The Ramaytush Ohlone fished, gathered, and tended this peninsula for millennia before the Spanish arrived. The 1776 mission and presidio were the northernmost outposts of New Spain. After Mexican independence in 1821, Yerba Buena traded hides and tallow on the cove. The U.S. flag went up in 1846, the Mormon ship Brooklyn tripled the population on July 31, 1846, and the gold cry of 1848 did the rest. By 1849, the Argonauts — the Forty-Niners — were sailing in from every coast, and what had been a sleepy anchorage was a deepwater port of abandoned ships, mud streets, and instant fortunes. The Bear Flag of the short-lived 1846 California Republic became the state flag in 1911. The "1850" stamped under the bear on our retro logo is the year California — and San Francisco — joined the Union.
Our San Francisco retro logo carries the California Bear and the star of the Bear Flag tradition, with "1850" stamped beneath — the year of California statehood and San Francisco's incorporation. The black-and-white styling is retro, in the visual vocabulary of WPA posters, crate labels, and the wayfinding of the rebuilt city. The bear and star, paired with the date, do the work of placing the design in the founding generation of the state — and the city that came back from 1906, built the Bridge, and ran the cable cars every day in between.
Why People Visit San Francisco California
- Walk or bike across the Golden Gate Bridge — the 1.7-mile Art Deco suspension span that opened May 27, 1937, designed by Joseph Strauss with Charles Ellis and Leon Moisseiff, in Irving Morrow's International Orange against the strait and the fog.
- Ride the Powell-Hyde, Powell-Mason, or California Street cable car — the only moving National Historic Landmark in the country, running on Andrew Hallidie's 1873 system out of the Cable Car Museum and powerhouse at Washington and Mason.
- Visit Mission Dolores at 16th and Dolores — the 1791 adobe chapel, founded 1776, the oldest intact building in San Francisco.
- Walk the Presidio — the Spanish presidio of 1776, the U.S. Army post from 1846 to 1994, now a national park at the south anchor of the Golden Gate Bridge — including Fort Point underneath the bridge approach and the 1794 site of the Castillo de San Joaquin.
- See the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square — the Steiner Street row at 710-720, Queen Anne Victorians built 1892-1896 by Matthew Kavanaugh — from the top of the park lawn with the downtown skyline behind.
- Climb Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill — the 1933 Art Deco fluted column with WPA murals inside and the best three-sixty view of the bay.
- Visit the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina — Bernard Maybeck's 1915 Beaux-Arts rotunda built for the Panama-Pacific Exposition and rebuilt to last in 1965.
- Drive the eight switchbacks of Lombard Street between Hyde and Leavenworth — the "crookedest street in the world."
- Take the ferry from Pier 33 to Alcatraz Island — the 1934-1963 federal penitentiary and now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, with the oldest lighthouse on the West Coast at its summit.
- Walk Golden Gate Park west to Ocean Beach — 1,017 acres of conserved park including the de Young Museum, the Japanese Tea Garden, and the Conservatory of Flowers.
- Walk the Embarcadero from the 1898 Ferry Building south to the ballpark and north to Pier 39, with the Bay Bridge (opened November 12, 1936) overhead at the Embarcadero Center.
- Walk Grant Avenue through Chinatown — the oldest Chinatown in North America, organized in 1848, rebuilt after 1906, gateways and lantern-lit streets between Bush and Broadway.
- Walk Columbus Avenue through North Beach — the historic Italian neighborhood, with the 1953 City Lights Bookstore at Columbus and Broadway.
- Stop at Swan Oyster Depot at 1517 Polk Street — the Danish-founded Cable Oyster Depot of the 1890s rebuilt as Swan in 1912 after the earthquake, with the same Italian marble counter and the same eighteen wooden stools in place ever since, now in its third Sancimino-family generation since 1946.
- Hike Lands End from the Cliff House to the Sutro Baths ruins — the western edge of the city, where the Pacific meets the Golden Gate.
- Catch the view from Twin Peaks at the geographic center of the seven-by-seven peninsula — Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Pacific Heights, and Potrero Hill arranged around it.
- Drive past Oracle Park on the Embarcadero, Chase Center in Mission Bay, and the former Candlestick Point and Kezar Stadium sites — the ballpark and arena footprints of the modern city.
- Take the Larkspur or Sausalito ferry from the Ferry Building for the classic seaward view of the skyline, Alcatraz, and the Bridge.
