along or near the water front, continuing around the entire
city and returning to the point of starting. Also,
mentioning more distant points, visible to the spectator
looking beyond the suburbs.
LUMBER YARDS; Wharves and Merchant Fleet; California
and Oregon S. S. Co.'s Wharves and Ships; Black Diamond
Coal Co.'s Pier; Rincon Point; U. S. Marine Hospital;
P. M. S. S. Co.'s Piers, Docks, Sheds and Ships;
Gas Works; C. P. R. R. Co,'s Freight Pier, Depot and
Boat; Mission Bay; Mission Rock; U. S. Ship Anchorage;
Steamboat Reserves; Long Bridge; Yacht Club
and Boat-house, with Yachts; Potrero; Glass Works;
Pacific Rolling Mill; Deep Cut; Islais Creek and Bridge;
Rope Walk; Italian Fishing Fleet and Flakes; Celestial
Ditto; South San Francisco; Catholic Orphan Asylum;
Hunter's Point; Dry Dock; Bay View Race Course;
Visitacion Point and Valley; San Bruno Road; New
Butchertown; Ocean House Road; Lake Honda; Almshouse;
Small Pox Hospital; Ocean House Race Track;
Lake Merced; Ocean House; Pacific Beach; Seal Rocks;
Cliff House; Farallones; Point Lobos; Signal Station;
Helmet Rock; Fort Point; Fort; Light-House; Golden
Gate; Lime Point; Point Bonita; Mountain Lake;
Lobos Creek; Presidio; Barracks; Parade Ground;
Black Point; Pacific Woolen Mills; North Beach; Angel
Island; Alcatraz; North Point; Sea Wall; Ferries, 188-196
III. HOW TO SEE THE CITY.
Under this head we suggest:
Morning, or half-day excursions, in and about the city and its
suburbs.
I. IN AND ABOUT THE CITY.
1. Montgomery Street, Telegraph Hill, North Beach,
Washington Square, The Plaza, City Hall, Kearny
street, 197
2. Chinese Quarter, 197
3. Third street, South Park, Long Bridge, Potrero, South
San Francisco, Dry Dock, 201
4. Water Front, (south), Stewart street, P. M. S. S. Co.'s
Docks and Mammoth Steamships, Foundries, Factories,
Shot Tower, 202
5. Water Front, (north), Sea Wall, North Point, Warehouses
and Clippers, Iron Ships, Bay and River Steamboats
and Docks, 202
6. Southwestern Suburbs, Mission street, Woodward's
Gardens, Old Mission Church, Jewish Cemeteries,
Woolen Mills, Howard street, 202
7. Western Suburbs and Beyond Bush street, Laurel Hill,
Lone Mountain Cemeteries, Cliff House Road, Race
Track, Cliff House, Seal rocks, Pacific Beach, Ocean
House, Road Track, Lake Honda, New Ocean Road, 203
8. Northwestern Suburbs and Beyond: Russian Hill,
Spring Valley, Fort Point, Fortress, Lighthouse, Golden
Gate, Presidio, Black Point, 203
SAN FRANCISCO.
Historical.
The site of what is now the city of San Francisco was first
permanently occupied by white men, September 17, 1776. The same year
witnessed the entrenchment of a garrison and the establishment of a
Mission.
San Francisco owes its origin to Catholic missionaries and Spanish
soldiers. Father Junipero Serra led the missionaries--and virtually
commanded the soldiers. The name San Francisco was given in honor of
Saint Francis of Asisis, a city of Italy, the founder of the order of
Franciscans to which Father Junipero belonged. The presidio, garrison
or fort, was founded first, Sept. 17, and the mission about three
weeks later, Oct. 9th. The site first chosen was near a small lagoon
back of, that is, west of, what is now called Russian Hill, but the
prevailing winds proved so high and bitter as to compel its early
removal to the more sheltered spot, over a mile south, under the lee
of high hills, and near the present Mission Creek. Here, at the head
of what is now Center or Sixteenth Street, the old church still
stands.
