San Francisco

Chapter 1: The City of Hills

Every year, about 16 million visitors come to San Francisco on the West Coast of the United States. Most people arrive in this wonderful city in California by car, bus, or plane. But some take the train and go across the country on the famous Old Railroad.

You can get on a train in New York on the East Coast and travel to the city of Chicago. From there, you can make one of the world's most exciting train journeys. From the window, you can see vast rivers, red mountains, big green trees, and many wild animals. At first, you go past the towns and villages of Iowa and Nebraska, next through the big Rocky Mountains, then across the open country of Utah, and in the end, through the mountains of the famous Sierra Nevada. Three days after you leave New York, you arrive in the city of San Francisco, a wonderful finish to a beautiful journey.

This railroad across the United States first opened in 1869. It carried thousands of people to San Francisco, and the city became bigger every year. Men and women began to call this exciting place the Paris of the West. These early visitors traveled to San Francisco because they wanted to make money and have a new life. But why do millions of people come to this city today?

Many visitors are interested in the famous places there. They want to walk across the wonderful Golden Gate Bridge, sit in the beautiful Golden Gate Park, or visit the island prison of Alcatraz. But they also want to see the nice views.

San Francisco is nearly an island. It has water on three sides. There is the Pacific Ocean on the west side, San Francisco Bay on the east side, and the Golden Gate with its famous bridge on the north side. The city is smaller than other American cities. It only has 800,000 people. But many people live in towns like Oakland, 13 kilometers away, and come to work in San Francisco every day.

There are about 70 hills in San Francisco, so it is a very good place for photographers. You can stand on a hill and take wonderful pictures of San Francisco with the blue water behind it. But you need to be very quick with your camera because the weather often changes here. One minute you can see big blue skies, and the next minute there is only the famous white fog. This moves quickly across the city from the sea.

A lot of visitors love San Francisco because it does not feel like a big city. The hills break the town into different parts. These are called neighborhoods. Every neighborhood has its coffee shops, restaurants, and little supermarkets. Forty-three of the hills have names, and some of the neighborhoods take their names from them. For example, in the downtown part in the east of the city, there is Knob Hill, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill.

Over the years, many families from across the world moved to the city. Today, some of these neighborhoods have a lot of people and shops from one country. For example, there is the famous Chinatown with its wonderful Chinese restaurants, or the newer Japantown with its Japanese food shops and bookshops.

Many men and women come to the city because it is an open, free place, too. In neighborhoods like The Mission, many people like to meet and talk about new ideas. When you sit in one of the coffee shops there, you sometimes hear people talk interestingly about new and different things.

Last of all, visitors come because they learn about the city from hundreds of films and books. For example, the writer Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. He was from a family of workers, but he later became famous for his exciting books, The Call of the Wild and White Fang. In some of his stories, like Martin Eden, you can learn about the lives of people in old San Francisco.

The writer Dashiell Hammett lived in the city in the 1920s. He wrote wonderful detective stories, often with the famous San Francisco fog in them. Perhaps the best of these is The Maltese Falcon. It became an important Hollywood film in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart.

Some later books were very different from these earlier stories. For example, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is about four families in the Chinatown neighborhood. It looks at the lives of older Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters.

Of course, many visitors remember the films, too. Who can forget Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock? In this 1958 film, a San Francisco detective is watching a young woman, and she suddenly jumps from under the Golden Gate Bridge into the cold water. The detective does not like tall buildings or bridges, but he quickly jumps down and helps her.

Many books and films use the San Francisco fog, but one film famously uses the big hills of the city. This was the 1968 film Bullitt with Steve McQueen. It has a very long car chase up and down the hills. It is one of the most exciting car chases in the world of film.

When you say the words San Francisco, something interesting often happens. People begin to sing. They sing something called "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". The singer Tony Bennett first sang this in the famous Fairmont Hotel in the city in the 1960s. Most visitors know a lot of stories about San Francisco today from the cinema, TV, and radio, but how much do they know about the early days of the city?

