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San Francisco has a unique mix of physical characteristics, including its months-long episodes of fog, its steep rolling hills, its eclectic mix of architecture (including Victorian style houses and modern highrises), and being surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco ... more »
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Airports San Francisco has a unique mix of physical characteristics, including its months-long episodes of fog, its steep rolling hills, its eclectic mix of architecture (including Victorian style houses and modern highrises), and being surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. Famous hallmarks and landmarks include the San Francisco cable cars, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island.
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The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth-largest city in California and the fourteenth-largest in the United States, with a 2005 population of 739,426. It is located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula and is the focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, whose population is seven million. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major American city, after New York.
In 1776, the Spanish became the first Europeans to settle in San Francisco, which they named for St. Francis. With the advent of the California gold rush in 1848, and the Comstock Lode and silver mines in 1859, the city entered a period of rapid growth. After being devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt and is today one of the most recognizable cities in the United States.
The City and County of San Francisco is located on the U.S. mainland at the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several islands are part of the city, notably Alcatraz Island, Treasure Island, and most of the Red Rock Island near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean.
The city and county has a total area of 231.9 mi² (600.7 km²). 46.7 mi² (120.9 km²) of it is land and 185.2 mi² (479.7 km²) of it (79.86%) is water. The land within the city limits roughly forms a seven by seven mile square, which has become a colloquialism referring to the city's shape.
The geographical center of the city is on the east side of Grand View Avenue between Alvarado and Twenty-third Streets.
San Francisco is famous for its hills. A "hill" in San Francisco is an elevation that is over 100 ft (30 m). There are a total of 42 hills within city limits. Some of these hills are neighborhoods such as Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill, while some of these hills are public parks and open space such as Bernal Heights, Twin Peaks, Mount Sutro, Mount Davidson, and Buena Vista Park. Alamo Square and Lafayette Square in Pacific Heights are Parks on hills less strenuous for walking, and surrounded by wonderful Victorian and other fancy houses.
Near the geographic center of the city and away from the downtown area are a series of less densely populated hills. Dominating this area is Mount Sutro, which is the site of Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio transmission tower, that is a well known landmark to city residents. Nearby are the equally well known Twin Peaks, which are a pair of hills resting at one of the city's highest points. About 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Mount Sutro is San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, which is over 925 feet (282 m) high. On top of Mount Davidson is a 103 foot (31.4 m) tall cross built in 1934.
San Francisco lies near the San Andreas and Hayward faults, two major sources of earthquake activity in California. The most serious earthquake, in 1906, is mentioned above. Earlier significant quakes rocked the city in 1851, 1858, 1865, and 1868. The Daly City Earthquake of 1957 caused some damage. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which also did significant damage to parts of the city, is also famous for having interrupted a World Series baseball game between the Bay Area's two Major League Baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics.
The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. New buildings must meet high structural standards, and older buildings and bridges must be retrofitted to comply with code.
Entire neighborhoods of the city such as the Marina and Hunters Point were created and sit on man made landfill (made up of mud, sand, and rubble from past earthquakes) and other reclamation projects over the San Francisco Bay when flatland became scarce. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction during earthquakes causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.
The most impressive example of an "infill neighborhood" is Treasure Island. It was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from tunneling through Yerba Buena Island in the construction of the Bay Bridge. It was a site for the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair, and it was originally envisioned that Treasure Island would serve as the site for San Francisco's municipal airport, but it became a Navy base at the start of World War II. In 1997 Treasure Island was returned to the city and it provides a unique vantage point to view the San Francisco skyline.
The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people, Native Americans, inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula from at least 8000 BCE until the early 19th century; the major villages on the land that would become San Francisco were Chutchui, Amuctac, Tubsinte, and Petlenuc. Within two generations of European contact, effects associated with the Spanish Mission system, including oppression and disease, drove the Yelamu people to extinction.
Sir Francis Drake
The first Europeans reliably known to visit San Francisco Bay arrived on November 2, 1769. The English sea captain and explorer Sir Francis Drake may have sailed into the Golden Gate while circumnavigating the globe in 1579, but no concrete evidence of an English landing has been found. The Spanish exploration party lead by Don Gaspar de Portolà was seeking to expand the Spanish colonial territory from the south, in opposition to the Russian expansion from the north.
Spanish Mission
The first Spanish mission in the area, Mission San Francisco de Asís, was established six years later. An associated military fort was also established in what is now the Presidio, as well as a small village called Yerba Buena. Though Spain held the port until the Mexican independence, (the earliest European explorer of California Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 had missed San Francisco entirely). Russians also coexisted near the Spaniards, having colonized the north Pacific coast as far south as Fort Ross in Sonoma County.
William Richardson
In the 1830s the first city street plan was laid out by William Richardson, who also erected the first significant European built home. Richardson received a large Spanish land grant in Marin County and Richardson Bay to the north bears his name.
