San Francisco California — Retro Vintage History

San Francisco is the city the Gold Rush built and the 1906 earthquake rebuilt. The Ramaytush Ohlone have been the original peoples of this seven-by-seven-mile peninsula for at least ten thousand years. On March 28, 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza planted a cross at the tip of the peninsula above what is now Fort Point and selected the sites of a presidio and a mission; on June 29, 1776 — five days before the Declaration of Independence was signed across the continent — Father Francisco Palóu and Father Pedro Cambón celebrated the first mass at Mission San Francisco de Asís, and on October 9 they formally dedicated the mission. Lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga founded the Presidio of San Francisco on September 17, 1776. The adobe chapel completed in 1791, known as Mission Dolores for the nearby Arroyo de los Dolores, still stands and is the oldest intact building in the city. A small Mexican-era village called Yerba Buena grew up along the cove. The U.S. Navy took it without a shot in July 1846, and on January 30, 1847, Lieutenant Washington Bartlett renamed the place San Francisco. A year later, on January 24, 1848, James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill on the American River; on May 12 of that year, a Mormon merchant named Sam Brannan walked San Francisco's streets with a vial of gold flakes shouting Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River! Brannan had already bought every pick, shovel, and pan he could find. By the end of 1848 the town of fewer than a thousand was a city of twenty-five thousand. San Francisco incorporated on April 15, 1850, the same year California became the thirty-first state. At four in the morning on August 2, 1873, the Scottish-born inventor Andrew Smith Hallidie took the controls of the Clay Street Hill Railroad and ran the first cable car down the Nob Hill grade — the world's first successful cable railway, and today, with the Powell-Hyde, Powell-Mason, and California Street lines, the only moving National Historic Landmark in the United States. The Painted Ladies of Alamo Square — the Queen Anne row at 710-720 Steiner Street, built between 1892 and 1896 by the developer Matthew Kavanaugh — were a generation old when, at five-twelve 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. Eighty percent of San Francisco was destroyed. The city rebuilt fast enough to throw a world's fair in 1915 — the Panama-Pacific International Exposition on the Marina — and Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts still stands from it. Coit Tower went up on Telegraph Hill in 1933. Alcatraz Island was the federal penitentiary from 1934 to 1963. Joseph B. Strauss broke ground for the Golden Gate Bridge on January 5, 1933, and at six in the morning on May 27, 1937, two hundred thousand people walked across the new four-thousand-two-hundred-foot Art Deco span — Irving Morrow's International Orange against the fog and the strait. Lombard Street still bends eight times down Russian Hill. The Painted Ladies are still on Steiner. The fog still pours through the Gate every evening from May to September. On the Bay since 1776.

What's with the Fog Voices of San Francisco? When the marine layer pours through the Golden Gate, the city changes texture: hills blur, streetlights glow warmer, and sounds seem to travel in strange ways. Fog Voices is what it feels like when a horn, a cable car bell, or a distant cheer sounds closer than the view suggests. A quick test is to listen at a corner: if you hear the same sound both crisp and muffled, the fog is thickening and the air is damp enough to bend and soften it. That is acoustics and moisture, not ghosts. Add steep streets and hard facades, and the fog becomes a quiet editor, turning familiar blocks into a soft-spoken map.

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.

The cable cars came in 1873 and ran twenty-three lines across fifty-three miles of track by 1890. Wells Fargo had been founded in San Francisco in 1852; Bank of America followed in 1904. The Ferry Building rose at the foot of Market Street in 1898 and survived the quake. The 1906 earthquake and the four-day fire destroyed twenty-eight thousand buildings and killed more than three thousand people, but the rebuild was already underway by the first anniversary. The 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition was the announcement that the city was back. Coit Tower went up in 1933 on the fluted Art Deco design of Arthur Brown Jr. The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, the same decade Alcatraz became the federal prison no inmate ever escaped from. The Bay Bridge had opened six months earlier, on November 12, 1936. The cable cars were saved by Friedel Klussmann's 1947 citizens' campaign and were named a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

San Francisco's lore is the lore of every place built on a fault line: the dreamers and the schemers, the fog and the foghorns, the ships in Yerba Buena Cove with their masts sticking up out of the mud where they had been pulled ashore and built around. The Italians who settled North Beach. The Chinese who built Chinatown — the oldest in North America, organized in 1848 and rebuilt after the quake. The Danes who opened the Cable Oyster Depot in Polk Gulch in the 1890s and rebuilt it as Swan Oyster Depot at 1517 Polk Street in 1912, where the same Italian marble counter and the same eighteen wooden stools are still in place after a century, now run by the third generation of the Sancimino family who bought it in 1946. The Beats who read poetry at City Lights Bookstore on Columbus Avenue from 1953 forward. The fog horns of Lime Point and Mile Rocks. The smell of sourdough on the Embarcadero. The clang of a cable car bell rising up Powell Street at six in the morning.

