San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 808,988 residents as of 2023, San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of California behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated major U.S. city behind New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind four of New York City's boroughs. Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022.As of 2023, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA CSA is the 5th largest in the nation, with an approximate population of over 9,001,024.
The Mission San Francisco de Asís, also known as Mission Dolores, is a historic Catholic church complex in San Francisco, California. Operated by the Archdiocese of San Francisco, the complex was founded in the 18th century by Spanish Catholic missionaries. The mission contains two historic buildings:
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 is an urban park between the Richmond and Sunset districts of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest park in the city, containing 1,017 acres (412 ha), and the third-most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 24 million visitors annually.
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.
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, United States. 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 San Francisco Mint is a branch of the United States Mint. Opened in 1854 to serve the gold mines of the California Gold Rush, in twenty years its operations exceeded the capacity of the first building. It moved into a new one in 1874, now known as the Old San Francisco Mint. In 1937 Mint operations moved into a third building, the current one, completed that year.
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.
Camp Meeker is an unincorporated community, Sonoma County, United States, located on the Bohemian Highway, between Occidental and Monte Rio. It has approximately 350 homes on properties ranging from a couple thousand square feet to many acres, some flat and sunny, some on steep narrow gauge railroad type one-way streets. The population hovers around 425.
San Jose, California, is the third largest city in the state, and the largest of all cities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California, with a population of 1,021,795.
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 U.S. Customhouse is a historic custom house located in San Francisco, California. It was built to house offices of the United States Customs Service.
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. The majority of damages to the city from the earthquake were caused not by the seismic event itself, but from the fires that ensued, resulting in the destruction of 80% of the city's property value at the time. The improved water system 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.
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.