Chapter 2: Early Days

People began to live in the San Francisco area thousands of years ago. They were Native Americans, and in this part of the country they were called the Ohlone. They lived in villages along the coast and found things to eat in the rivers or the sea. This seafood and the wild animals were an important part of their usual food. But the lives of the Ohlone changed suddenly in the late 1700s when early travelers from Europe came to the area.

A Spanish soldier called Captain Juan Bautista de Anza arrived on the coast, and he made a building at the Golden Gate in 1776. Then the Spanish opened a mission here, the Mission San Francisco de Asís. The city of San Francisco later took its name from this place. Everything was now different for the Ohlone. The Spanish needed workers, and they took many of the Ohlone to live in the mission. The Spanish brought new diseases with them, too, and about three-quarters of the Ohlone people became ill from these and died.

There were a number of different mission buildings, but the last one was built in 1791. You can visit this beautiful place today. It is now called Mission Dolores, and it is the oldest building in San Francisco.

In 1821, the area stopped being Spanish and became part of the country of Mexico. People built houses away from the mission, and they began a little town called Yerba Buena.

Between 1846 and 1848, there was a war between the United States and Mexico. On the 2nd of February, 1848, California became part of the United States, and the town soon changed its name from Yerba Buena to San Francisco.

Before this time, there were not many people in the town or the area around it. But things changed one day in January 1848. At Sutter's Mill, a place 190 kilometers to the northeast of San Francisco, a worker called James Marshall found something interesting in a river. He worked for a man called John Sutter, so he quickly went to him and told him about it. What did Marshall find? Soon, the two men knew the answer. It was gold.

John Sutter did not want to tell people about the gold. But one important man soon heard about it. This was Samuel Brannan of the newspaper The California Star. He walked quickly through the streets of San Francisco with some gold in a bottle in his hand and said:

"Gold! Gold! Gold! On the American River!"

Of course, the people of the town all left at once and went to look for the gold. So San Francisco became very quiet, with nobody on the streets. But then, newspapers around the world wrote about the story. They talked about mountains of gold in California. And the famous Californian Gold Rush began.

In the Gold Rush, people came in their thousands to California. They all wanted the same thing: To find gold, and to find it quickly.

Around 40,000 people came across the United States, often on foot. Thousands of travelers arrived by ship from Europe, China, and Australia, too. They were called the 49ers, because many of them came to California in 1849. A lot of these visitors stayed in San Francisco before and after their journey north to the gold areas. The number of people in the town suddenly went from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 in 1850. Hundreds of new hotels, restaurants, and places to drink opened. And the town soon became a wild place.

Some travelers in the early days found gold easily and made lots of money. But many people soon lost it in the streets of San Francisco. The hotels and restaurants often made more money than the 49ers.

The Californian Gold Rush finished in 1855. Some people went home, but many stayed and opened businesses. San Francisco changed from a little town into a city.

Some of the most famous San Francisco businesses come from this time. For example, the Wells Fargo Bank and Stagecoach business opened in 1852. The Wells Fargo Stagecoaches brought letters and travelers from across the United States to California. The roads were very bad and dangerous, but the stagecoaches usually arrived on time. The stagecoaches and the new railroad across the United States opened San Francisco to people from across the country. And big ships from around the world often stopped here, too.

In the late 1800s, many rich people began to build beautiful houses in neighborhoods like Nob Hill. But the city later lost many of these on one very bad day in the spring of 1906.

Chapter 3: From 1906 to the Summer of Love

At 5:12 in the morning on Wednesday, the 18th of April, 1906, the earth suddenly began to move in San Francisco. Most people were at home in bed. All over the city, men, women, and children sat up when they heard a long and terrible noise. The earth did not stop moving for 42 seconds. It was a very big earthquake, one of the worst earthquakes in the world at that time.

Families ran out of their homes and saw a different city. Most of the houses, shops, and hotels were not there any longer. Soon, fires began in different neighborhoods, and they moved quickly from place to place. People wanted to stop the fires, but there was not a lot of water. Only one fountain, called Lota's Fountain. Soldiers and other workers stood in a long line and took water from the fountain. The water went from one person to the next, but it was slow work. The fires only stopped after four long days.

