Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

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The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.68 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)

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The Presidio of San Francisco (originally, El Presidio Real de San Francisco or The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis) is a park and former military base on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, and is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It had been a fortified location since September 17, 1776, when New Spain established it to gain a foothold on Alta California and the San Francisco Bay. It passed to Mexico, which in turn passed it to the United States in 1848. As part of a 1989 military reduction program under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, Congress voted to end the Presidio's status as an active military installation of the U.S. Army. On October 1, 1994, it was transferred to the National Park Service, ending 219 years of military use and beginning its next phase of mixed commercial and public use.

In 1996, the United States Congress created the Presidio Trust to oversee and manage the interior 80% of the park's lands, with the National Park Service managing the coastal 20%. In a first-of-its-kind structure, Congress mandated that the Presidio Trust make the Presidio financially self-sufficient by 2013, which it achieved 8 years ahead of the scheduled deadline.

The park is characterized by many wooded areas, hills, and scenic vistas overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. It was recognized as a California Historical Landmark in 1933 and as a National Historic Landmark in 1962. (more...)

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Emilio Gino Segrè (30 January 1905 – 22 April 1989) was an Italian physicist and Nobel laureate who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a sub-atomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the in Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959.

Born in Tivoli, near Rome, Segrè studied engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza before taking up physics in 1927. Segrè was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Rome in 1932 and worked there until 1936, becoming one of the Via Panisperna boys. From 1936 to 1938 he was Director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo. After a visit to Ernest O. Lawrence's Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, he was sent a molybdenum strip from the laboratory's cyclotron deflector in 1937 which was emitting anomalous forms of radioactivity. After careful chemical and theoretical analysis, Segrè was able to prove that some of the radiation was being produced by a previously unknown element, dubbed technetium, which was the first artificially synthesized chemical element which does not occur in nature. (more...)

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Concord (/ˈkɒŋkərd/ KON-kərd; formerly Todos Santos) is the largest city in Contra Costa County, California, in the United States. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 122,067. Founded in 1869 as the community of Todos Santos by Salvio Pacheco, the name was changed to Concord within months. The city is a major regional suburban East Bay center within the San Francisco Bay Area, and is 31 miles (50 km) east of San Francisco. (more...)

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Bride and groom at the ruins of the Sutro Baths, San Francisco

image credit: Brocken Inaglory

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The Bay Area by year

1953

Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore (pictured) opens in San Francisco
Johnny Kan opens an early "open kitchen" Chinese restaurant in San Francisco
Laney College is established in Oakland
The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages begins publication at the University of California, Berkeley

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Lake Merritt, Oakland (ca. 1890-1905)

image credit: Library of Congress

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Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

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Previous Did you know...

... that there are only two extant populations of the Tiburon Jewelflower (pictured), both on the Tiburon Peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area?
... that the Yulupa Creek watershed has been designated as critical habitat for two California endangered species?
... that the Laguna de Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California, has several endemic endangered species and is the second-largest freshwater wetland in Northern California?
... that Isaias W. Hellman, a co-founder of the University of Southern California, ran Wells Fargo Bank out of his house after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake leveled its headquarters?
... that Graham Creek in California was a seasonal hunting and gathering ground for prehistoric Pomo and Wappo people?
... that the Brush Creek confluence (pictured) with Santa Rosa Creek was the site of a Pomo village, the antecedent of modern Santa Rosa, California?

December 2006

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The Festival del Sole is an annual ten-day jazz and classical music, food, wine, and art festival held in Napa Valley. Founded in 2006 by Richard Walker and Barrett Wissman, the festival attracts over 8,000 attendees annually. Performers at the festival have included Monica Mancini, Pinchas Zukerman, Dmitry Sitkovetsky and Arturo Sandoval (pictured, at a White House performance).

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“

The port of San Francisco ... is a marvel of nature, and might well be called the harbor of harbors ... And I think if it could be well settled like Europe there would not be anything more beautiful in all the world.

”

~ Juan Bautista de Anza

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"Big C", California Golden Bears fight song

credit: public domain

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Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

Regions

East Bay

North Bay

Peninsula

Santa Clara Valley

Silicon Valley

Wine Country

West Marin

Geographic features

San Francisco Bay

San Pablo Bay

Suisun Bay

Islands of the Bay

Marin Headlands

Diablo Range

Berkeley Hills

Santa Cruz Mountains

Protected areas

Golden Gate Recreation Area

Farallones Marine Sanctuary

Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge

Point Reyes Seashore

Mount Tamalpais State Park

Henry Coe State Park

Midpeninsula Open Space

East Bay Regional Parks

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