Timeline of the San Francisco Bay Area

Prehistory

• The San Andreas Fault begins to form in the mid Cenozoic about 30 million years ago
• 9.5 million years ago, the Moraga Volcanics produces most of the lavas that underlie the East Bay ridges from present day Tilden Regional Park to Moraga
• During the Quaternary glaciation beginning 2.58 million years ago, the basin that will be filled by the bay is a large linear valley with small hills, similar to most of the valleys of the Coast Ranges. The rivers of the Central Valley run out to sea through a canyon that will become the Golden Gate. As the ice sheets melt, sea levels rise over the next 4,000 years, and the valley fills with water from the Pacific.
• A strait was formed about 640,000 to 700,000 years ago, while much of modern California was emerging from an ice age, connecting the inland lake covering Central California with the Pacific Ocean.
• Evidence of human occupation of California dates from at least 17,000 BCE.
• The Ohlone people inhabit the Bay Area region as early as 6,000 years ago, with a 1770 estimated population of 10,000–20,000
• The Coast Miwok inhabit the Sonoma and Marin region as early as 4,000 years ago, with a 1770 estimated population of 2,000
• The Patwin people inhabit the northern Bay region as early as 1,500 years ago, with a 1770 estimated population of 12,000
• The Bay Miwok inhabit the region that is now Contra Costa County, with a 1770 estimated population of approximately 1,700

16th century

• In 1539, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo lands on islands off the coast of California, and names them Farallones, Spanish for cliffs or small pointed islets
• On 13 November 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sights a peninsula from his ship and names it "Cabo de Pinos", while missing the entrance to San Francisco Bay
• Francis Drake lands at what is now known as Drakes Bay in 1579 , and claims the land for England, as New Albion

17th century

• Despite numerous sailing vessels traveling along the coast, no ships discover the Golden Gate and the San Francisco Bay, due to factors such as fog and ships avoiding sailing close to shore

18th century

• Las Californias is established in 1768 by New Spain, encompassing the Bay Area
• Gaspar de Portolà arrives in the Bay Area in 1769
• Mission San Francisco de Asís and El Presidio Real de San Francisco are founded in 1776 in Yerba Buena
• Baptisms of the Yelamu by Spanish missionaries begin in 1777
• La Misión Santa Clara de Thamien and el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe are established in 1777 on the Guadalupe River
• In 1786, Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse sails to San Francisco and maps the Bay Area
• In 1792, British explorer George Vancouver stops in San Francisco, in part, according to his journal, to spy on the Spanish settlements in the area

19th century

• In 1804, The Bay Area is part of the newly created New Spain state of Alta California
• The Russian-American Company establishes Fortress Ross (Крѣпость Россъ, tr. Krepostʹ Ross) in 1812, in what is now Sonoma County
• In 1821, New Spain cedes Alta California, including the Bay Area, to the newly created [First Republic of Mexico|Mexican Empire|Mexican Empire]
• William A. Richardson arrives in San Francisco in 1822, and in 1838 is given Rancho Saucelito in present-day Marin County by Mexican Governor Juan Alvarado
• In 1823, the Bay Area, as part of Alta California, becomes part of the newly founded United Mexican States
• In 1837, Antonio Ortega begins operating a pulqueria (tavern) north of San Francisco, on the former site of Mission San Francisco Solano
• In 1838, a 7.0 M_La earthquake strikes the Peninsula, on or near the San Andreas Fault, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII
• Colonists in Alta California rebel against the Mexican department's government, raise a flag featuring a grizzly bear ' at El Cuartel de Sonoma, and establish the short-lived California Republic
• US Navy Commodore John D. Sloat claims California for the United States during the Mexican–American War, and US Navy Captain John Berrien Montgomery and US Marine Second Lieutenant Henry Bulls Watson of the arrives to claim Yerba Buena two days later by raising the American flag over the town plaza
• Washington Allon Bartlett is named alcalde of Yerba Buena
• Yerba Buena doubles in population when about 240 Mormon pioneers arrive, among them Samuel Brannan
• Samuel Brannan's California Star begins publishing in Yerba Buena '
• [The The Californian (1840s newspaper)|Californian (1840s newspaper)|The Californian] moves to Yerba Buena from Monterey, shortly after the California Star debuts
• Alcalde Washington Allon Bartlett proclaims that Yerba Buena will henceforth be known as San Francisco
• Nathan Coombs purchases a farm on Rancho Napa from Salvador Vallejo, and of Rancho Entre Napa from Nicholas Higuera

