page_title: San Francisco Bay Area
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: San Francisco Bay Area / History
caption_attribution_description: English: President Harry S. Truman addressing the United Nations Conference in San Francisco, California. From left to right: Unknown person, President Truman, Harry Vaughan, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, and Alger Hiss. Armed Service personnel and the flags of nations are in the background. (Original is oversize)
context_page_description: The San Francisco Bay Area, popularly referred to as the Bay Area or simply the Bay, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. While the exact boundaries of the region are variously defined, the Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to include the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other boundaries may exclude parts of or even entire counties, or expand the definition to include neighboring counties that do not border the bay such as San Benito, San Joaquin, and Santa Cruz.
  Home to approximately 7.75 million people, Northern California's nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a complex multimodal transportation network. The larger combined statistical area of the region, which includes fourteen counties, is the second-largest in California, the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 41st-largest urban area in the world with 9.67 million people.
context_section_description: The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the Bay Area dates to around 10,000 B.C. (Coyote Hills Shell Mound) along the shores of the bay, with evidence pointing to even earlier settlement in Point Reyes in Marin County. The Miwokan and Costanoan Ohlone people, who were living in the Bay Area at the time of first European contact, were possibly descended from Siberian tribes who arrived at around 1,000 BC by sailing over the Arctic Ocean and following the salmon migration. The Ohlone lived in about forty or so tribes spread throughout the lands adjacent to the San Francisco Bay and as far south as Point Sur near Monterey Bay.
  In 1575, a Spanish exploration party led by Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho landed in Drakes Bay near Point Reyes and was the first European settler to claim land in the Bay Area. He was soon followed in 1579 by Sir Francis Drake, who also landed in Drakes Bay and claimed the land for England. The San Francisco Bay itself remained undiscovered by Europeans until a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà sailed through the Golden Gate Strait in 1769. Further expeditions by Spanish explorers in the following years include those led by Juan Bautista de Anza who colonized the Presidio, and Gabriel Moraga who started at the Presidio and led expedition parties to San Jose and over the Pacheco Pass, as well as reaching the San Joaquin Valley. In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain and the Bay Area became part of the Mexican province of Alta California, a period characterized by ranch life and visiting American trappers. Mexico's control of the territory would be short-lived, however, and in 1846, a party of settlers occupied Sonoma Plaza and proclaimed the independence of the new Republic of California. That same year, the Mexican–American War began, and American captain John Berrien Montgomery sailed the USS Portsmouth into the bay and seized San Francisco, which was then known as Yerba Buena, and raised the American flag for the first time over Portsmouth Square.
  In 1848, James W. Marshall's discovery of gold in the American River sparked the California Gold Rush, and within half a year, 4,000 men were panning for gold along the river and finding $50,000 per day. The promise of fabulous riches quickly led to a stampede of wealth-seekers descending on Sutter's Mill. The Bay Area's population quickly emptied out as laborers, clerks, waiters, and servants joined the rush to find gold, and California's first newspaper, The Californian, was forced to announce a temporary freeze in new issues due to labor shortages. By the end of 1849, news had spread across the world and newcomers flooded into the Bay Area at a rate of one thousand per week on their way to California's interior, including the first large influx of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. The rush was so great that vessels were abandoned by the hundreds in San Francisco's ports as crews rushed to the gold fields. The unprecedented influx of new arrivals spread the nascent government authorities thin, and the military was unable to prevent desertions. As a result,
  numerous vigilante groups formed to provide order, but many tasked themselves with forcibly moving or killing local Native Americans, and by the end of the Gold Rush, two thirds of the indigenous population had been killed.
  During this same time, a constitutional convention was called to determine California's application for statehood into the United States. After statehood was granted, the capital city moved between three cities in the Bay Area: San Jose (1849–1851), Vallejo (1851–1852), and Benicia (1852–1853) before permanently settling in Sacramento in 1854. As the Gold Rush wound down, wealth generated from the endeavor led to the establishment of Wells Fargo Bank and the Bank of California, and immigrant laborers attracted by the promise of wealth transformed the demographic makeup of the region. Construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad from the Oakland Long Wharf attracted so many laborers from China that by 1870, eight percent of San Francisco
caption: U.S. President Harry S. Truman addressing the United Nations Conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations.
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