At 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, a magnitude-7.9 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault ran for forty-five seconds and toppled the city; the fire that followed burned for four days, destroyed eighty percent of San Francisco, and killed more than three thousand people. It remains the city’s defining catastrophe — and its defining recovery. San Francisco rebuilt fast enough to host a world’s fair nine years later, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, whose Palace of Fine Arts by Bernard Maybeck still stands on the Marina. Coit Tower added its fluted column to Telegraph Hill in 1933, and Alcatraz Island served as the federal penitentiary from 1934 to 1963.
At 4 a.m. on August 2, 1873, Andrew Hallidie ran the first cable car down Clay Street; the system is the only moving National Historic Landmark in the United States.
Why People Visit San Francisco California
- Walk or bike the Golden Gate Bridge, then see it from Fort Point below, Baker Beach, or the Marin headlands — International Orange against the fog.
- Ride a cable car over Nob Hill and Russian Hill — the 1873 system is the only moving National Historic Landmark in the country.
- Take the ferry to Alcatraz Island for the penitentiary years and the view back at the city.
- See the Painted Ladies from Alamo Square at golden hour, the Queen Anne row of the 1890s against the downtown skyline.
- Enter Chinatown through the Dragon Gate for dim sum and lantern-strung alleys — the oldest Chinatown in North America.
- Wander North Beach for espresso, the City Lights bookstore of the Beats, and the climb to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill — listening for the wild parrots overhead.
- Visit the Mission District for Mission Dolores — the 1791 adobe that is the city’s oldest building — the murals, and a Mission-style burrito.
- Graze the Ferry Building marketplace, then watch the sea lions haul out along the Fisherman’s Wharf piers.
- Walk Lands End past the Sutro Baths ruins to Ocean Beach, or catch the whole grid from Twin Peaks.
- Drive — or better, walk — the crooked block of Lombard Street down Russian Hill.