• The San Francisco Bay Area is part of the new state of California, which is admitted into the United States of America
• The City and County of San Francisco is incorporated
• *John W. Geary becomes the first mayor of San Francisco
• Contra Costa County is incorporated
• Marin County is incorporated
• Napa County is incorporated
• Santa Clara County is incorporated
• *San Jose is incorporated in Santa Clara County '
• Solano County is incorporated
• *Benicia is incorporated in Solano County '
• Sonoma County is incorporated

• Saint Ignatius Academy is founded in San Francisco by the Italian Jesuits Rev. Anthony Maraschi, Rev. Joseph Bixio, and Rev. Michael Accolti '
• With gold only profitably retrieved by medium to large groups of workers, either in partnerships or as employees, the California Gold Rush ends
• The College of California is founded in Oakland
• San Mateo County is incorporated '
• Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine is founded in San Francisco
• Early San Francisco developer William A. Richardson dies
• Daily Evening Bulletin editor James King of William is shot and killed at Montgomery Street in San Francisco
• Église Notre Dame Des Victoires ' in San Francisco is completed
• The Sisters of Mercy open St. Mary's Hospital on Stockton Street in San Francisco, the first Catholic hospital west of the Rocky Mountains '
• Minns Evening Normal School is founded in San Francisco by George W. Minns
• George Kenny starts construction of an octagonal house at Russian Hill in San Francisco
• Landscape painter Fortunato Arriola moves to San Francisco from Cosala, Sinaloa, Mexico
• Lafayette is incorporated in Contra Costa County
• Buena Vista Winery is founded by Agoston Haraszthy in the Sonoma Valley '
• The first Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is held in Chinatown, combining elements of the Chinese Lantern Festival with a typical American parade '
• The William Hood House is built in Sonoma County, using bricks made on the property
• The Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, the first medical school on the West Coast, is founded in Santa Clara
• Bolinas School opens in Marin County
• Alcatraz Citadel ' is built on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay
• Laurentine Hamilton comes to San Jose to preach at the First Presbyterian Church of San Jose
• Joshua Norton declares himself "NORTON I, Emperor of the United States" in San Francisco
• Francis K. Shattuck is [List of mayors of Oakland, California|Oakland, California|elected the fifth mayor] of Oakland
• Congregation Beth Israel-Judea forms in San Francisco from the merger of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel and the Reform Temple Judea
• The San Francisco Olympic Club is founded '
• The Woodford Hotel and Saloon in Contra Costa County becomes a Pony Express stop '
• The James Lick Mansion in Santa Clara, the estate of James Lick, is completed
• The Black Diamond coal mine is started by Noah Norton
• San Francisco's population is 56,802, an increase by 63% from 1852's 34,776
• S & G Gump is established in San Francisco as a mirror and frame shop by Solomon Gump and his brother, Gustav '
• Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine in San Francisco ceases publishing
• Charles Krug founds the first winery in Napa Valley
• The Halleck, Peachy & Billings law firm in San Francisco is dissolved

• The Democratic Press is founded in San Francisco
• The California Educational Society is established in San Francisco
• Jack's Restaurant opens in San Francisco
• The Napa Valley Register is established
• Mountain View Cemetery , designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, is established in Oakland
• African American resident Charlotte L. Brown files a lawsuit after being forcibly removed from a segregated horse-drawn streetcar in San Francisco
• The Alameda County Infirmary is established '
• literary newspaper The Californian begins publishing in San Francisco, with Bret Harte as editor, and Mark Twain as a writer
• The Bank of California ' is founded in San Francisco by William Chapman Ralston
• [Oakville, California|The Napa, California|Napa Valley Railroad Company] is founded by Samuel Brannan to shuttle tourists between ferry boats docked in Vallejo to the resort town of Calistoga
• The San Jose Railroad completes its route from San Francisco to San Jose along the San Francisco Peninsula, becoming the first railroad to link the two cities
• The Daily Dramatic Chronicle ' is founded in San Francisco by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young
• The California Pacific Rail Road Company is incorporated in San Francisco
• The California State Mineral Collection is begun in San Francisco, driven by the mineral finds of the California Gold Rush
• Jefferson Thompson in West Marin begins making a fresh Brie "breakfast cheese" that is transported by horse-drawn carriage to Petaluma, then shipped by steamboat down the Petaluma River to San Francisco where it is sold to waterfront dockworkers
• Pacific Rolling Mill Company, the West's first iron and steel producing foundry ', is established in San Francisco
• Frederick Billings of the College of California, while walking with fellow collegians through land purchased in 1860 for the new location of the college, stops at a spot in the Contra Costa Range astride Strawberry Creek, with a view of the Bay Area and the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate. While watching two ships standing out to sea, he remembers a line by Anglican Bishop George Berkeley, "westward the course of empire takes its way", and suggests Berkeley's name for the college and the town to grow around it.
• Ezra Decoto, an Alameda County landowner, sells land to the railroads, and an eponymous small settlement begins at the location
• Redwood City in San Mateo County is incorporated '
• Hill Park is established in San Francisco

