San Francisco packs a trillion-dollar bay into foggy hills
The City and County of San Francisco counted 826,079 people in 2025—California's fourth city, seventeenth nationally—yet leads large U.S. cities in per-capita income. Yelamu Ohlone land saw a 1776 Presidio and Mission San Francisco de Asís rise at the Golden Gate for Saint Francis.
People lived around the bay from at least 3000 BCE, and the Ohlone called the place Ahwaste, place at the bay. The Yelamu, part of the Ramaytush, lived in a few small villages when Gaspar de Portolá's overland party, with the friar Juan Crespí, reached the bay on 2 November 1769, the first documented European visit. Pedro Fages sought a direct route from Monterey in 1770, Juan Bautista de Anza scouted sites in 1774, and on 5 August 1775 Juan Manuel de Ayala brought the San Carlos into the bay, the first vessel ever to drop anchor there.
Anza set up the Presidio on 28 March 1776, and Padre Francisco Palóu founded the mission, better known as Mission Dolores, that October. A fort on the south side of the Golden Gate, later Fort Point, followed in 1794, and the mission settlement peaked at about 1,100 people around 1810 to 1820. After Mexico took over in 1821 and secularised the missions in 1833, Governor José Figueroa opened the area to civilians. Juana Briones de Miranda founded the first non-indigenous civilian household at El Polín Spring, and the trading post of Yerba Buena grew up in 1834 around what is now Portsmouth Square.
The alcalde Washington Allon Bartlett swapped the name Yerba Buena, Spanish for good herb, for San Francisco in 1847. Gold-rush migrants from Canton called the city Gold Mountain; after gold turned up at Bendigo in Australia, that became New Gold Mountain and San Francisco the old one. The nickname Frisco dates to at least 1850, though it still divides residents.
Three-quarters of the city burned or collapsed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, yet it hosted the Panama–Pacific International Exposition nine years later. Among large American cities it now ranks third in population density, and in 2024 output per resident was about $324,000.
Source: San Francisco