For nearly sixty years the mission stood, the nucleus of a little
village of rude adobe houses, tenanted by a fluctuating population of
Indians, Mexicans and Spanish--and the center of a military and
religious authority, which upon more than one occasion made itself
felt and feared for leagues around. The population rarely rose above
four hundred and frequently fell to less than a hundred and fifty.
In 1835, Capt. W. A. Richardson put up the first pioneer dwelling,
with rude wooden walls and sail-cloth roof. On the fourth of July of
the next year, 1836, Jacob P. Leese finished the first frame house.
This house stood where the St. Francis Hotel now stands,--on the
southwest corner of Clay and Dupont streets, a single block west of
the present City Hall. Leese had his store on the beach, which was
where Montgomery and Commercial streets now intersect. Nearly seven
solid blocks of made-land now stretch between where that old beach lay
and the present water front. Other houses soon rose near that of
Leese, and presently the villagers saw their little settlement fast
approaching the dignity of a new town, and cast about to find a name.
Nature caused it to spring out of the ground for them in the form of a
species of aromatic mint, which, surrounding their dwellings,
perfuming the morning air and supplying frequent and varied medicinal
needs, had proved indeed, as the Spaniards called it, "Yerba Buena,"
the Good Herb. So the herb named the town, and the name "_stuck_" as
the Californians say, for nearly a dozen years. During these years the
houses grew in number, until 1847, when the town contained
seventy-nine buildings,--thirty-one frame, twenty-six adobe, and the
rest shanties--and these houses sheltered three hundred souls, or, at
least, that number of bodies. On the 30th of January of that year,
these three hundred dropped the old name Yerba Buena, and adopted the
older one, which had belonged to the neighboring mission for nearly
fourscore years. Thus the town also became San Francisco, and has ever
since so remained. The first steamboat appeared in the bay, November
15th of the same year. In March, 1848, the houses had grown to two
hundred, and the population to eight hundred and fifty. On the third
of the next month, the first public school began.
New Year's Day, '49, the new city claimed a population of two
thousand. Three days later the two previously published weekly papers
merged into the Alta California, the earliest established of all
newspapers now existing in the State.
The early miners were making from twenty to thirty dollars a day,
getting "bags" of dust and "piles" of nuggets, and rushing down to
"Frisco" to gamble it away. These were the "flush times" of the new
city. Fresh eggs cost from seventy-five cents to one dollar apiece.
For a beefsteak and a cup of coffee for breakfast one had to pay a
dollar and a half, and a dinner cost him from two to ten or even
twenty dollars, according to appetite and drinketite. Rough labor
brought the old Congressional pay of eight dollars a day; draymen
earned twenty dollars a day; and family "help" could hardly be had for
forty, or even fifty, dollars a week. The great mass of the men lived
in tents. Very few women had come, but those few were overwhelmed with
attention; if one wished to cross the street in the rainy season, a
score of brawny arms would fight for the privilege of gallantly wading
through the sea of mud to carry her across the unpaved street.
Great fires came, four of them; the first the day before Christmas,
'49--it burned over a million dollars worth; the second, May 4th,
'50--it destroyed three millions dollars worth. A little over a month
later, June 14th, 1850, the most destructive fire the city ever saw
left it poorer by four millions of dollars; and on the 17th of the
next September the fourth fire consumed another half million. Nearly
nine million dollars worth burned in less than nine months!
Business thrived immensely. In 1852, more than seven vessels a day
arrived at or departed from San Francisco. Commerce overdid itself.
Long piers ran out over the flats where now solid blocks of lofty
buildings have stood for half a score of years. Sometimes storms kept
back the clippers; then prices went still higher. Between March and
November, flour went up from eight to forty dollars a barrel, while
the "Alta" came down from its usual broad and sightly page to the size
of a pane of window-glass, fourteen by ten. Villainy flourished;
drinking, gambling, robbery and murder held high carnival; the law did
little, and did that little shabbily and tardily; so the people woke
and resumed their original legislative, judicial, and especially their
executive, functions.
