The city proper occupies the northeast corner of the county. Its limits extend about two miles and a half from east to west, by three and a half from north to south, thus including between one fifth and one sixth the area of the county.
The natural surface was very uneven and the soil equally varied—sand beach, salt marsh, mud flats, low plains, narrow ravines, small and shallow valleys, elevated benches or plateaux, sandy knolls and dunes, and stretches of the close, adobe soil, made up its original surface; while rocky bluffs fortified its shore line, and extensive ledges underlaid its hills or cropped out from their sides, or crowned their tops. These hills varied in height from two hundred and sixty to four hundred and ten feet, while west and south of the city limits they rose still higher. One or two small lagoons lay sluggishly about, and as many small streams found their way thence to the bay.
The original founders of the city, as is usual in similar cases, seemed never to suspect that they were moulding the beginnings of a grand metropolis. Hence they laid out what little they did project with the least possible regard to present symmetry, or the probable demands of future growth. The natural inequalities of surface, the grade and width of streets which must become necessary to a large city, reservations for public buildings, promenades, gardens, parks, etc., with the sanitary necessity of thorough drainage, were matters of which they seem to have been serenely unconscious, or, worse still, sublimely indifferent. And many of their immediate successors in authority were legitimate descendants, or humbly imitative followers.
We have not an important street in the city which conforms its course to the cardinal points of the compass, and but one main avenue, Market street, which begins to be wide enough. As Cronise truthfully says: "The whole town stands askew."
We now proceed to "orient" the tourist, as Horace Mann used to say, in regard to such streets, avenues, thoroughfares, cuts, parks, etc., as mainly constitute the highly artificial, though not particularly ornamental, topography of our little occidental village.
General Plan.
Market street is the widest and the longest, starting at the water front, half a mile east of the old City Hall, and slightly ascending through eight or nine blocks, it runs thence southwesterly on a nearly level grade beyond the city limits. Its western end is yet unfinished. A mile and a half from the water it cuts through a moderately high and immoderately rocky hill, beyond which it stretches away toward the unfenced freedom of the higher hills, and the dead level of the western beach beyond, at which it will probably condescend ultimately to stop. Its surface presents every variety of natural conformation ingeniously varied with artificial distortion. Plank, rubble, McAdam, cobble, Nicolson, gravel, Stow foundation, gravel, adobe, sand, and finally undisguised dirt, offer their pleasing variety to the exploring eye. From two to four horse-railroad tracks diversify its surface with their restful regularity, while the steam cars from San José follow their locomotive a short distance up its western end.
Stately blocks, grand hotels, massive stores, lofty factories, tumble-down shanties, unoccupied lots and vacant sand-hills form its picturesque boundary on either hand. When the high summer winds sweep easterly down its broad avenue, laden with clouds of flying sand from vacant lots along its either margin, it becomes a decidedly open question whether the lots aforesaid really belong in the department of real estate, or should, properly enter the catalogue of "movable property."
We have dwelt thus at length upon this street, not only on account of its central position and superior dimensions, but because it is a representative street. Others are like it as far as they can be. They would resemble it still more closely, did length, width and direction permit. It is fast becoming the great business street of the city, and, spite of the roughness and crudeness necessarily attaching to all the streets of a new and fast-growing city, it unmistakably possesses all the requisites of the future "Grand Avenue" of the Pacific metropolis.
On the northeast of Market street, through the older portion of the city, the streets run at right angles with each other, though neither at right angles or parallel with Market. One set runs, in straight lines, nearly north and south. The other set, also straight, crosses the former at right angles, that is, running nearly east and west. The principal of these streets, as one goes from the bay westerly, back toward the hills, and, in fact, some distance up their slopes, are Front, Battery, Sansome, Montgomery, Kearny, Dupont, Stockton, Powell, Mason, Taylor, and a dozen others, of which those nearer the bay are gradually growing into importance as business streets, especially along the more level portions of their southern blocks, near where they run into Market street. Beyond these, that is, west of them, the streets are chiefly occupied by dwelling houses, among which are many expensive residences of the most modern construction and elegant design.