1958 Move to San Francisco

Lore & Background

The earliest evidence of human habitation in what is now the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Native Americans who settled in this region found the bay to be a resource for hunting and gathering, leading to the establishment of many small villages. Collectively, these early Native Americans are now known as the Ohlone, and the language they spoke belonged to the Miwok family. Their trade patterns included places as far away as Baja California, the Mojave Desert and Yosemite.

The earliest Europeans to reach the site of San Francisco were a Spanish exploratory party in 1769, led overland from Mexico by Don Gaspar de Portolá and Fra. Joan Crespí. The Spanish recognized the location, with its large natural harbor, to be of great strategic significance. A subsequent expedition, led by Juan Bautista de Anza, selected sites for military and religious settlements in 1774.

The Presidio of San Francisco was established for the military, while Mission San Francisco de Asís began the cultural and religious conversion of some 10,000 Ohlone who lived in the area. The mission became known as Mission Dolores, because of its nearness to a creek named after Our Lady of Sorrows. The first anchorage and settlement of Yerba Buena was established at what is now Portsmouth Square, not lower Market Street, and the small settlement that grew up nearby was named Yerba Buena, after the herb of the same name that grew in abundance there.

The original plaza of the Spanish settlement remains as Portsmouth Square. Today's city took its name from the mission, and Yerba Buena became the name of a San Francisco neighborhood now known as South of Market. The Moscone Center and Yerba Buena Gardens are in the Yerba Buena area. In addition, the name Yerba Buena was applied to the former Goat Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, adjacent to Treasure Island. San Francisco became part of the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

Reader's Guide

According to one anthropologist, the indigenous name for San Francisco was Ahwaste, meaning, 'place at the bay'. Linguistic and paleontological evidence is unclear as to whether the earliest inhabitants of the area now known as San Francisco were the ancestors of the Ohlone population encountered by the Spanish in the late 18th century. The cultural unit, Ohlone, to which the San Francisco natives belonged did not recognize the city or county boundaries imposed later by Americans, and were part of a contiguous set of bands that lived from south of the Golden Gate to San José.

When the Spanish arrived, they found the area inhabited by the Yelamu tribe, which belongs to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone. The Ohlone speakers are distinct from Pomo speakers north of the San Francisco Bay, and are part of the Miwok group of languages. Their traditional territory stretched from Big Sur to the San Francisco Bay, although their trading area was much larger. Miwok-speaking Indians also lived in Yosemite, and Ohlone-speakers intermarried with Chumash and Pomo speakers as well.

The Spanish conquest of the San Francisco Bay area came later than to Southern California. San Francisco's characteristic foggy weather and geography led early European explorers such as Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to bypass the Golden Gate and miss entering San Francisco Bay, although it seems clear from historical accounts of navigation that they passed close to the coastline north and south of the Golden Gate.