The area became Mexican upon its independence and fell into isolation. It was during this period that American and European settlement increased. The United States claimed the city on January 30, 1847, during the Mexican-American War. At that point, despite its useful location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. But two years later, the California gold rush brought a wave of migration and immigration, raising the population from 1,000 to 25,000 by December 1849. The railroad, banking, and mining industries became major economic forces in the city.
Chinese
The influx of Chinese workers created a sizable Chinatown district, and Chinese Americans remain one of the city's largest ethnic-groups. Hostility toward immigrants contributed to lynchings and race riots in the 1850s, and to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which drastically restricted immigration from China until 1943.
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the fires that followed it (burning out of control due to the loss of water supply), destroyed approximately 80% of the city, including almost all of the downtown core. At least 3,000 died, while refugees settled temporarily in Golden Gate Park and in undeveloped areas.
Bridge
The opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1936 and 1937, respectively, made the city more accessible, and its population grew faster in the 1940s due to its importance as a military base in World War II. Urban planning projects in the 1950s further transformed the city, tearing down and redeveloping many neighborhoods and introducing major freeways.
In April 1945, the UN Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco. In 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco was also drafted and signed.
Counter Culture
In the second half of the 20th century, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture, drawing artists, Beat Generation writers, rock musicians and hippies. It also became a center of the Gay Liberation movement; San Francisco has a higher percentage of gay men and lesbians than any other major U.S. city.
Another Earthquake
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged many of the city's freeways, as well as the Marina District and the South of Market.
Economic Expansion
A further wave of economic expansion and physical development began in the mid 1980s with a boom in construction of skyscrapers and condominiums that some referred to as "Manhattanization". During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer software professionals moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals that changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified, driving up rents, housing prices and the cost and standard of living. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, it had a major impact on the city's employment and venture-capital markets as many of these companies and their employees left.
High technology continues to be a mainstay of San Francisco's economy in the early 21st century. In addition, another wave of Manhattanization has started in the city in the mid-00's, with highrise condos sprouting in places like South of Market and Rincon Hill. This second wave of highrises will significantly alter the San Francisco skyline once again and possibly take back the title of the tallest building on the West Coast from Los Angeles. Unlike the first wave of towers, this second wave has met little in the way of opposition from citizens and the city itself.
Roads and highways
Because of its unique geography—making "beltways" somewhat impractical—and the results of the "Freeway revolts" of the late 1950s, San Francisco is one of the few cities in the U.S. including Boston and New York City that has opted for European style arterial thoroughfares instead of a large network of major highways.
From San Francisco, the Bay Bridge is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. Similarly, the Golden Gate Bridge is the only direct road access from San Francisco to Marin County.
The major highways in San Francisco are Interstate 80 which begins at the Bay Bridge and goes eastbound; U.S. Route 101 which extends Interstate 80 to the south toward Silicon Valley. Northbound, U.S. 101 uses arterial streets, Van Ness Avenue and Lombard Street to the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County. Interstate 280 runs from South of Market to the west, and then south toward Silicon Valley and Highway 1 or Park Presidio Blvd. in the Richmond district and 19th Ave. in the Sunset and Parkside districts which bisects the westside of the city as an arterial thoroughfare.
Public transportation
San Francisco has the most extensive public transit system on the U.S. West Coast and one of the most diverse in the country. It also has one of the highest riderships; 35% of the city's population use public transit as part of their daily commute.
Muni is the city-owned public transit system which operates the Muni Metro light rail system, the F Market heritage streetcar line and the San Francisco cable car system, together with buses and trolleybuses. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is the regional transit system which connects San Francisco with the East Bay through an underwater tunnel (the Transbay Tube), and Northern San Mateo County, California communities and San Francisco International Airport on the San Francisco Peninsula.
In addition, a commuter rail service, Caltrain, runs between San Francisco, San Jose and (with limited service) Gilroy, in southern Santa Clara County. Caltrain also stops at many places on the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. A small fleet of commuter ferries operate from the Embarcadero to points in Marin County, Oakland, and north to Vallejo in Solano County.
San Francisco International Airport
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is located 8 miles (12.9 km) south of the city in San Mateo County on a landfill extension into the San Francisco Bay. Towns adjacent to SFO are: Millbrae, San Bruno, and South San Francisco. It is the second major international hub airport in California, after LAX in Los Angeles. During the late 1990s economic boom, SFO was the sixth busiest international airport in the world, but has since fallen off of the top ten during the economic depression of 2000-2001. Despite this, SFO is the 9th largest airport in the United States, and 14th largest in the world, handling 51 million people in 2005.
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Rail extensions there include BART and Caltrain via BART at nearby Millbrae, California.
Other large airports in the region include Oakland International Airport (OAK), 20 miles (32.2 km) east of San Francisco and Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), 44 miles (70.8 km) southwest of San Francisco.
