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The captivating past of San Francisco, California
The astounding site of San Francisco has captivated the brilliant minds of history. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Sir Francis Drake, both captains and explorers, sailed their way to the coast. In the year 1769, a hunting party from an expedition led by the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola looked down from the hilltop to the wide body of water and they were the first Europeans known to have seen the beauty of San Francisco for the very first time in recorded history. The San Carlos, the first Spanish ship, directed by Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala turned eastward between the headlands and anchored their ship inside the harbor. Sir Francis Drake possibly entered the bay, but most proofs suggest otherwise.
An Englishman pioneered settling in the area, named Captain William Anthony Richardson, who in the year 1835, cleared an area of land and constructed San Francisco’s earliest dwelling which was a tent made of four pieces of redwood and a ship’s foresail. In the same year, the United States attempted to purchase San Francisco Bay from the Mexican government. After fighting began along the Rio Grande, Captain John B. Montgomery sailed the eye of the war Portsmouth into the bay on June 3, 1846. Then later went ashore with a group of sailors and marines to raise the flag of the United States of America. On January 30, 1847, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.
The discovery of gold helped the metropolis grow, helping the city picked up a stride and direction. A number of over 40,000 gold hunters arrived by sea, another 30,000 plodded across the Great Basin, then another 9,000 moved to the north from Mexico. By the year 1851, more than 800 ships were ridden to anchor on the area. The eggs sold in the local market were tagged at 1 dollar every piece. Until a panic of over 50,000 Franciscans became wealthy and shortly went bankrupt, avoided and misled one another, and took violence as a solution. As The Sacramento Union stated in the year 1856, there had been “some fourteen hundred murders in San Francisco in six years, and only three of the murders hung, and one of these was a friendless Mexican.” Then in the year 1859, silver was discovered in the Nevada Territory. 11 years after that, the city of San Francisco boasted a population of nearly 150,000 residents.
Between the years 1860 and 1870, the modern San Francisco was born. They claimed that it was the Athens, Paris, and New York of the West but never lost the roots of its wild humble beginnings. When Rudyard Kiplings visited the city and made an observation in the 1890’s, he stated that “San Francisco is a mad city, inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people.”
The World War made an expansion during the 20th century and while the rest of the people around the globe were assembling for the First World War, the city of San Francisco was occupied, hosting a successful World’s Fair – Panama – Pacific International Exposition – to celebrate a great boost to the Western commerce which is the opening of the Panama Canal.
The second world war made notable contact on the city’s prosperity and special shipyards were built just around the bay area and half a million people came to do their job in the places of war-related industries, the majority of them stayed indefinitely after the war.
During the 1980s, the city has experienced positive growth. San Francisco’s population topped over 700,000 with a great mixture of immigrants coming from South Asia. After the sudden increase in population, the cost of living in the city has skyrocketed making it one of the most expensive cities to live in around the country. The number of automobiles was doubled, the cable cars were improved, tourism became the city’s most profitable business, and the number of homeless people grew tremendously. In the year 2010, the city bounced back with its second technology discovery, leading to an influx of people living in the area in the already crowded city.
Umar Nisar was born and raised in the busy city of Abbottabad. As a journalist, Umar Nisar has contributed to many online publications including PAK Today and the Huffing Post. In regards to academics, Umar Nisar earned a degree in business from the Abbottabad UST, Havelian. Umar Nisar follows the money and covers all aspects of emerging tech here at The Hear Up.
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