A study of the founding and growth of some of the cities of the West, and particularly of the Pacific slope, will bring out many interesting facts.
San Francisco is the metropolis of the Pacific; its population will soon reach half a million. If we look back seventy-five years we find San Francisco an unimportant Mexican military post and the seat of one of the smaller missions. Monterey, the capital of the province of California and one of the two leading towns (Los Angeles being the other), apparently had all the advantages in the race for supremacy.
In date of discovery (1603) Monterey Bay has the advantage of more than one hundred and fifty years over San Francisco Bay. It is difficult to understand why the different navigators who sailed north along the coast failed to discover California's most magnificent bay. Sir Francis Drake went by it, evidently not seeing the narrow opening between the headlands now known as the Golden Gate. Vizcaino, after discovering Monterey Bay, also passed by and anchored where Drake had stopped, in a little bay now called Drake's Bay, a few miles north of San Francisco Bay.
After the founding of San Diego, in 1769, a party started overland for Monterey, but by reason of the peculiar position of the bay they passed it unknowingly, and by accident came upon the body of water which has since been of so great importance to the commercial life of California. Monterey Bay in time lost its importance, partly because it was not thoroughly protected from the storms, and partly from the lack of easy communication with the rest of the state.
Immediately after the acquisition of California and the discovery of gold, the advantages of San Francisco Bay began to be appreciated, and the little Mexican town grew rapidly. The narrow entrance to the bay, which had for so long a time delayed its discovery, completely protected it from the storms, while its long arms opened across the coast mountains directly into the important valleys of the interior. Ocean vessels could go up the bay and through the Strait of Carquinez, while river boats could be used for many miles farther. After the discovery of gold, ships from all parts of the world found ample room and shelter in San Francisco Bay; and the incoming miners, going by the water routes to Marysville, Sacramento, and Stockton, easily reached the gold-bearing gravels of the Sierra Nevada streams.
With the exception of southern California and a portion of the northern coast, almost all the agricultural and mineral resources of California are directly tributary to San Francisco. This place is naturally the centre of home trade, of foreign commerce, and of population.
FIG. 118.—SAN FRANCISCO BAY
Formed by the sinking of the land and flooding of a river valley
Nature failed to supply San Francisco with one essential advantage, namely, cheap power for manufacturing. There is no water-power near and but little coal in the state. Since the coal has to be shipped in from distant points, its high price has impeded manufacturing. But now it appears that San Francisco is not so badly off after all, for important deposits of petroleum have been discovered in the central and southern portions of California; and besides, processes have been invented for transforming the unlimited water-power of the mountain streams into electric energy, and transmitting this power to all the cities about the bay.