Car Hire in San Francisco

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San Francisco is a city in western California, coextensive with San Francisco County. Famous for its beautiful setting, San Francisco is primarily located on the northern tip of a peninsula at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the strait known as Golden Gate on the north, San Francisco Bay on the east, and San Bruno Mountain on the south. Alcatraz, Angel, Farallon, Treasure, and Yerba Buena islands are part of the city.

The community was settled in 1776, when the Spanish officer Juan Bautista de Anza founded a fort (presidio) here to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Later that year Father Junípero Serra established nearby the Misión San Francisco de Asís (now called Mission Dolores). Little happened in either location, and in the 1830s a third settlement began at Yerba Buena Cove, near the present site of Portsmouth Square in the northeastern part of the city. The United States took Yerba Buena from Mexico in 1846, renaming it San Francisco in 1847. In 1848 gold was discovered in the interior of California, near Sacramento, and the ensuing gold rush rapidly transformed San Francisco into a booming community. San Francisco was incorporated as a city in 1850. The city developed as a port and supply point and became an early governmental and cultural center. It was noted for its cosmopolitan population and for the lawlessness of some sections, particularly the so-called Barbary Coast area. In 1869 the transcontinental railroad reached the Bay Area. By 1900 San Francisco had more than 340,000 inhabitants.

On April 18, 1906, an earthquake shook the city and caused a fire that raged for three days, destroying almost all of San Francisco's downtown and much of the residential area. The city was rebuilt quickly, and in 1915 it played host to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. In 1934 a strike by 12,000 San Francisco longshoremen spread to a dozen Pacific Coast cities and resulted in a three-day general strike that paralyzed the city. During World War II (1939-1945), San Francisco was a major shipbuilding center, and in 1945, at the end of the war, the city was the site of an international conference that drafted the charter of the United Nations. In the 1960s and 1970s many large, modern buildings were constructed in the city, and a number of residential areas were revitalized. In the late 1950s the literary development of the Beat Generation was centered in San Francisco's North Beach area. The city was again badly damaged by an earthquake in 1989, but has since recovered. The city's significant homosexual population has made it a center of gay civil rights activism since the 1970s.