In '51 and '52, and again in '56, they came nobly to the front, hung
the worst villains who defied the common law, frightened away the
others, restored order, established security for honest men, and
resolved themselves again into law-abiding citizens. And thus, through
perils of fire, social convulsions, and financial fluctuation, the
cosmopolitan city has swept swiftly on until to-day, though having
barely attained her majority, she stands in the first half-score of
American cities. Every year she leaves a city or two behind in her
steady progress toward the throne of the continent which she will
surely occupy before the present century has fully fled.
Situation and Extent.
In extent, population, commerce, wealth and the growth, San Francisco
of to-day is not only the chief city of California, but the great
commercial metropolis of the whole Pacific slope. It is both a city
and a county; the county occupies the extreme end of a hilly peninsula
stretching north to the Golden Gate, between the Pacific Ocean on the
west, and San Francisco bay on the east.
The whole peninsula has a length of from thirty-five to forty miles,
with an average width of from twelve to fifteen miles. The average
width of the county from bay to ocean is four and one half miles, and
its extreme length, from the Golden Gate on the north, to the San
Mateo County line on the south, is six miles and a half. Its boundary
line being the natural one of a coast or shore on the west, north and
east, is more or less irregular; on the south it is straight. Its
entire area is 26,681 acres, including the Presidio reservation of
1,500 acres, which belongs to the general government.
The county also includes the Farallon Islands, lying nearly thirty
miles west in the Pacific Ocean, with the islands of Alcatraz and
Yerba Buena, or Goat Island, in San Francisco bay.
The city proper occupies the northeast corner of the county. Its
limits extend about two miles and a half from east to west, by three
and a half from north to south, thus including between one fifth and
one sixth the area of the county.
The natural surface was very uneven and the soil equally varied--sand
beach, salt marsh, mud flats, low plains, narrow ravines, small and
shallow valleys, elevated benches or plateaux, sandy knolls and dunes,
and stretches of the close, adobe soil, made up its original surface;
while rocky bluffs fortified its shore line, and extensive ledges
underlaid its hills or cropped out from their sides, or crowned their
tops. These hills varied in height from two hundred and sixty to four
hundred and ten feet, while west and south of the city limits they
rose still higher. One or two small lagoons lay sluggishly about, and
as many small streams found their way thence to the bay.
The original founders of the city, as is usual in similar cases,
seemed never to suspect that they were moulding the beginnings of a
grand metropolis. Hence they laid out what little they did project
with the least possible regard to present symmetry, or the probable
demands of future growth. The natural inequalities of surface, the
grade and width of streets which must become necessary to a large
city, reservations for public buildings, promenades, gardens, parks,
etc., with the sanitary necessity of thorough drainage, were matters
of which they seem to have been serenely unconscious, or, worse still,
sublimely indifferent. And many of their immediate successors in
authority were legitimate descendants, or humbly imitative followers.
We have not an important street in the city which conforms its course
to the cardinal points of the compass, and but one main avenue,
Market street, which begins to be wide enough. As Cronise truthfully
says: "The whole town stands _askew_."
We now proceed to "orient" the tourist, as Horace Mann used to say, in
regard to such streets, avenues, thoroughfares, cuts, parks, etc., as
mainly constitute the highly artificial, though not particularly
ornamental, topography of our little occidental village.
General Plan.
Market street is the widest and the longest, starting at the water
front, half a mile east of the old City Hall, and slightly ascending
through eight or nine blocks, it runs thence southwesterly on a nearly
level grade beyond the city limits. Its western end is yet unfinished.
A mile and a half from the water it cuts through a moderately high and
immoderately rocky hill, beyond which it stretches away toward the
unfenced freedom of the higher hills, and the dead level of the
western beach beyond, at which it will probably condescend ultimately
to stop. Its surface presents every variety of natural conformation
ingeniously varied with artificial distortion. Plank, rubble, McAdam,
cobble, Nicolson, gravel, Stow foundation, gravel, adobe, sand, and
finally undisguised dirt, offer their pleasing variety to the
exploring eye. From two to four horse-railroad tracks diversify its
surface with their restful regularity, while the steam cars from San
Jose follow their locomotive a short distance up its western end.
