San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments defines the Bay Area as including the nine counties that border the estuaries of San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, and Suisun Bay: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other definitions may be either smaller or larger, and may include neighboring counties which are not officially part of the San Francisco Bay Area, such as the Central Coast counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey, or the Central Valley counties of San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus. The Bay Area is known for its natural beauty, prominent universities, technology companies, and affluence. The Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a complex multimodal transportation network.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlements in the Bay Area dates back to 8000–10,000 BC. The oral tradition of the Ohlone and Miwok people suggests they have been living in the Bay Area for several hundreds if not thousands of years. The Spanish empire claimed the area beginning in the early period of Spanish colonization of the Americas. The earliest Spanish exploration of the Bay Area took place in 1769. The Mexican government controlled the area from 1821 until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Also in 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold in nearby mountains, resulting in explosive immigration to the area and the precipitous decline of the Native population. The California gold rush brought rapid growth to San Francisco. California was admitted as the 31st state in 1850. A major earthquake and fire leveled much of San Francisco in 1906. During World War II, the Bay Area played a major role in America's war effort in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, with the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, of which Fort Mason was one of 14 installations and location of the headquarters, acting as a primary embarkation point for American forces. Since then, the Bay Area has experienced numerous political, cultural, and artistic movements, developing unique local genres in music and art and establishing itself as a hotbed of progressive politics. The postwar Bay Area saw large growth in the financial and technology industries, creating an economy with a gross domestic product of over $700 billion. In 2018 it was home to the third-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States.
The Bay Area is home to approximately 7.52 million people. The larger federal classification, the combined statistical area of the region which includes thirteen counties, is the second-largest in California—after the Greater Los Angeles area—and the fifth-largest in the United States, with over nine million people. The Bay Area's population is ethnically diverse: roughly three-fifths of the region's residents are Hispanic/Latino, Asian, African/Black, or Pacific Islander, all of whom have a significant presence throughout the region. Most of the remaining two-fifths of the population is non-Hispanic White American. The most populous cities of the Bay Area are Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, the latter of which had a population of 969,655 in 2023, making San Jose the area's largest city and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The San Francisco Bay Area's population has the third-oldest median age, following two Florida metros; and it is the fastest-aging of any metropolitan area in the U.S., described as a demographic "doom loop".
Despite its urban character, San Francisco Bay is one of California's most ecologically sensitive habitats, providing important ecosystem services such as filtering the pollutants and sediments from rivers and supporting a number of endangered species. In addition, the Bay Area is known for its stands of coast redwoods, many of which are protected in state and county parks. The region is additionally known for the complexity of its landforms, the result of millions of years of tectonic plate movements. Because the Bay Area is crossed by six major earthquake faults, the region is particularly exposed to hazards presented by large earthquakes. The climate is temperate and conducive to outdoor recreational and athletic activities such as hiking, running, and cycling.
The Bay Area is host to teams in each of the five largest North American men's professional sports leagues and is a cultural center for music, theater, and the arts. It is also host to numerous higher education institutions, including research universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, the latter known for helping to create the high tech center called Silicon Valley. Home to 101 municipalities and 9 counties, governance in the Bay Area involves numerous local and regional jurisdictions, often with broad and overlapping responsibilities.
History
Pre-colonization
The Coyote Hills Shell Mound, the earliest known archaeological evidence of human habitation of the Bay Area estuaries, dates to around 10,000 BCE, with evidence pointing to even earlier settlement in Point Reyes in Marin County. It has been conjectured that the people living in the Bay Area at the time of first European contact were descended from Siberian tribes who arrived at around 1,000 BCE by sailing over the Arctic Ocean and following the salmon migration. However the current academic consensus is compatible with the oral tradition of the Ohlone and Miwok peoples, which suggests they have been living in the Bay Area for several hundreds if not thousands of years.At the time of colonization, the Ohlone peoples in the Bay Area primarily lived on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the South Bay and in the East Bay, and the Miwok primarily lived in the North Bay, northern East Bay, and Central Valley. Ohlone villages were spread across the Peninsula, East Bay, South Bay, as well as further south into the Monterey Bay area. There were eight major divisions of Ohlone people, four of which were based in the Bay Area: the Karkin of the Carquinez Strait, the Chochenyo of the East Bay, the Ramaytush of the San Francisco Peninsula, and the Tamien of the South Bay. The Miwok had two major groups in the Bay Area: the Bay Miwok of Contra Costa and the Coast Miwok of Marin and Sonoma.
Colonization
In 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast near the Bay Area though the expedition did not see the Golden Gate or the estuaries, likely due to fog. Sir Francis Drake became the first European to land in the area and claim it in June 1579, when he landed at Drakes Bay near Point Reyes. Even though he claimed the region for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion, the English made no immediate follow up to the claim.In 1595, Philip II of Spain tasked Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho with mapping the west coast of the Americas. Soromenho set sail on Manila Galleon San Agustin on July 5, 1595 and in early November they reached land between Point St. George and Trinidad Head, north of the Bay Area, in the Lost Coast. The expedition followed the coast southward and on November 7 the San Agustin anchored in Drakes Bay, and claimed the region as Puerto y Bahía de San Francisco. In late November, a storm sank the San Agustin and killed between 7 and 12 people. On December 8, 80 remaining crew members set sail on the San Buenaventura, a launch which was partially constructed en route from the Philippines. Seeking the fastest route south, the expedition sailed past the Golden Gate, arriving at Puerto de Chacala, Mexico on January 17, 1596. File:Mission San Francisco de Asís .jpg|thumb|right|In 1776, Francisco Palóu founded Mission San Francisco de Asís, the first Spanish settlement in the Bay Area.
File:"General Vallejo Reviewing His Troops in Sonoma, 1846".jpg|thumb|right|General Vallejo reviewing Californio troops in Sonoma, during the U.S. Conquest of California in 1846
The Bay Area estuaries remained unknown to Europeans until members of the Portolá expedition, while trekking along the California coast, encountered them in 1769 when the Golden Gate blocked their continued journey north. Several missions were founded in the Bay Area during this period. In 1806, a Spanish expedition led by Gabriel Moraga began at the Presidio, traveled south of the bay, and then east to explore 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 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.
Gold rush
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 in gold 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 goldfields. 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.File:California's first state capitol in San José.jpg|thumb|right|San Jose served as the first state capitol following the California's Admission to the Union in 1850.
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, Vallejo, and Benicia before permanently settling in Sacramento in 1854. As the gold rush subsided, 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's population was of Asian origin. The completion of the railroad connected the Bay Area with the rest of the United States, established a truly national marketplace for the trade of goods, and accelerated the urbanization of the region.