More than 3,000 men, women, and children died in the earthquake or the terrible fires, and more than half of the people lost their homes. Many began to sleep in open places, like the Golden Gate Park.

Countries around the world quickly learned about the disaster. For the first time, newspaper readers saw pictures of a city after an earthquake. Countries like the United Kingdom and Canada and rich business people in the United States gave money to the city. Very soon, all the builders began to build new houses, restaurants, and shops. Fifteen every day. In the years after the earthquake, San Francisco became a wonderful city again, ready for a big exhibition in 1915. This was called the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Thousands of people came here from all over the United States. They could see exciting new things and eat different food from countries around the Pacific.

In the 1920s and 1930s, San Francisco became more important. Hundreds of ships from around the world came and went every week. In the Second World War, big ships were built there, too.

After the war, writers and thinkers with interesting new ideas came to San Francisco. In the 1950s, they moved into neighborhoods like North Beach and Haight-Ashbury. The most famous of these people was Jack Kerouac. Many young students read his 1957 book, On the Road. In the book, he travels around the United States and goes to San Francisco a number of times.

Perhaps one of the most exciting years was 1967. Over 100,000 young people traveled to San Francisco. Most of them were hippies with big hats, long clothes, and flowers in their hair. These hippies stayed in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, and they ate, sang, and talked about ideas all in one place. This time was called the Summer of Love, and people around the world saw it on TV.

From the time of the 1960s and 1970s, the city became famous for its open ideas. San Francisco was a good place for people from different countries and with different lives. Many visitors loved the place, so they stayed and opened shops or coffee shops in some of the more exciting young neighborhoods. Of course, this was only one part of life in San Francisco.

The city became important in the world of banks and businesses, too. In the 1990s, a lot of new internet businesses quickly opened with money from the banks. In March 2000, many of these businesses suddenly closed again after the banks wanted their money back. But today, the city is famous again for its banks and new businesses.

Chapter 4: The Fog and the Fault

The weather in San Francisco is often different from other American cities because it is very near the water, between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. The waters of the sea are very important to the temperature in the city. The weather here is never very hot or very cold. The temperature in the winter does not change a lot from the temperature in the summer. For example, in the day, it is often 15 degrees Celsius in February and 19 degrees Celsius in August. The people of San Francisco laugh about their famous summers. The weather is usually worse in the summer months of June, July, and August. At this time of year, a lot of fog comes from the Pacific Ocean, through the Golden Gate, and into the city, and you sometimes need to wear a coat in summer. The best weather is often in the spring, in April and May, or in the autumn, in September and October, when it is nice and warm with not much rain.

The weather can be very different from one neighborhood to the next. You can sit in the hot sun in one area, then walk for five minutes to a different place, and suddenly there is fog or rain. The Pacific Ocean changes the daily weather in San Francisco. But there is one other important thing in the life of the city: the San Andreas Fault. This is a big line between two parts of the Earth, and when one part hits the other, this can make big earthquakes. The San Andreas Fault does not go through San Francisco, but it goes near the city to the south. The terrible earthquake of 1906 happened because the San Andreas Fault moved. There was a very big earthquake in 1989 because of it, too. It was called the Loma Prieta earthquake. More than 3,000 people lost their homes, and about 60 people died. There are often earthquakes today in the San Francisco area, but these are very little, and people cannot usually feel them. The newer houses or offices in the city are carefully built. When the earth moves, they can move, too. For example, the Transamerica Pyramid, the tallest building in San Francisco, moved 30 centimeters from side to side in the 1989 earthquake, but it stayed up.

Chapter 5: Travel

Travel in San Francisco is often more exciting than in other places. This is because of the many hills across the city. Some of these are very steep. Perhaps the most famous road on a steep hill in San Francisco is Lombard Street. Lombard Street is a long road with one very steep part on Russian Hill. In 1922, people changed the line of Lombard Street here, and they made the road go from side to side down the hill. This is easier for drivers, but they need to drive from one side to the other eight times. There is no other street like this in the world, people say.

