San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California, with 808,437 residents as of 2022, and covers a land area of 46.9 square miles, at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include Frisco, San Fran, The City, and SF.
Mission San Francisco de Asís, commonly known as Mission Dolores, is a Spanish Californian mission and the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco. Located in the Mission District, it was founded on October 9, 1776, by Padre Francisco Palóu and co-founder Fray Pedro Benito Cambón, who had been charged with bringing Spanish settlers to Alta California and with evangelizing the local indigenous Californians, the Ohlone. The present mission building was the second structure for the site and was dedicated in 1791.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately 10 mi (16 km) northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With an magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), the shock was responsible for 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault System had been relatively inactive since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake until two moderate foreshocks occurred in June 1988 and again in August 1989.
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres (412 ha) of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development of Golden Gate Park. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape to but 20 percent larger than Central Park in New York City, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles (4.8 km) long east to west, and about half a mile (0.8 km) north to south. With 24 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third most-visited city park in the United States after Central Park and the Lincoln Memorial.
The Mission District, commonly known as The Mission, is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is derived from Mission San Francisco de Asís, built in 1776 by the Spanish. The Mission is historically one of the most notable centers of the city's Chicano/Mexican-American community.
A fireboat or fire-float is a specialized watercraft with pumps and nozzles designed for fighting shoreline and shipboard fires. The first fireboats, dating to the late 18th century, were tugboats, retrofitted with firefighting equipment. Older designs derived from tugboats and modern fireboats more closely resembling seafaring ships can both be found in service today. Some departments would give their multi-purpose craft the title of "fireboat" also.
Mission High School is a public high school in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) San Francisco, California.
Pacific Heights is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It has panoramic views of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Palace of Fine Arts, Alcatraz, and the Presidio.
After 1900, California continued to grow rapidly and soon became an agricultural and industrial power. The economy was widely based on specialty agriculture, oil, tourism, shipping, film, and after 1940 advanced technology such as aerospace and electronics industries – along with a significant military presence. The films and stars of Hollywood helped make the state the "center" of worldwide attention. California became an American cultural phenomenon; the idea of the "California Dream" as a portion of the larger American Dream of finding a better life drew 35 million new residents from the start to the end of the 20th century (1900–2010). Silicon Valley became the world's center for computer innovation.
The history of the city of San Francisco, California, and its development as a center of maritime trade, were shaped by its location at the entrance to a large natural harbor. San Francisco is the name of both the city and the county; the two share the same boundaries. Only lightly settled by European-Americans at first, after becoming the base for the gold rush of 1849 the city quickly became the largest and most important population, commercial, naval, and financial center in the American West. San Francisco was devastated by a great earthquake and fire in 1906 but was quickly rebuilt. The San Francisco Federal Reserve Branch opened in 1914, and the city continued to develop as a major business city throughout the first half of the 20th century. Starting in the later half of the 1960s, San Francisco became the city most famous for the hippie movement. In recent decades, San Francisco has become an important center of finance and technology. The high demand for housing, driven by its proximity to Silicon Valley, and the limited availability has led to the city being one of America's most expensive places to live. San Francisco is currently ranked 16th on the Global Financial Centres Index.
The San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) provides firefighting, hazardous materials response services, technical rescue services and emergency medical response services to the City and County of San Francisco, California.
The 1923 Berkeley, California, fire was a conflagration that consumed some 640 structures, including 584 houses in the densely-built neighborhoods north of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley, California, on September 17, 1923.
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in San Francisco and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died, and over 80% of the city was destroyed. The event is remembered as the deadliest earthquake in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high on the lists of American disasters.
The Auxiliary Water Supply System is a high pressure water supply network built for the city of San Francisco in response to the failure of the existing emergency water system during the 1906 earthquake. It was originally proposed by San Francisco Fire Department chief engineer Dennis T. Sullivan in 1903, with construction beginning in 1909 and finishing in 1913. The system is made up of a collection of water reservoirs, pump stations, cisterns, suction connections and fireboats. While the system can use both fresh or salt water, it is preferential to not use salt water, as it commonly causes galvanic corrosion in fire equipment.
Phoenix is a fireboat owned by State of California and operated by the city of San Francisco in the San Francisco Bay since 1955. Phoenix is known for helping to save Marina District buildings from further destruction by fire following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Her worthy assistance resulted in a second vintage fireboat obtained for the city. Both Guardian and Phoenix are based at Firehouse No. 35 at Pier 22½ of the Port of San Francisco. Phoenix often leads parades of ships, and takes part in welcoming ceremonies.
As a major port a number of fireboats of San Francisco have been operated by the city of San Francisco since 1878.
Dennis T. Sullivan was the Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department in 1906. He was mortally wounded during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, when a neighboring building collapsed onto the fire station that housed the Chief's official apartment.
Nob Hill is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States that is known for its numerous luxury hotels and historic mansions. Nob Hill has historically served as a center of San Francisco's upper class. Nob Hill is among the highest-income neighborhoods in the United States, as well as one of the most desirable and expensive real estate markets in the country. Prior to Covid-19, it was the most expensive real estate market per metre squared, narrowly beating Monte Carlo, although it has since fallen heavily. It was the only place in the United States so far where market price per square metre exceeded the average yearly salary in the country.
St. Francis is a fireboat operated by the San Francisco Fire Department on San Francisco Bay since 2016. Also known as Fireboat 3, she was given the official name on October 17, 2016, the anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Local schoolchildren helped pick the vessel's name.
The Lower Nob Hill Apartment Hotel District is a historic district located in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, U.S.. It covers roughly a 5-block length in downtown San Francisco on the south slope of Nob Hill. It is sometimes referred to as the "Tendernob," the name is a portmanteau for the area that is the meeting point of the Tenderloin and Nob Hill. The Lower Nob Hill Apartment Hotel District is listed as a California Historical Landmark since July 31, 1991; and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since July 31, 1991, for architecture and social history.