Stately blocks, grand hotels, massive stores, lofty factories,
tumble-down shanties, unoccupied lots and vacant sand-hills form its
picturesque boundary on either hand. When the high summer winds sweep
easterly down its broad avenue, laden with clouds of flying sand from
vacant lots along its either margin, it becomes a decidedly open
question whether the lots aforesaid really belong in the department of
real estate, or should, properly enter the catalogue of "movable
property."
We have dwelt thus at length upon this street, not only on account of
its central position and superior dimensions, but because it is a
representative street. Others are like it as far as they can be. They
would resemble it still more closely, did length, width and direction
permit. It is fast becoming the great business street of the city,
and, spite of the roughness and crudeness necessarily attaching to all
the streets of a new and fast-growing city, it unmistakably possesses
all the requisites of the future "Grand Avenue" of the Pacific
metropolis.
On the northeast of Market street, through the older portion of the
city, the streets run at right angles with each other, though neither
at right angles or parallel with Market. One set runs, in straight
lines, nearly north and south. The other set, also straight, crosses
the former at right angles, that is, running nearly east and west. The
principal of these streets, as one goes from the bay westerly, back
toward the hills, and, in fact, some distance up their slopes, are
Front, Battery, Sansome, Montgomery, Kearny, Dupont, Stockton, Powell,
Mason, Taylor, and a dozen others, of which those nearer the bay are
gradually growing into importance as business streets, especially
along the more level portions of their southern blocks, near where
they run into Market street. Beyond these, that is, west of them, the
streets are chiefly occupied by dwelling houses, among which are many
expensive residences of the most modern construction and elegant
design.
Between Front street and the bay run two shorter streets, Davis and
Drumm, along which, as well as upon the northern part of Front street,
are several of the principal wharves, piers, docks and steamboat
landings.
At right angles with these streets, running back at an acute angle
from Market street, and at a right angle with the water front as well
as the streets already named, are Geary, Post, Sutter, Bush, Pine,
California, Sacramento, Clay, Washington, Jackson, Pacific, Broadway,
with a dozen or more others still further north, and a score or so
south.
Along the eastern blocks of these streets, that is, within five or six
squares of the water, stand many of the leading business houses,
hotels, newspaper offices, etc.
A sufficient variety of pavement diversifies the surface of all these
streets--from the primitive, original and everlasting cobble,
destroyer of quiet, destruction to wheels and death on horses, to the
smooth-rolling Nicolson and the beautifully level Stow foundation,
blessed bane of all the above abominations, and not a specially bad
thing for the contractors. The sidewalks generally have a liberal
breadth. They are commonly covered with plank, asphaltum or brick,
and, near the corners and in front of the numerous rum-holes, with
gangs of bilks or crowds of loafers, who have only, as Sydney Smith
once said of a certain vestry in London, to lay their heads together
to make a first-class wooden pavement.
South of Market street, that is, in the newer and more rapidly growing
portion of the city, the streets were laid out under a new survey,
and, of course, have an angle and direction of their own. One set runs
parallel with Market, that is, nearly southwest and northeast. Their
names, in receding order from Market, are Mission, Howard, Folsom,
Harrison, Bryant, Brannan, etc. These streets are generally wider than
those of the older, northern part. Southeast of them are seven or
eight parallel streets, gradually growing shorter as they come nearer
the Mission Bay, ending in South street, less than a block and a half
long, lying along the water front. The lower or eastern ends of nearly
all these streets run down to piers and wharves, upon which are the
leading lumber and coal yards of the city, the largest hay and grain
barns and sheds, and the immense docks of the great Pacific Mail
Steamship Company. Nearly two miles back from the water front all
these streets "swing around the circle" far enough to bring them into
an exactly north and south line, and creep southward down the
peninsula, a block or two farther south every season.
The streets running at right angles with Market street, beginning at
the water front and reckoning back southwesterly, are named by their
numbers, First, Second, etc., up to Thirtieth, and even beyond.