San Francisco is also different from many other American cities, because it does not have any very big roads near the center. In cities like Los Angeles or Miami, people usually drive from place to place, but in San Francisco, more people go by bus or walk. A walk in the city is always good. There are wonderful views across the hills, and you can go past many nice buildings. For example, in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, there are the beautiful old houses around Alamo Square. They are in different colors, like green, blue, orange, or yellow.

Some people travel to and from the city by sea, too. Workers come across the water every day from towns like Oakland or Sausalito. When they arrive, they travel around on the Muni. The Muni is all the bus and streetcar lines in San Francisco, and the famous old cable car lines, too.

Everybody knows about the cable cars. You cannot find many films about San Francisco without one.

They first began in 1873. A man called Andrew Halliday had the idea for them when he saw a bad road accident. They were a very good answer to the steep, dangerous hills, and soon there were cable car lines across the city. But San Francisco lost many of its cable cars in the terrible 1906 earthquake. After this, there were more buses, and by the 1930s, a lot of people used these to travel around the city. In 1947, some of the most important men in the city wanted to close the cable car lines. Of course, the people of San Francisco became very angry because they did not want to lose them. In the end, they saved the cable cars, and today, 40 of the cars move around the city on three different lines. Every car has a driver and a conductor. This man or woman takes the money and helps people when they travel, too. This is important because some travelers stand outside the cable car on the side, and this can be very dangerous. One of the most famous conductors was Maya Angelou. She was the first African-American streetcar conductor in the city when she was only 14. She later became one of the most important writers in the United States. Her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is about her early years and the lives of African-Americans in the 1930s.

Chapter 6: The Bridge and Alcatraz

When people talk about San Francisco, they often think of the long orange-red bridge to the city, the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge. There are many wonderful photos of the bridge, often with the sun behind it or the fog half over it. A man called Charles Crocker first thought of a bridge here in 1872, but many people did not like the idea. The Golden Gate was a terrible place for a bridge, they said, because the weather was always bad and the seas were very dangerous.

Later, in 1921, a bridge builder called Joseph Strauss had a good idea for a long bridge across the Golden Gate, and he talked to many important people about it. In the end, they listened to him, and work began on the bridge in January 1933. It cost more than $35 million, and hundreds of workers built it over four years. When it opened in April 1937, it was the longest bridge of its type in the world. It was 2.7 kilometers long, and you could walk, drive, or go by bicycle across it. The first day was very exciting. Over 200,000 men, women, and children came from all over the city and walked across the new bridge. And, 50 years later, in April 1987, thousands of people went across the bridge again. This time, there were 300,000 walkers. Some of the older men and women happily remembered their first walk across it in 1937.

Of course, this big bridge always needs a lot of work, because the fog and seawater move around it all the time. You can find 38 workers on the bridge every day. What do they do? They make the bridge the famous orange-red color, and their work never stops.

You can see the Golden Gate Bridge in a lot of films, too. In the James Bond film, A View to a Kill, a dangerous man called Zorin chases Bond, and they have a long fight on the bridge. They move wildly from side to side, but in the end, Bond hits Zorin with his feet, and he goes down into the cold waters of the Golden Gate.

When you stand on the bridge and look east across San Francisco Bay, you can see an island. It is very small, but everybody knows its name.

Alcatraz.

Every year, more than 1.4 million visitors visit this place. And why do they all come? They want to learn more about the story of this terrible prison island.

Alcatraz Island first became an important prison in 1907. At this time, it was only a prison for soldiers. Then, in the 1930s, the U.S. government needed a place for the most dangerous people in the country. People from wild cities like Chicago or New York. Soon, they thought of Alcatraz Island. The water around the island is cold and dangerous to swim in. Nobody could escape from there, the government thought. The island became a U.S. government prison between 1934 and 1963, and over the years, 1,545 men lived there. Alcatraz became the home of famous prisoners like Al Capone from Chicago and George "Machine Gun" Kelly from Tennessee. Life for the prisoners on Alcatraz was not easy. The island is only 2.4 kilometers away from the city of San Francisco. From their little dark rooms, they could always hear the noises of city life from across the water. They were in prison, and they could never forget it.

