San Francisco
San Francisco,situated on one of the world's largest bays, on the central California coast, had a population in 1990 of approximately 750,000. The bay may have been sighted by Drake (1579), but the discoverer of the city's site is usually considered to be Portola, whose expedition arrived in 1770. Anza founded the mission and presidio (1776), which, under the administration of Serra, was the beginning of the pueblo Yerba Buena, the present San Francisco. The region became Mexican territory (1821), but a local insurrection, the Bear Flag War (1846), resulted in the establishment of a temporary republic, and a month later California was taken by the U.S. The gold rush of the forty-niners caused San Francisco's mushroom growth into a busy, lawless frontier town, whose most notorious area was the Barbary Coast. The city's port flourished, with trade and immigration from the Orient, around Cape Horn, and across Panama. Overland communication with the East was...
[The entire page is 705 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
