side of the strait where the Golden Gate Bridge now stands.

The Spanish controlled the region until 1821, when Mexico gained independence. The First Mexican Republic ruled over and area much larger than today’s Mexico, encompassing all or parts of California, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

Settlers

Under Mexican rule, the area was opened to settlers, and a small community developed near the best anchorage inside the bay. It was called Yerba Buena – “Where the Good Herbs Grow.”

In 1841, the Hudson’s Bay Company established a trading post in the bay, selling goods imported from Vancouver, salmon, timber, and British industrial products, in exchange for hides and tallow.

Invasion

In 1845, the United States annexed Mexico, and the following year the Mexican-American War broke out. When the war ended in 1848, the U.S. had taken control of Mexico’s entire northern region. California had already been invaded in 1846, and in 1847 Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

Freshwater and timber were scarce, and San Francisco remained a small town of around 1,000 inhabitants until gold was discovered in California in 1848. Within a few years, the California Gold Rush swelled the population, numbering 24,000 by the end of 1849.

Despite the lawlessness and crime that the fortune seekers brought with them, the city developed rapidly. In 1869, San Francisco was connected to the national railway network, and in 1873 the city introduced its famous cable cars. By 1890, the population had surpassed 300,000, and the future looked bright.

The earthquake

Along the U.S. West Coast, two tectonic plates meet, massive, rigid slabs of the Earth’s outer shell. The Pacific Plate to the west is being pushed beneath the North American Plate, making the entire region prone to earthquakes. On April 18, 1906, northern California was struck by a devastating one, reaching a magnitude of 7,9.

In San Francisco, buildings collapsed and gas lines ruptured. A massive fire raged for days. Thousands of people lost their lives, and more than half of the city’s 400,000 inhabitants were left homeless.

Reconstruction progressed quickly. The Bank of America generously issued loans to those who had lost their homes, and by 1915 San Francisco was hosting a World’s Fair, a showcase of the city’s recovery.

During World War II, the shipbuilding industry expanded dramatically, and the population grew rapidly.

The hippie city

San Francisco’s harbor area proved unsuitable when large container ships replaced the cargo vessels of the 1950s and ’60s. Shipping operations moved across the bay to Oakland. With the ships went many industrial jobs, and between 1950 and 1980 the city lost more than ten percent of its population.

It was during this period that San Francisco became the gathering place for America’s counterculture. Hippies flocked to the Haight-Ashbury district, while the gay culture found a home in the Castro.

Dot-com

Since the 1990s, it is the internet, more than counterculture, that has defined San Francisco. During the dot-com boom, a large number of startup companies were founded in the city. Many of them are now among the most successful in the world, helping to reinvigorate the local economy alongside finance and tourism.

What is known as Silicon Valley lies south of San Francisco Bay, home to world-famous companies such as Apple, Intel, Nvidia, and many more.

Today, the city also is a hub for research in medicine and biotechnology, as well as for culture. Netflix, and the animation studios Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Animation, and Pixar all have their headquarters in San Francisco. The Academy of Art University is the largest art and design school in the country.

The fog

The fog that often drapes the bay and the city is legendary. It forms when moist ocean air is cooled by cold deep water that rises to the surface as ocean currents meet the coastline.

The fog and proximity to the sea give the city a cooler climate than its latitude suggests. Temperatures vary little throughout the year, but San Francisco is far from a freezing city. The maximum temperature ranges from 14-16°C in winter to 19-21°C in summer and early autumn.

The city receives about 581 millimeters of precipitation annually, mostly between November and March. June through September are typically bone dry.

Normal maximum temperature in November: 17.6°C
Normal rainfall in November: 66 mm