San Francisco's LGBT culture has its roots in the city's own origin as a frontier town, what San Francisco State University professor Alamilla Boyd characterizes as "San Francisco’s history of sexual permissiveness and its function as a wide-open town - a town where anything goes". The discovery of gold saw a boom in population from 800 to 35,000 residents between 1848 and 1850. These immigrants were composed of miners and fortune seekers from a variety of nationalities and cultures, over 95% of whom were young men.