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.

Today San Francisco is, above everything, a peninsula city — seven miles by seven miles, forty-nine hills, the strait on one side and the bay on the other. It is the Golden Gate Bridge in the late-afternoon orange, Mission Dolores still standing two hundred and fifty years after the Spanish mass of June 29, 1776, the cable cars still climbing Hyde Street, the Painted Ladies still on Steiner, and the fog still pouring under the Bridge every evening from May to September. Our San Francisco designs are made for that city — the city that the Gold Rush built, the 1906 earthquake rebuilt, and the Golden Gate has watched over since the spring of 1937.

San Francisco California — Travel Guide

Visiting San Francisco California Today

San Francisco is the seven-by-seven-mile peninsula city at the mouth of San Francisco Bay, with the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Golden Gate strait to the north. It is a year-round destination; the clearest months are September and October, the foggiest are May through August, and most major events — Pride, Bay to Breakers, Outside Lands, Fleet Week, the Chinese New Year Parade — fall between February and October. The cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores, the Presidio, and Alcatraz are all open year-round.

The Golden Gate, the Cable Cars, the Painted Ladies, and the City That Came Back from 1906

For visitors searching for things to do in 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.

Why People Visit San Francisco California

San Francisco offers the Golden Gate Bridge in International Orange against the strait, the 1776 Mission Dolores still standing as the oldest building in the city, the only moving National Historic Landmark in the country still running uphill on Andrew Hallidie's 1873 system, the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square that survived 1906, the 1915 Palace of Fine Arts, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, Lombard Street's eight switchbacks down Russian Hill, Alcatraz federal-prison rock in the bay, Chinatown — the oldest in North America — rebuilt after the fire, the 1898 Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, the 1912 marble counter at Swan Oyster Depot on Polk Street, forty-nine hills, the western beach at Ocean Beach, and the fog that pours through the Gate every evening from May to September. It is a peninsula city that came back from a magnitude-7.9 earthquake and built the most photographed bridge in the world inside thirty years. On the Bay since 1776.

