San Francisco, California (CA)

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The first European to reach the San Francisco Bay was the Spanish explorer Don Gaspar de Portolà,in 1770. The first Spanish mission, Mission San Francisco de Asis, was established six years later. A small military fort was also established in what is now the Presidio and on Alcatraz island in the bay, as well as a small village called Yerba Buena. Though Spain held the port until the Mexican revolution, there was also British settlement in the form of fur trading settlements in the area from 1792 onward following a visit from explorer George Vancouver (the earlier English explorer Sir Francis Drake had missed San Francisco entirely, due to the bay's characteristic foggy weather). Russians also coexisted with the Europeans, having colonized Northern California as far south as Fort Ross in Sonoma County.

The area fell into Mexican hands following its independence and fell into isolation. It was during this period that increased American and European settlement increased. The United States claimed the city on January 30, 1847, during the Mexican-American War. At that point, despite its useful location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. But a year later, the California gold rush brought a wave of migration and immigration, raising the population from 1,000 to 25,000 by December 1849. The railroad, banking, and mining industries became major economic forces in the city. San Francisco became a county when California became a U.S. state in 1850 as it briefly served as its state capital before it moved to San Jose and eventually its permanent home in Sacramento. The county originally included what is now San Mateo County.

The influx of Chinese workers created a sizable Chinatown district, and Chinese Americans remain one of the city's largest ethnic groups. Hostility toward immigrants contributed to lynchings and race riots in the 1850s, and to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which drastically restricted immigration from China until 1943.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the fires that followed it (burning out of control due to the loss of water supply), destroyed approximately 80% of the city, including almost all of the downtown core. At least 3,000 died, while refugees settled temporarily in Golden Gate Park and in undeveloped areas.

The opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1936 and 1937 made the city more accessible, and its population grew faster in the 1940s due to its importance as a military base in World War II. Urban planning projects in the 1950s further transformed the city, tearing down and redeveloping many neighborhoods and introducing major freeways.