Destinations

San Francisco was built by "forty niners" with gold fever

Oakland and Berkeley, California lie just across the bay from San Francisco and are easily accessible via the Bay Bridge. The more famous Golden Gate Bridge spans the narrow inlet that extends from the Pacific Ocean into the bay. The Golden Gate Bridge connects San Francisco with a mountainous peninsula called the Marin headlands that is primarily known for beautiful scenery and expensive homes with spectacular views. Sausalito, a small village on the bay shore of the Marin headlands is famous as a local artist's community. Alcatraz Island with its abandoned prison is situated in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The city of San Jose lies about 30 miles south of San Francisco at the southern tip of this extensive bay. The area near San Jose and Santa Clara is known as "Silicon Valley", home of the largest concentration of electronics and computer firms in the USA.
San Francisco was founded in 1776 when father Junipero Serra constructed the mission San Dolores to Christianize the local native Indian population. At the same time, Spanish troops constructed a Presidio, or fort, to protect this colony for the Queen of Spain. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the village of Yerba Buena, consisting of whalers, traders, adventurers and pirates, occupied the present site of San Francisco. In 1848, gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains about 100 miles to the east. By 1849, San Francisco was inundated with "forty-niners" as the gold seekers were commonly called, and the population of the city exploded. Ever since, it has remained the center of commerce, entertainment, culture and tourism for Northern California.