For deeper reading on San Francisco, California history described here — the long Ramaytush Ohlone heritage of the seven-by-seven peninsula and the Yelamu of San Francisco before contact, the March 28, 1776 selection of the Presidio and Mission sites by Juan Bautista de Anza at the close of his overland expedition from Tubac, the June 29 / October 9, 1776 founding of Mission San Francisco de Asís by Father Francisco Palóu and Father Pedro Cambón and the August 2, 1791 dedication of the adobe chapel that remains the oldest intact building in the city, the September 17, 1776 founding of the Presidio by Lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga, the growth of the Mexican-era village of Yerba Buena on the cove and its January 30, 1847 renaming as San Francisco by Lieutenant Washington Bartlett, James Marshall's January 24, 1848 gold discovery at Sutter's Mill on the American River, Sam Brannan's May 12, 1848 gold cry through the streets of San Francisco, the city's incorporation on April 15, 1850 and California statehood on September 9 of the same year, Andrew Smith Hallidie's 4 a.m. August 2, 1873 inaugural run of the Clay Street Hill Railroad as the world's first successful cable railway, the 5:12 a.m. April 18, 1906 magnitude-7.9 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault and the four-day fire that destroyed eighty percent of the city, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts that survives from it, the construction of Coit Tower in 1933, the 1934-1963 federal penitentiary at Alcatraz, the January 5, 1933 groundbreaking and May 27, 1937 opening of the Golden Gate Bridge under chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss with the design work of Charles Alton Ellis and Leon Moisseiff and the Art Deco and International Orange of Irving F. Morrow, the 1947 citizens' campaign of Friedel Klussmann that saved the cable cars, the 1964 designation of the cable car system as a National Historic Landmark, and the 1994 transfer of the Presidio to the National Park Service — it may be useful to consult (1) the California Historical Society in San Francisco, the primary scholarly repository for the 1848-1855 Gold Rush archive, the 1906 earthquake-and-fire collection, and the broader California-statehood records, (2) the San Francisco Public Library San Francisco History Center on Larkin Street for the city directories, Sanborn maps, newspaper microfilm (the California Star from January 9, 1847 forward, the Daily Alta California, the Chronicle, the Examiner, the Call), and the photograph collection, (3) the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, the principal western-Americana research repository, with the Hubert Howe Bancroft California manuscript collection, the 1906 earthquake photograph archive, and the Spanish-and-Mexican-California papers, (4) the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service Golden Gate National Recreation Area archives for the 1776 founding records, the U.S. Army post papers from 1846 to 1994, and the 1962 National Historic Landmark documentation, (5) the Mission Dolores archive and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco for the 1776 founding records, the 1791 chapel dedication, the Ohlone baptism registers, and the post-1906 reconstruction documentation, (6) the U.S. Geological Survey 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Centennial archive and the Lawson Report of 1908 for the seismological record, (7) the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Cable Car Museum at Washington and Mason for the 1873-forward cable-car operating records, the Hallidie papers, and the 1964 National Historic Landmark designation file, (8) the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District archive at the bridge's south plaza for the 1928-forward bridge-district records, the Strauss-Ellis-Moisseiff-Morrow design papers, and the 1937 opening-day documentation, and (9) the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone for the descendant-community records of the original peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. For deeper local San Francisco research, it may be useful to reach out to (1) the California Historical Society, (2) the San Francisco Public Library San Francisco History Center, (3) the Bancroft Library, (4) the Society of California Pioneers, (5) the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, (6) the Presidio Trust, (7) the National Park Service Golden Gate National Recreation Area, (8) the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Cable Car Museum, and (9) the Mission Dolores archive. For travel and visitor information in San Francisco, it may be useful to contact (1) San Francisco Travel for citywide visitor information, (2) the National Park Service Golden Gate National Recreation Area for Alcatraz Island, the Presidio, Fort Point, and Lands End information, (3) the Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center for bridge-visit information, (4) the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Cable Car Museum for cable car history and operating information, (5) the Mission Dolores Basilica for chapel visiting hours, (6) the Palace of Fine Arts for Marina-district event programming, and (7) the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department for Golden Gate Park, Alamo Square, Coit Tower, and Twin Peaks information. Readers interested in the broader cultural reception of San Francisco and its seven-by-seven peninsula identity — the Ramaytush Ohlone heritage and the Yelamu before contact, the 1776 mission and presidio of New Spain, the Mexican-era Yerba Buena village and its 1847 renaming, the 1848 gold cry and the city the Forty-Niners built, the 1873 inauguration of the cable car, the 1906 earthquake and the four-day fire and the rebuilding that put a world's fair on the Marina nine years later, the 1937 opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, the 1934-1963 federal penitentiary at Alcatraz, the 1892-1896 Painted Ladies of Alamo Square, the 1898 Ferry Building, the 1933 Coit Tower, the 1915 Palace of Fine Arts, the 1912 Italian marble counter at 1517 Polk Street, and the fog that pours through the Gate every evening from May to September — will find that the named places (Mission Dolores, the Presidio of San Francisco, Fort Point, the Castillo de San Joaquin site, the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square, Coit Tower, the Ferry Building, the Palace of Fine Arts, Lombard Street, Alcatraz Island, the Cliff House and Sutro Baths ruins, Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach, Baker Beach, Lands End, Treasure Island, the Embarcadero, the Transamerica Pyramid, City Hall, the Polk Gulch and Swan Oyster Depot, Chinatown, North Beach, the Mission District, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Pacific Heights, Twin Peaks, the Marina District, Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate strait, and the Pacific Ocean coastline at San Francisco), the named historical figures (Juan Bautista de Anza, Father Francisco Palóu, Father Pedro Cambón, Lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga, Lieutenant Washington Bartlett, Sam Brannan, Andrew Smith Hallidie, Matthew Kavanaugh, and Mark Twain), and the named historical moments (the at-least-10,000-year Ramaytush Ohlone heritage of the peninsula, the March 28 1776 Anza site selection, the June 29 / October 9 1776 founding of Mission San Francisco de Asís, the September 17 1776 founding of the Presidio, the January 30 1847 renaming of Yerba Buena, the May 12 1848 Brannan gold cry, the April 15 1850 city incorporation and September 9 1850 California statehood, the August 2 1873 inauguration of the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the April 18 1906 earthquake and four-day fire, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the 1933 construction of Coit Tower, the 1934-1963 Alcatraz federal penitentiary, the May 27 1937 opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, the 1947 Friedel Klussmann citizens' campaign that saved the cable cars, the 1964 National Historic Landmark designation of the cable car system, and the 1994 transfer of the Presidio to the National Park Service) recur across all of these traditions as a shared cultural grammar of foundational San Francisco history grounded specifically on the seven-by-seven peninsula at the mouth of San Francisco Bay where the Pacific Ocean meets the Golden Gate strait.