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In the years following World War II, San Francisco accelerated its transformation into a center of alternative culture and lifestyles. Movements instrumental in this change include the beat generation or beatniks (the term beatnik was coined by a local journalist Herb Caen), the San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s, hippie culture, women's liberation, gay civil rights, and the Summer of Love in the Haight Ashbury in the 1960s.
Left Wing
During these times, San Francisco moved dramatically to the left and is now considered to be one of the hypocenters of liberalism in the United States, and is a major stronghold for the Democratic party. Green party candidates also do well as several prominent Green party members hail from San Francisco. The city's board of supervisors regularly passes liberal resolutions such as banning U.S. Military recruiters on school campuses that have drawn the ire and ridicule of conservatives nationwide.
No Guns?
In early 2006 San Francisco passed into law a regulation that would ban private possession of handguns and ammunition in the city limits, and prohibits the sale, manufacture, transfer and distribution of any firearms within city limits. A similar law was overturned in 1982 on the grounds that it violated the state constitution. The law, intended to go into effect March 1, 2006, was immediately challenged on state constitutional grounds by the National Rifle Association. The law is currently on hold pending a court decision in the case, Fiscal v. San Francisco.
Gentrification
In the last decade, driven by the allures of its salutary climate and culture, and enabled by the great wealth generated by the tech revolution, San Francisco has seen major gentrification. Significant numbers of the wealthy and high income-earners have settled in the city driving up the cost and the standard of living. It has become difficult for low and middle-income earners to live in San Francisco, as many have moved out of the city, most notably across the bay to Oakland and Berkeley (as well as completely out of the state). San Francisco has the smallest share of children of any major U.S. city, with city's 18 and under population at just 14.5 percent.
Billionares Love It!
Behind New York, Moscow and London, San Francisco is 4th in the world in terms of numbers of billionaires living within its city limits, while having less than 10% the population of the above. San Francisco has been ranked by many private companies such as the Mercer human resources firm as one of the best cities to live in United States (second to Honolulu) and 28th best in the world.
Gay People
The high concentration of gay people in the Castro, coupled with the city's historical contributions to gay rights, has earned San Francisco the reputation of the "Gay Mecca". It is the world's most popular destination for gay tourists and hosts San Francisco Pride, the world's best known gay pride parade and festival, in June. The Castro is also home to the Castro Theatre, a 1922 movie palace which is home to many film festivals, and known nationally for the quality of its programming of both new and classic films.
Famous fictional works set in San Francisco include The Joy Luck Club, The Maltese Falcon, and Tales of the City.
Tony Bennett
Through the years San Francisco has been the subject of popular songs, the most famous of which is arguably "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" by Tony Bennett.
* Surrounded on three sides by water, San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean. The weather is remarkably cool all year round, characterized by foggy summers and rainy winters; average daily high temperatures in the summer typically range from 60°F to 75°F (15°C to 24°C), while in the winter it hovers between 50°F and 60°F (10°C to 15°C) during the day but can, on a very cold day, fall to between 41°F (5°C) and freezing at night, although during nearly all winters no temperatures at or below freezing are recorded in most parts of the city. Rain in the summer is rare, but winters can be very rainy. Snowfall is extraordinarily rare.
Summers in San Francisco are uncharacteristically cold when compared to the rest of California, and the country. The Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the city is particularly cold year round with the ocean temperature at about 50°F (10°C) throughout the year. Summer temperatures in San Francisco are significantly lower than the inland locations of the Bay Area and parts of inland California such as the Central Valley, where temperatures regularly top 104°F (40°C) in the summer. In July/August, when the rest of the United States is fighting record high temperatures, it would not be uncommon to be wearing a sweater and/or windbreaker in San Francisco. A famous quotation, incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain goes, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland creates the city's characteristic foggy weather that can cover the western half of the city in fog all day during the summer and early fall, as well as cover the rest of the San Francisco metropolitan area as far as 35 to 50 miles (50 to 80 kilometers) inland (the fog often burns off during the day at inland locations). The fog is less pronounced during the late spring and during the months of September and October, which are generally the warmer, more "summer-like" months of the year in San Francisco.
Even within the city itself there are distinct microclimates, generally much more differentiated in the summer than in the winter. In the summer months it will regularly be very foggy and cool in the Sunset District in the western half of San Francisco at the same time that it is sunny and perhaps 10°F (5°C) warmer downtown or in the bayside neighborhood of Hunters Point.
In January, morning lows average 46°F (8°C) and afternoon highs average 58°F (14°C). In September (the warmest month), lows average 56°F (13°C) and highs average 71°F (22°C). San Francisco receives an average of 19.97 in (507.2 mm) of precipitation annually, 85% of which falls between November and March. May through September are almost completely free of precipitation.
Temperature - Yearly Average
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Distances are calculated as the crow flies, and are provided as an aid in planning only.
* This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Source wikipedia.