• Meek Mansion in the East Bay is completed
• The first Japanese immigrants arrive in San Francisco
• The California Theatre in San Francisco opens
• Frederick Marriott's unmanned, lighter-than-air craft the Hermes Avitor Jr. ' takes to the air at the Shellmound Park racetrack in Emeryville, flying at about 5 miles per hour
• Laurentine Hamilton is charged with heresy and resigns from his ordination in the Presbyterian church, with most of his parishioners joining him in forming the First Independent Presbyterian Church in Oakland
• Golden Gate Park in San Francisco ' is surveyed and mapped
• The First National Gold Bank in San Francisco begins producing National Bank Notes redeemable in gold
• San Francisco's population is 149,473, an increase by 163% from 1860's 56,802
• The California Historical Society is founded in San Francisco
• The Daily Californian student-run newspaper ' is founded at the University of California, Berkeley
• The San Francisco Art Association is founded by a group of landscape painters led by Virgil Williams
• The Bohemian Club ' is founded in San Francisco
• Alum Rock Park, the first municipal park in California, is established at a valley in the Diablo Range foothills on the east side of San Jose
• Napa is incorporated in Marin County
• Julia Morgan is born in San Francisco '

• The second San Francisco Mint building ' is completed
• Markham Vineyards is founded in the Napa Valley
• East Brother Island Light ' is built on East Brother Island near the tip of Point San Pablo in Richmond
• The Oakland Tribune begins publishing
• Beringer Vineyards in the Napa Valley is established
• Napa State Hospital in Napa is established
• Point Montara Light in Montara begins operating using a kerosene lantern
• Luther Burbank moves to Santa Rosa from Massachusetts, with money from selling the rights to a potato cultivar '
• The Baldwin Hotel ' is built in San Francisco as an addition to the Baldwin Theatre
• Hayward in Alameda County is incorporated
• A two-day pogrom is waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco by the city's majority white population, resulting in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city's Chinese immigrant population.
• The Argonaut literary journal is founded by Frank M. Pixley ' in San Francisco
• The Conservatory of Flowers ' in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco is completed
• Mark Hopkin's mansion in San Francisco is completed
• The California Street Cable Railroad, a cable car company, is founded in San Francisco by Leland Stanford
• Austin Herbert Hills and R. W. Hills begin selling coffee and tea from a market stall in San Francisco
• The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, opens to the public
• Finnish fur trader Gustave Niebaum founds Inglenook Winery in the Napa Valley village of Rutherford
• Croll's Gardens and Hotel is built in Alameda
• Joshua Abraham Norton , self-declared "Emperor of these United States" and subsequently "Protector of Mexico", collapses and dies in front of Old St. Mary's Church while on his way to a lecture at the California Academy of Sciences
• Famed Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson honeymoons for 2 months at a played out mine on Mount Saint Helena in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, and writes a memoir about his travels in Napa Valley
• Max J. Brandenstein begins producing coffee in San Francisco '
• A. Schilling & Company is founded in San Francisco by August Schilling and George F. Volkmann, both natives of Bremen, Germany
• Chateau Montelena, at the foot of Mount Saint Helena in the Napa Valley, is established
• Cresta Blanca Winery ' in the Livermore Valley is established
• Concannon Vineyard in the Livermore Valley is established
• Firemen on coal-burning steamers found the Pacific Coast Marine Firemen, Oilers, Watertenders and Wipers Association in San Francisco
• The Silverado Squatters, about Robert Louis Stevenson's travels in Napa Valley, is published
• Matthew Turner, his brother, and John Eckley form the Matthew Turner Shipyard at Benicia
• Charles N. Felton of Menlo Park is elected to the United States House of Representatives
• The California and Nevada Railroad, a narrow gauge steam railroad in the East Bay, is incorporated
• The Grand Army of the Republic opens a home for war veterans in Napa County
• Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco opens
• V. Sattui Winery in the Napa Valley is established
• Leland Stanford Junior University is founded by Leland Stanford, former governor of and U.S. senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year.
• The Aegis high school newspaper is founded in Oakland
