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San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine

The City and County of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is the fourth-largest city in California and the fourteenth-largest in the United States, with a 2005 population of 739,426.[2] It is located on the tip of the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Peninsula and has traditionally been the focal point of the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Bay Area. ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the United States.[3]

In 1776, the Spanish became the first Europeans to settle in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco, establishing a mission named for Francis of Assisi. With the advent of the California Gold Rush in 1848, the city entered a period of rapid growth. After being devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco was quickly rebuilt and is today one of the most recognizable cities in the world.

( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is renowned for its months-long episodes of fog, steep rolling hills, the eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture, and its peninsular location surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Bay. Famous hallmarks and landmarks include the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, the cable cars, the Transamerica Pyramid, and Chinatown.

History
History of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco, California
The ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Peninsula was inhabited from at least 8000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people had established several small villages in the area when a Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà arrived on November 2, 1769, claiming the first documented European visit to ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Bay.[4] Six years later a Spanish mission, Mission ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), was established with a small settlement, and an associated military fort was built in what is now the Presidio.[5]


Mission ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores)Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first significant homestead outside the immediate vicinity of the Mission Dolores,[6] near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Mission Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican-American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco the next year.[7] Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.


A Cable Car on California Street in 1899The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco over rival Benicia,[8] raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849.[9] The promise of riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco harbor.[10] California was quickly granted statehood and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz island to secure the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Bay. Silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.

Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush. Early winners were the banking industry, which saw the founding of Wells Fargo in 1852, and the railroad industry, as the magnates of the Big Four, led by Leland Stanford, collaborated in the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The development of the Port of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco established the city as a center of trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Immigrant laborers made the city a polyglot culture, with Chinese railroad workers creating the city's Chinatown quarter. The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast.[11] By the turn of the century, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco was a city of international renown, celebrated for a flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene.


"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is gone." - Jack London after the 1906 earthquake and fire.[12]At 5:12 AM on the morning of April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that would spread across the city and burn out of control for several days. With water mains out of services, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks.[13] More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core.[14] Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people lost their lives, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands.[15] More than half the city's population of 400,000 were left homeless.[16] Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.


The Palace of Fine Arts at the 1915 Panama-Pacific ExpositionRebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed.[17] Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose once again in Beaux Arts splendor, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915.

In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco-based bank failed.[18] Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937 respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its services as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone. ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's Fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.


The USS ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco steams under the Golden Gate Bridge in 1942, during World War IIDuring World War II, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for services members shipping out to the Pacific theater of operations.[19] The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many returning servicesmembers and civilians who had come to work decided to stay. The UN Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco officially ended the war with Japan.
Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s saw widespread destruction and redevelopment of westside neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways.[20] The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1969, and in the 1980s the Manhattanization of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco saw extensive high rise development downtown.[21] Port activity moved to Oakland, the city began to lose industrial jobs, and ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco began to turn to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs experienced rapid growth and ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America.[22][23]


The Grateful Dead in Haight-Ashbury Over this same period, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim its historic downtown waterfront.

During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals that changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees left, although high technology and entrepreneurship continued to be mainstays of the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco economy.

Geography
( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco and northern San Mateo County( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is located on the west coast of the U.S. at the tip of the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several islands are part of the city, notably Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The land within the city limits roughly forms a seven by seven mile square, which has become a colloquialism referring to the city's shape.

( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is famous for its hills, which are defined as elevations over 100 ft (30 m). There are a total of 43 hills within city limits.[24] Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, Potrero Hill, and Telegraph Hill.


Cars negotiate Lombard Street to descend Russian HillNear the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Dominating this area is Mount Sutro, the site of Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower. Nearby is Twin Peaks, a pair of hills resting at one of the city's highest points and a popular overlook spot for tour groups. ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is 925 ft (282 m) high, and is capped with a 103 ft (31.4 m) tall cross built in 1934.

The San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, even though neither passes through the city itself. It was the San Andreas Fault which slipped and caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. New buildings must meet high structural standards, and older buildings and bridges must be retrofitted to comply with new building codes.

( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from tunneling through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Climate
Fog envelops the Golden Gate Bridge and approaches Crissy Field.A quotation incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain goes, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco."[25] ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco benefits from California's Mediterranean climate, characterized by mild wet winters and warm dry summers.[26] However, surrounded on three sides by water, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean which tend to moderate temperature swings and produce a remarkably mild climate with little seasonal temperature variation. Average summertime high temperatures in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco peak at 70°F (21 °C) and are 20°F (9 °C) lower than they are in nearby inland locations like Livermore.[27] Winters are mild, with daytime highs near 60°F (15 °C), and lows almost never reach freezing temperatures. The months of May-September are quite dry, with rain a common occurrence from November-March. Snowfall is extraordinarily rare, with only 10 instances recorded since 1852.[28]

The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland creates the city's characteristic fog that can cover the western half of the city all day during the summer and early fall. The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods, in late spring, and during September and October, which are the warmest months of the year. Due to its sharp topography and maritime influences, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. The high hills in the geographic center of the city are responsible for a 20% variance in annual rainfall between different parts of the city.[28] They also protect neighborhoods directly to their east from the foggy and cool conditions experienced in the Sunset District; for those who live on the eastern side of the city, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is fairly sunny, with an average of 160 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year.[29]

Beaches and Parks
The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park 
Baker BeachMain article: Parks in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco, California
Ocean Beach runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline, and Baker Beach occupies a picturesque setting just west of the Golden Gate Bridge. They are not suitable for swimming because the waters off the coast are cold and have deadly rip currents. The biggest and most well-known park is Golden Gate Park, stretching from the center of the city to the ocean. Once covered only in grass and sand dunes, the park is planted with thousands of non-native trees and plants and is rich with attractions including the Conservatory of Flowers, the Japanese Tea Garden, and Strybing Arboretum. The Presidio, a former military base, and its Crissy Field section, restored to its natural salt marsh condition, are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Alcatraz, and other regional parks. Buena Vista Park is the city's oldest, established in 1867. Lake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland.

Demographics
Population (thousands) by year [32]See also: Demographic maps of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco, California 
The population of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco peaked at 776,733 in 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, declining by about 35,000 residents by 2005. With nearly 16,000 people per square mile, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is the second most densely populated major American city after New York.[33] ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is the traditional focal point of the ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco Bay Area and forms part of the greater San Jose-( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA) whose population is over 7 million - the fifth largest in the United States as of the 2000 census.[34]

( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is a minority-majority city as non-Hispanic Whites make up less than 44% of the population. Asian Americans, principally Chinese, comprise nearly 31% of the population. Hispanics of any race make up just over 14% of the population. At less than 8% of the population, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco has a lower concentration of African Americans than the United States as a whole.[35] Few of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco's residents have lived there their whole lives. Only 35% of its residents were born in California; 39% were born outside the United States.[36]

( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.[37] Gay men outnumber lesbians; it has been estimated that one in five males over the age of 15 is gay.[38]

The ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco median household income, at $57,496 in 2005, is the fifth-highest for any large city in the nation.[39] Following a national trend, an out-migration of middle class families is contributing to widening income disparity[40] and has left the city with a lower proportion of children, 14.5%, than any other large city in the United States.[41] Nevertheless, the poverty rate, at 7.8%, is lower than the national average and among the lowest for cities ranked by the U.S. Census Department.[42]

Homelessness has been a chronic and controversial problem for ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco since the early 1980s. The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major city in the United States.[43] The rates of violent and property crime, reported for 2003 as 742 and 4943 incidents per 100,000 residents respectively,[44] are higher than the national average.[45] Among the 50 largest U.S. cities by population, ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco ranks 32nd and 38th in each of those categories.[44]

Government
The City and County of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, a status it has had since 1856. It is the only such consolidation in California. The mayor is also the county executive and the city council acts as the county board of supervisors. Because of its unique status, it exercises jurisdiction over property that would otherwise be located outside of its corporation limit. ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco. ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.


( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco City HallUnder the city charter, the Government of ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco is constituted of two co-equal branches. The executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other city-wide elected and appointed officials, and the civil services. The 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a President (Aaron Peskin, as of 2006) and exercises general oversight over all city and county functions. They are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city.[46] If the mayor dies or resigns, the President of the Board of Supervisors assumes the office, as Dianne Feinstein did after the assassination of George Moscone in 1978. The current municipal budget is greater than $5 billion.[47]

The federal government utilizes ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the United States Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had three major military installations - the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point - a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco as the home of the state Supreme Court and other state agencies. Foreign governments have located in excess of thirty foreign consulates in ( Bought to you by our San Francisco / Bay Area Limousine) San Francisco.[48]

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