Between First street and the present water front, some six or seven
blocks have been filled in and are occupied chiefly by gas works,
lumber yards and large manufactories. The new streets thus formed are
named, in receding order from First street, Fremont, Beale, Main,
Spear, Stuart and East. To reduce blocks to miles, one has only to
know that in the older part of the city the blocks, reckoning east and
west, number twelve to the mile, including the streets between. From
north to south they are shorter, numbering sixteen to the mile. South
of Market street the blocks are about one seventh of a mile long from
east to west, and one ninth of a mile wide. In both the older and
newer parts of the city, the regular standard blocks are frequently
subdivided by one, and sometimes two, smaller streets, running through
them each way. Near the city front, the first six blocks, reckoning
back from the water, have from one half to two thirds the standard
size. Bearing these dimensions in mind, one can readily reduce blocks
to miles, and calculate distance and time accordingly.
Approaches to the City.
From only one direction can the traveler approach the city by land;
that is, by coming up from the south, through San Jose and the
intervening places. From every other direction one approaches by
water. Between Sacramento and San Francisco there are two principal
routes by rail. The first brings the tourist to Vallejo, sixty miles,
and thence twenty-three miles by boat, making a total of eighty-three
miles, over the shortest and quickest route. Time, four hours and a
half, fare, $3.00.
Approaching by this route, he comes down upon the city from the
northeast. On the left, the San Pablo, Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda
shores, rising gently back into broad plains, whose further edges
fringe the feet of the back-lying hills. Beyond the hills, Mount
Diablo. On the larboard bow, as the sailors say, that is, a little
southwest, rises Goat Island, or Yerba Buena, three hundred and forty
feet. This island looks "very like a whale," and in outline seems a
very monster among leviathans at that.
Directly south the waters of the bay stretch so far that one can
seldom discern the shore line, and may easily fancy himself looking
out to sea in that direction. Further round to the right, that is,
more westerly, he may catch a glimpse of Hunter's Point with the
chimney and engine house of the Dry Dock. Nearer lies the Potrero,
with the suburban city fast creeping up the sides, and crowning the
summit of its rocky promontory. From the beach, at its nearest base,
stretch out the piers and rise the grimy buildings of the Pacific
Rolling Mills. Still nearer you see the south end of the long bridge,
stretching southerly across Mission Bay, and connecting the Potrero
with the city. In a line with the further end of this bridge, and a
mile or more nearer, we have the piers and sheds of the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company, with the immense ships of their China line, the
largest wooden vessels afloat. The steep slope just to the right of
them, on which you see the upper stories of a large brick building, is
Rincon Hill, and the building is the U. S. Marine Hospital. That
monument, as it seems, is the Shot Tower, while in front of, around
and beyond it, you see the usual medley of ordinary city buildings,
here and there rising into single or double church spires, broken by
the bulk of some big business block, and relieved by the regular
lines of intersecting streets.
Right of Rincon Hill, where the city fills a broad hollow, you are
looking over what was once the "Happy Valley" of early times. In a
line beyond it lies the Mission, which you cannot now discover, backed
by the "Twin Peaks," and the high hills which form the back-bone of
the peninsula. Still following around, the larger buildings of the
older city meet the eye, gradually rising up the southern slope. Those
singular minarets or mosque-like twin towers or spires, surmount the
Jewish Synagogue. Here and there a church spire shoots above the
roofs, but one sees fewer of them than in eastern cities of equal
size, because the possibility of earthquakes, and the certainty of
high winds, restrain architects and builders from attempting anything
too lofty or exposed. Several of the finest churches in the city,
spread out on the earth much more than they rise toward heaven. One
reason may be that they do not own far in the latter direction.
North of the Synagogue towers, the hill still rises through three
blocks, when it reaches its full height in California street hill.
Then a slight depression in the hill-top outline, followed by another
rise into the Clay street and Washington street hill, two blocks north
and three blocks west of the former.
The higher hill still further north but nearer the front, is the
famous land-mark and signal-station, Telegraph Hill, from whose top
the long familiar observatory has but recently disappeared; prostrated
on a stormy night last winter, by one of the giant winds whose fury it
had so long defied.
Beyond, or to the right of Telegraph hill, the city falls away to the
northwest, and the bay shore also trends in that direction. Black
Point, the Presidio, and finally Fort Point, bring us to the Golden
Gate.
Unfolding to empire its way,
Wide opened by gold and by fate,
Swung by tides which no nation can stay,
Here standeth the continent's gate.