• The Students' Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley is constructed
• Eshcol vineyards and winery in the Napa Valley is established
• The California League Baseball Grounds baseball park opens in San Francisco
• John McLaren is appointed superintendent of the developing Golden Gate Park in San Francisco
• William Randolph Hearst takes over management of the San Francisco Examiner, which his father had received in 1880 as payment for a gambling debt
• The 36-inch telescope at Lick Observatory is the largest telescope in the world when it sees first light.
• The SS City of Chester sinks after a collision ' with RMS Oceanic at the Golden Gate in San Francisco Bay
• Hunt Bros. Fruit Packing Co. is founded in Sebastopol
• Swinerton construction is founded in San Francisco
• The Pacific-Union Club in San Francisco ' is founded as a merger of two earlier clubs: the Pacific Club and the Union Club
• The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is founded in San Francisco
• Mayacamas Vineyards is established on the Mayacamas Mountains within the Napa Valley
• St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Walnut Creek is completed
• Livermore Valley winery Cresta Blanca's first vintage, an 1884 dry white wine, wins Grand Prize at the Paris Exposition, becoming the first California wine to win a competition in France
• Jacob Gillig opens a carriage and wagon shop in San Francisco
• Oakland Harbor Light is built at the Oakland Estuary
• Dominican College is founded in San Rafael
• Nichelini Winery is founded in Napa Valley
• Roe Island Light is built at the east end of Suisun Bay across from Port Chicago
• Stanford University opens in Santa Clara County, with 21 departments, including the Department of the History and Art of Education
• King Kalākaua of Hawaii dies at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco
• The First Unitarian Church of Berkeley is founded
• Le Petit Trianon near Santa Clara Valley is built for Charles A. Baldwin and his wife Ellen Hobart Baldwin, as the center of their wine-producing estate
• Stanford Cardinal football play the first game of their first season, 1891–1892, and shortly into the season win in their first game against California Golden Bears football
• The Berkeley Graduate School of Education is established
• Paul Masson's first sparkling wine under the name "champagne" is introduced at Almaden Valley in Santa Clara County
• The Owl Drug Company is established in San Francisco
• Church Divinity School of the Pacific is founded in San Mateo
• Stanford Law School is established at Stanford University
• University of California Press is established at the University of California, Berkeley
• Adolph Sutro is elected Mayor of San Francisco
• Fentons Creamery in Oakland is founded
• The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 is held in San Francisco
• Palo Alto in Santa Clara County, Pleasanton in Alameda County, and San Mateo in San Mateo County are incorporated
• The De Young museum is founded in San Francisco by San Francisco Chronicle publisher M. H. de Young ' as an outgrowth of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894
• Landscape designer Makoto Hagiwara creates the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park
• The Native Sons of the Golden State, a Chinese benevolent society, is founded in San Francisco
• John Van Denburgh completes his organizing of the herpetology department of the California Academy of Sciences
• The Sutro Baths ' north of Ocean Beach, San Francisco open to the public
• Native son James D. Phelan is elected mayor of San Francisco
• Molinari's delicatessen in San Francisco's North Beach is founded
• Colombo Baking Company is founded in the Bay Area
• Anchor Brewing Company is founded in San Francisco
• Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley is founded '
• The Evening Press and Sonoma Democrat are merged to create The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa
• Californio and former Contra Costa County Supervisor Víctor Castro dies

• San Francisco State Normal School is established
• Botanist Willis Linn Jepson receives his Ph.D. degree from, and is made assistant professor at, the University of California, Berkeley
• McTeague by Frank Norris is published
• An epidemic of bubonic plague centered on San Francisco's Chinatown begins, the first plague epidemic in the continental United States '
• The California Automobile Company is founded in San Francisco
• The Sempervirens Club''' is founded with the goal of preserving old growth coast redwood forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains
• The World's Drinks And How To Mix Them, by William "Cocktail" Boothby, is published by the Palace Hotel, San Francisco

