What’s with the Principal Chief? Six years after the prison closed, Alcatraz got different visitors — and one of them was a young woman the city had raised. Wilma Mankiller came to San Francisco in 1956 as a child, when her Cherokee family was moved from Oklahoma under the federal relocation program; she grew up in the city’s working neighborhoods and studied at San Francisco State. When Indians of All Tribes occupied Alcatraz beginning in November 1969, she crossed the bay to support it and later called the nineteen-month occupation her political awakening. That road led home: in 1985 she became the first woman Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, led it for a decade, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2022 the United States Mint honored her with the Wilma Mankiller quarter in the American Women Quarters Program — her gaze resolute, wrapped in a traditional shawl beside the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation.
So San Francisco gathers a mission and a gold rush, an earthquake and a rebirth, an orange bridge and a moving landmark, a streetcar conductor and a Principal Chief onto one fog-swept peninsula — and our San Francisco designs gather that into wearable form. Whether San Francisco is your hometown, your hill, your fog, or the city you still mean to reach, wear the history. On the Bay since 1776.
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.