There are escape stories about 36 different men. Perhaps the most famous story is about Frank Morris and the two Anglin brothers, John and Clarence. At 9:30 on the evening of the 11th of June, 1962, the three prisoners got into one of the building's big air vents with the help of spoons and other things from the prison. They carefully went through the air vents and out into the dark night. The men took some old coats with them and made a raft, a type of little ship. Sometime after 10 o'clock, they began to move across the fast, dangerous waters of San Francisco Bay on their raft. And did the men escape? Some people think yes, but the prison said no.

The three prisoners died in the cold water, they said. But nobody found their dead bodies, only their raft, and nobody heard from them again.

You can learn all about their story in the exciting 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood. Watch it, and perhaps you can answer the question. Did they escape, or didn't they?

The prison closed in 1963. Later, in 1969, hundreds of Native Americans came to Alcatraz and stayed there for 19 months. They were angry with the government about the terrible lives of their people. In the end, the government changed some of their ideas about Native Americans, and they gave the people back some of their old villages and areas.

Alcatraz is now a U.S. government park, and you can visit the island all year. Most visitors come in the day, but you can go at night, too.

Walk around the dark prison buildings. Look in the rooms and listen for noises. Perhaps you can hear the prisoners from long ago.

Chapter 7: Golden Gate Park

Where do the people of San Francisco go when they want to escape city life? They walk or take the bus to the Golden Gate Park. You can find everything here: Big fountains, tall trees, and, of course, beautiful gardens with flowers in every color. It is the biggest city park in the United States. It is 5 kilometers long and 1 kilometer across, and it is a very good place for runners and walkers because you can go for more than 43 kilometers around the park.

The park began in the early 1870s when a famous man called William Hammond Hall and the Scottish gardener John McLaren started work on the area. They changed the place into a green garden. McLaren put in more than 155,000 trees, and the park is famous for these today.

There are a lot of different parts of the park. For example, there is a beautiful Japanese garden. It was built by a man called Makoto Hagiwara in 1894, and it is the oldest Japanese garden in the United States. Visitors often come here and take photographs of the nice Japanese bridge.

The park has a lot of wonderful buildings, too. The Conservatory of Flowers was built from wood and glass in 1878, and it has about 20,000 different flowers and little trees. You can find a lot of oranges and bananas in here, too.

When visitors walk through the park, they sometimes see very big wild animals with long hair, but they do not need to feel afraid. These animals are the famous buffalo, American bison, and they first began to live here in 1894. They stay quietly in their area of the park, and they cannot escape.

People in San Francisco love being out with their friends, and at the weekend, everybody likes to play in the park. There are different places for tennis, football, or baseball. You can see a lot of families and children on bicycles, too.

The park is one of the best places for skaters. Young students like to skate very fast here, and sometimes jump wildly over things. Visitors often sit and watch. It is very exciting.

Chapter 8: Going Out

Going out in San Francisco is always interesting. You can watch the San Francisco Giants baseball team, see an exciting street parade, or visit one of the wonderful museums in the city.

One of the most famous museums is the Cable Car Museum. It is in a big old building in the Knob Hill neighborhood. One of today's cable car lines finishes at the museum, and visitors can watch the big cables move here. There are a number of very old cable cars from the 1870s, too.

Schools often take children to the Wells Fargo Museum near the Chinatown neighborhood. Here, students can learn all about the Wells Fargo stagecoaches from the early days of the Gold Rush. Jump into an old stagecoach at the museum, and you are on a wild road in the 1850s. Look into one of the famous Wells Fargo green boxes, and what can you see? There are big bags of gold, old money, and letters from the time of the Gold Rush. Every stagecoach carried one of these boxes, and the drivers always sat on them at the front.

A new museum is the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The roof of the building is a wonderful color because it has wildflowers all over it. When visitors walk through one part of the museum, they sometimes say, "this is like South America." That is because there are hundreds of trees and animals from places like the Amazon, and they are all alive.

