| San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the
fourth most populous city in California and the 13th most
populous city
in the United States, with a 2010 estimated population of
805,235. The
only consolidated city-county in California, it encompasses
a land area
of 46.7 square miles (121 km2) on the northern end of the
San Francisco
Peninsula, giving it a density of 17,243 people/mi² (6,655
people/km²).
It is the most densely settled large city (population
greater than
200,000) in the state of California and the second-most
densely
populated large city in the United States. San Francisco is
the
financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San
Francisco Bay
Area, a region of more than 7.4 million people which
includes San Jose
and Oakland.
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In 1776, the Spanish established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission
named for Francis of Assisi on the site. The California Gold Rush in
1848 propelled the city into a period of rapid growth, increasing the
population in one year from 1,000 to 25,000, and thus transforming it
into the largest city on the West Coast at the time. After
three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and
fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition nine years later. During World War II, San
Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out
to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning
servicemen, massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes, and other
factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing
San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.
Today, San Francisco is a popular international tourist destination,
renowned for its chilly summer fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of
Victorian and modern architecture and its famous landmarks, including
the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Chinatown.
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principal banking and finance center, and the home to more than 30
international financial institutions, helping to make San Francisco
eighteenth place in the world's top producing cities, ninth in the
United States, and fifteenth place in the top twenty Global Financial
Centers.
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San Francisco Neighborhoods:
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San Francisco’s corrugated surface is home to more than 100 individual neighborhoods, bunched into roughly 40 main geographical neighborhoods. The claims to fame and the local lore in the
“hoods,” are all a wonderful, exuberant part of the Only in San
Francisco experience. No two neighborhoods are alike and each is worth a
closer look.
Although a neighborhood can be just as much a function of
attitude as latitude, we’ve provided a map to encourage your exploration of which neighborhood best suits your lifestyle.
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