Peculiarities of American Cities

by Willard W. Glazier

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SAN FRANCISCO.

San Francisco.—The Golden State.—San Francisco Bay.—Golden Gate.—Conquest of California by Fremont, 1848.—Discovery of Gold.—Rush to the Mines, 1849.—"Forty-niners."—Great Rise in Provisions and Wages.—Miners Homeward Bound.—Dissipation and Vice in the City.—Vigilance Committee.—Great Influx of Miners in 1850.—Immense Gold Yield.—Climate.—Earthquakes.—Productions.—Irrigation.—Streets and Buildings.—Churches.—Lone Mountain Cemetery.—Cliff House.—Seal Rock.—Theatres.—Chinese Quarter.—Chinese Theatres.—Joss Houses.—Emigration Companies.—The Chinese Question.—Cheap Labor.—"The Chinese Must Go."—Present Population and Commerce of San Francisco.—Exports.—Manufactures.—Cosmopolitan Spirit of Inhabitants.

San Francisco is situated on the best harbor which our Pacific Coast affords, a little below the 38th parallel of latitude, and about a degree further south than St. Louis, Cincinnati and Washington. It is the western terminus of the Central Pacific Railroad, American gateway to Asia and the far East.

As the traveler proceeds thitherward from the Valley of the Mississippi, on descending the western slopes of the Sierras, he finds himself fairly within the Golden State; and in more senses than one does California deserve that name. If it be the summer season the very air seems filled with a golden haze. In leaving the mountains all freshness is left behind. Trees and fields are yellow with drouth, which lasts from April to November. Dense clouds of dust fill the air and settle upon everything. Whole regions, by the means of extensive and destructive mining operations, have been denuded of all verdure, and lie bare and unsightly, waiting until the slow processes of time, or the more expeditious hand of man, shall reclaim them. But mines have now given place to vast grain and cattle farms or ranches; and great fields of golden grain and the cattle on a thousand hills are on either side of the track. If it be later or earlier in the year there is a wealth of bloom such as is never dreamed of in the East. The ground, sometimes, as far as the eye can reach, is brilliant with color, a golden yellow the predominating hue. In the rainy season the Sacramento valley, the occasional victim of prolonged drouth, is sometimes visited by a freshet, which carries destruction with it; a mountain torrent, taking its rise near the base of Mt. Shasta, and fed by the snows of the Sierras, it is fitful in its demeanor. It finds its outlet through San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate to the Pacific.

San Francisco is on a peninsula which extends between the bay of that name and the ocean. Its site is nothing more than a collection of sand hills, which, before the building of the city, were continually changing their positions. The peninsula is thirty miles long and six wide, across the city, which stands on the eastern or inner slope.

San Francisco Bay is unsurpassed in the world, except by Puget Sound, in Washington Territory, for size, depth, ease of entrance and security. The entrance to the bay is through a passage five miles in length and about two in width, with its shallowest depth about thirty feet at low tide. Rocks rise almost perpendicularly on the northern side of the entrance, to a height of three thousand feet. A lighthouse is placed on one of these, at Point Bonita. Fort Point, a fortress built on solid rock, commands the entrance from the south, and beyond it, until San Francisco is reached, are a series of sand dunes, some of them white and drifting and others showing green with the scant grass growing upon them. The entrance to the bay is called the Golden Gate, a name applied with singular appropriateness, since through its portals have passed continuous streams of gold since the discovery of the latter in 1848. Strangely enough, the name was given before the gold discovery, though at how early a date there seems no means of knowing. As far as can be ascertained, it first appears in Fremont's "Geographical Memoir of California," published in 1847. Six miles eastward from its entrance the bay turns southward for a distance of thirty miles, forming a narrow peninsula between it and the ocean, on the northeastern extremity of which the city is built. It also extends northward to San Puebla Bay, which latter extending eastward, connects by means of a narrow strait with Suisun Bay, into which the Sacramento River discharges its volume of water. These three bays furnish ample and safe harborage for all the merchant fleets of the world.

San Francisco Bay is about forty miles in length, its widest point being twelve miles. At Oakland, directly east of San Francisco, it is eight miles in width. Alcatraz Island, in the centre of the channel, six miles from the Golden Gate, is a solid rock rising threateningly above the water, and bristling with heavy artillery. It is sixteen hundred feet in length, and four hundred and fifty feet in width. Angel Island is directly north of Alcatraz, and four miles from San Francisco, contains eight hundred acres, and is also fortified. Midway between San Francisco and Oakland is Yerba Buena, or Goat Island, which, too, is held as a United States military station. Red Rock, Bird Rock, the Two Sisters, and other small islands dot the bay.

In 1775 the first ship passed the portals of the Golden Gate, and made its way into the Bay of San Francisco. This ship was the San Carlos, commanded by Caspar De Portala, a Franciscan monk and Spanish Governor of Lower California, who set out on a voyage of discovery and exploration. The same man had six years previously visited the sand hills of the present site of San Francisco, being the first white man to set his foot upon them. Portala named the harbor San Francisco, after the founder of his monastic order, St. Francis. A mission was founded there six years later, on the twenty-seventh of June, by Friars Francisco Paloa and Bonito Cambou, under the direction of Father Junipero Serra, who had been commissioned by Father Portala as president of all the missions in Upper California. This was the sixth mission established in California, and up to the year 1800 the Fathers labored with great zeal and industry, had established eighteen missions, converted six hundred and forty-seven savages, and acquired a vast property in lands, cattle, horses, sheep and grain. Presidios or military stations were established for the protection of these missions, and the Indians readily submitted themselves to the Fathers, and acquired the arts of civilization.