San Francisco is also famous for its big street parades. Every year, in January or February, there is the Chinese New Year Parade. This began in 1858, and it is one of the biggest parades of its type. The best part is when a big gold dragon, 72 meters long, comes down the street. A hundred people walk along under the dragon and carry it from side to side through the streets of Chinatown.

On the Saturday before the 17th of March, there is the wonderful St. Patrick's Day Parade. The first parade was in 1852, and it is all about the best things from the country of Ireland. Thousands of people go down Market Street in the center of the city. An important part of St. Patrick's Day is the color of people's clothes. Everybody wears something green.

In their free time, a lot of people go to see the San Francisco 49ers American football team. The team takes its name from the men and women of the Gold Rush. What colors do they play in? Red and gold, of course. They were the first team in the important U.S. Super Bowl five times in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Giants are one of the oldest baseball teams in the United States. They began their life in New York, but they moved to San Francisco in 1957. In 2010, they had a very good year when they won the famous World Series. The team became very important on television in 1989, too. On the 17th of October, some minutes before the team began to play, the television pictures suddenly moved and then stopped. This was, of course, the Loma Prieta earthquake, and it was the first earthquake on TV.

Chapter 9: Shopping and Eating

San Francisco is the home of many big shops, like Bloomingdale's and Macy's. There is Neiman Marcus, too. You can buy very expensive clothes here and nice things for your home. Visitors come and look at the beautiful roof in this building. It came from an old San Francisco shop called the City of Paris. The City of Paris opened in 1850 at the time of the Gold Rush. You could buy wonderful things from France here, and people were sorry when it closed in 1972.

The men and women of San Francisco love reading. They buy more books than the people of any other U.S. city. The most famous bookshop is City Lights in the North Beach neighborhood. A famous writer called Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened City Lights in 1953. It soon became an important center for people with new ideas. People came from across the country to read the exciting books here by writers like Jack Kerouac. City Lights is in a very interesting building, too. It was built after the 1906 earthquake, and it is a good example of an old San Francisco shop. You can walk past and look through the big old windows at the latest books.

After you finish shopping, you can go to one of the many restaurants. When people moved to San Francisco from China, Japan, South America, or Europe, they brought their ideas about food with them. So you can find good restaurants here from all over the world.

Perhaps some of the best places for food are the famous Boudin bread shops and restaurants. One of their biggest restaurants is at Fisherman's Wharf next to the water on San Francisco Bay. Visitors can look across to Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge. Here you can eat some of the city's famous sourdough bread. Sourdough is a very old type of bread, and many people love eating it. At the time of the Gold Rush, sourdough bread was the most important food for people. They took it with them when they looked for gold in the hills. The Boudin family first began to make this bread in 1849, and you can learn all about their story in the Boudin Museum.

People often ask for the most famous thing on the Boudin menu.

Clam chowder in sourdough bread.

Clam chowder is made from seafood. You eat the warm chowder first with a spoon, and then you finish the nice sourdough bread. When you are very hungry, it is the best dinner in the world.

San Francisco has a long and interesting story from the early days of the Gold Rush to today. Some things about this city do not change: The white fog, the beautiful old houses, and the wonderful Golden Gate Bridge. But other things move with the times, and of course, this city likes new ideas. For example, the city recycles a lot of its old bottles, boxes, and newspapers. When you are walking around the city and you finish your drink, you can easily find a place for your old bottle. The city recycles 72% of things like paper, old food, and bottles, and it is the best city in the United States for this.

The city also wants people to use greener cars. These use electricity, and they are not dirty like other cars. There are now a lot of places in the center of San Francisco for people with these cars. They can put more electricity into them here, and they do not need to pay for it. From May 2011 to December 2013, it is free.

With its newer ideas and wonderful older things like the world-famous cable cars or sourdough bread, we can look at the city and say, "San Francisco likes to do things a little differently."

And it is true. You cannot find a place like San Francisco in any other country in the world.