Ships from Europe did not find the entrance ,the Golden Gate, to the great bay of San Francisco until the middle of the 18th century , although explorers were already sailing up the coast two hundred years earlier.In 1579, for example, sir Francis drake landed on the coast which covers the city every summer afternoon.

The first small village here , Yerba Buena, was Spanish, then Mexican , and finally American. The discovery of gold nearby changed things. Thousands of people came to California during the Gold Rush of 1849, many of them to San Francisco ,its new name.The discovery of silver in the mountains brought more people. San Francisco grew until April 18,1906 when a great earthquake, and especially the fire that followed,destroyed almost everything.



        

As the city began to grow again , people came from many countries, from different parts of the world. The Chinese settled in the oldest part of the city , today Chinatown. The Italians built their homes on a hill near the bay because many of them were fisherman. These hills were so steep that only cable cars could climb them.

Today tall skyscrapers and other fine buildings climb the hills. There are lovely old homes,shops, churches, parks, and steep streets were visitors can still enjoy a ride on one of the old cable cars. But San Francisco is also a place where many young people go to school. There are several well-known universities in the city and others no far away ( Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley just across the bay ). This is also a busy place were people work . They come to the city across several bridges. The most famous is certainly the one above the entrance to the bay , the Golden Gate Bridge. These are only a few of the sights of San Francisco. Which have you heard about?




Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate is the strait connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. The Golden Gate Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world when it was completed in 1937 and has become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and the United States. It is currently the second longest suspension bridge in the United States after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City.


The idea of a bridge to span the Golden Gate Strait was brought up in an article by the engineer James Wilkins. The bridge later earned its name, Golden Gate Bridge, after a mention of it in 1927, by San Francisco city engineer M. M. O’Shaughnessy. The bridge was the idea of Joseph Strausses, an engineer responsible for over 500 drawbridges. The bridge has approximately 1,200,000 total rivets. Upon completion, Joseph Strauss wrote a poem now on the Golden Gate Bridge entitled "The Mighty Task is Done" . Since its completion, the bridge has closed due to windy conditions five times; 1951, 1982, 1983, 1996, and 2005.