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It
Was Golden Before the Gold Rush
U.S. Colonel and one-time candidate
for President, John C. Frémont,
gave the name “Chrysoplylae”
or “Golden Gate” to the
entrance of the San Francisco Bay
well before gold was discovered in
the area.M.D.
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TThe 2003 ASA Annual Meeting will be held in San
Francisco, California, on October 11-15. The following
article provides a brief historical synopsis of everyone’s
favorite city.
You can’t get any more presumptuous than proclaiming
that one’s city is “Everyone’s Favorite
City.” That is, unless it’s the truth.
And a look back at the San Francisco Bay area’s
history reveals that not only might this presumptuous
proclamation be true, it might not even do the city
justice.
A 10,000-Year-Old Melting Pot
About 10,000 years ago, the last of a series of great
glacial floods filled what is now the San Francisco
Bay and created a veritable Eden to which countless
life forms, from red abalone to Green Party activists,
would flock in their own turn. The Bay area soon evolved
into something of a primordial crockpot of birds,
game animals, marine mammals, fish and shellfish.
With this kind of menu, humans were soon to follow,
and they did in droves.
When the Spanish first established colonies in California
in the late 1700s, the Bay area was inhabited by more
than 300,000 native Indians, which surpassed the numbers
of natives in any area of comparable size north of
Mexico.
Primitive Sophistication
Like modern-day San Franciscans, early records show
that Native Americans in the area dined on delectables
like mussels, clams, crabs and waterfowl and did so
in an astonishingly sophisticated and diverse culture.
Before Europeans began settling en masse,
native populations developed extensive trade patterns
and, despite vast language and cultural differences
between tribes, were known to intermingle for the
purpose of gaining fresh knowledge and trade —
an activity seemingly inherent in San Franciscans
throughout history.
This Town’s Not Big Enough for All of
Us
Quite apart from the monumental events taking place
between Britain and the colonies 3,000 miles to the
east, 1776 was an important year for San Francisco.
That year saw Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza
and his expedition found a Presidio, or fortress,
in the area. The same year, Franciscan priest Francisco
Palou dedicated a church, the Mission Dolores, to
Saint Francis of Assisi in the area. To this day,
the Presidio and Mission Delores remain two of the
most popular tourist attractions in the city.
In 1835, the English came calling, and Anglo sailor
William Richardson formed a settlement in the area
called Yerba Buena. The flag-planting flurry continued
in 1846 when John C. Fremont declared California’s
independence from Mexico in Yerba Buena. Less than
a month later, American marine commander John Montgomery
and his troops raised the United States flag in Yerba
Buena and declared California an American territory.
California was given statehood in 1850.
Apparently malcontented with anything static, the
citizens of Yerba Buena soon changed the town’s
name to San Francisco, the original name of the great
bay, which was soon to become very famous.
All That Glitters
The discovery of gold in the Bay area around 1848
might have done more to change the landscape than
the glacial floods of 10,000 years ago. In March 1848,
San Francisco was a sleepy little village of 812 inhabitants.
That would change two months later when one of San
Francisco’s earliest entrepreneurs, Sam Brannan,
shouted the now-famous words, “Gold! Gold from
the American River!” In light of the events
that swiftly followed his declaration, he probably
wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Thousands flocked
to the area, a U.S. mint was established and quite
a few people became enormously wealthy. The rush didn’t
last long, though, and by late 1848, the majority
of the gold was gone.
Although many were stricken with gold madness, the
San Franciscan propensity toward progressive thinking
was evident even amid the lust for material wealth.
In the summer of 1849, a mass meeting of miners and
citizens protested the use of slaves in gold mines,
and a resolution was passed, which demanded that use
of black slaves be discontinued.
Uh, Now What?
With pick axes in hand and no gold left to pick over,
many of the intrepid thousands who came for riches
did what scores of folks do when they come to San
Francisco: they fell in love with it, gold or no gold.
By 1849, one year after the discovery of gold, San
Francisco’s population exceeded 100,000. Those
who stayed turned the city into a dynamic and prosperous
town of many “firsts.” In 1849, the first
regular passenger service around Cape Horn to New
York was established. Commercial dynamite was introduced
here in 1866, and the first cable car in the world
went into service in 1873. And always in a mind to
broaden horizons, it was San Francisco that helped
change the way we communicate by developing the first
trans-Pacific cable message. By the end of the 19th
century, San Francisco most likely led the nation
in civic pride.
The City Does Have Its Faults
On the morning of April 18, 1906, the residents of
San Francisco received a wake-up call of epic proportions.
For 48 seconds on that day, an earthquake that is
now believed to have measured 8.3 on the Richter scale,
shook, rumbled and rent much of the city. Since water
systems were destroyed, fires raged uncontrolled for
four days. When it was over, the devastating earthquake
claimed 3,000 lives and caused $500 million (that’s
1906 dollars!) in damage.
Not surprisingly, Mother Nature’s devastation
was countered by an equally excited fervor to rebuild
the city. With help coming in from around the world,
the residents became even more unified in their goal
of creating a city unsurpassed in beauty and diversity.
Chinese immigrants, who for much of San Francisco’s
existence were grudgingly accepted as a needed part
of the social fabric, played a giant role in San Francisco’s
restructuring. Other immigrants came in search of
opportunity and to aid in the city’s transformation.
For the most part, San Francisco welcomed them with
open arms, and it would soon become one of the most
cosmopolitan (and wealthy) cities on earth.
Everybody’s Favorite City?
Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be given
to San Francisco is that such a wide variety of folks
have felt comfortable claiming it as their own. Native
Americans reaped the Bay area’s bounties for
thousands of years. Early European explorers fought
over the right to claim it. Immigrants from every
corner of the globe settled there over the decades
and found new and better lives. In the 1950s and 60s,
political radicals and free-thinkers found in San
Francisco a hotbed of tolerance and openness to change.
Today the city is home to a burgeoning technology
industry and still serves as one of the country’s
most important trade centers.
It seems the very ground that San Francisco rests
upon facilitates greatness and achievement. It is
often a shaky ground and one prone to dynamic shifts
and thunderous change. But each change just makes
the people of San Francisco stronger, more resilient
and wiser than before.
When you come to San Francisco for the ASA 2003 Annual
Meeting, it will not take long before you start to
feel like you belong there. Everybody who comes here
does. It is, after all, “Everyone’s Favorite
City.”
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| Looting was common after
the 1906 earthquake, but this official proclamation
effectively halted theft and kept curiosity
seekers off the streets. Photo courtesy
of The Museum of the City of San Francisco. |
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