20th century

• The Lowie Museum of Anthropology is established in San Francisco by patron Phoebe Hearst ', to house items for the University of California, Berkeley.
• The Family, a private club in San Francisco, California, is formed by newspapermen who had left the Bohemian Club
• The California Society of Artists is founded in San Francisco by Xavier Martínez, Maynard Dixon, Gottardo Piazzoni, Matteo Sandona and other artists disaffected with the San Francisco Art Association
• YMCA Evening College in San Francisco opens its law school, becoming a full-fledged college
• The Paul Masson Mountain Winery is established by Paul Masson in Saratoga
• The SS City of Rio de Janeiro shipwrecks off the shores of San Francisco at the Golden Gate
• A light bulb is installed at a Livermore fire station
• Hotel Majestic ' in San Francisco is built.
• The Carpenter Gothic Victorian St. Thomas Aquinas Church is completed in Palo Alto
• Big Basin Redwoods State Park is established in the Santa Cruz Mountains
• Stanford Memorial Church at Stanford University, designed by architect Charles A. Coolidge, is dedicated
• George A. Wyman becomes the first person to ride a motorcycle across the US, from San Francisco to New York City
• The Alameda Free Library is completed
• The California Pelican student humor magazine begins publishing at the University of California, Berkeley
• Pittsburg is incorporated in Contra Costa County
• The Bank of Italy is founded in San Francisco by A.P. Giannini, a San Jose born son of Italian immigrants.
• The 12-story Flood Building in San Francisco is completed.
• The Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco is completed
• The San Francisco Motorcycle Club is founded
• Graft trials begin in San Francisco against mayor Eugene Schmitz, members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and attorney and political boss Abe Ruef, who were receiving bribes, and business owners who were paying the bribes. '
• Concord and Richmond are incorporated in Contra Costa County
• The Bank of Pinole ' is founded in Richmond
• The Hill Opera House opens in Petaluma
• The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley is founded when the university purchases Hubert Howe Bancroft's 50,000 volumes on the history of California and the North American West

• By the end of a violent streetcar operator strike in San Francisco, thirty-one people had been killed and about 1100 injured.
• San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz ' is found guilty of extortion, and the office of mayor is declared vacant
• The School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts is founded in Berkeley during the height of the Arts and Crafts movement
• Piedmont is incorporated in Alameda County
• The whaling bark Lydia wrecks on the shore of San Francisco
• Brisbane is incorporated in San Mateo County on the lower slopes of San Bruno Mountain
• Muir Woods National Monument is established in Marin County
• Cooper Medical College is acquired by Stanford University and renamed the Stanford University School of Medicine
• Brown's Opera House opens in San Francisco

• The C. H. Brown Theater opens in the Mission District, San Francisco
• Samuel Merritt College is founded in Oakland as a hospital school of nursing
• San Francisco Law School is founded
• The neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, a refugee camp from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake adjacent to Albany and Berkeley, is first subdivided
• The Richmond Police Department is founded
• John Sabatte opens the South Berkeley Creamery , selling milk from local farmers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties '
• The Southern Pacific railroad company completes the Dumbarton Rail Bridge, the first bridge crossing San Francisco Bay. The bridge is inaugurated on.
• Hillsborough is incorporated in San Mateo County on May 5
• The San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Henry Kimball Hadley ', is founded
• Italian immigrant Ambrogio Soracco opens Liguria Bakery in San Francisco
• Daly City is incorporated in San Mateo County

• Chauncey Thomas opens The Tile Shop on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley to make and sell faience tiles '
• Dewing Park in Contra Costa County is renamed Saranap after the local inter-urban commuter rail system developer's mother, Sara Napthaly
• John Swett, former Superintendent of the San Francisco Public Schools, and "Father of the California public school", dies

• During a parade on Preparedness Day, prior to entry into World War I, a suitcase bomb detonates, killing ten and wounding forty, the worst such attack in San Francisco's history
• Buena Vista Cafe opens in San Francisco on the first floor of a boardinghouse converted into a saloon
• Thomaso Castagnola opens the first crab stand on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, selling fresh crab to passersby
• Writer Jack London dies at his ranch on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain
• General Motors Oakland Assembly opens
• Fageol Motors is founded in Oakland
• University of California, Berkeley establishes the first program in the US for the study of criminal justice, headed by Berkeley police chief August Vollmer
• The San Francisco Sausage Company is established by Italian immigrants Peter Domenici and Enrico Parducci
• Neptune Beach opens in Alameda with private picnic areas, barbecue pits, a clubhouse for dancing, and vacation cottages
• El Cerrito in Contra Costa County is incorporated
• During World War I, a major explosion of barges loaded with munitions at Mare Island Naval Shipyard killes 6 people, wounds another 31, and destroys some port facilities.
• The -long Twin Peaks Tunnel opens to streetcar service under Twin Peaks, San Francisco
• Santa Rosa Junior College is established
• Historian and ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft dies in Walnut Creek
• Wines & Vines, a journal devoted to the North American wine business ', begins publishing in Marin County
• Edward Howard Duncan Jr. is born in Oakland
• The 18th Amendment results in Bay Area vineyards uprooted and cellars destroyed, with some vineyards and wineries converting to table grape or grape juice production, or providing churches with sacramental wine
• The Democratic National Convention ' is held at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium, with their platform supporting the League of Nations and women's suffrage
• Cooley LLP is founded in San Francisco by attorneys Arthur Cooley and Louis Crowley
• The Schlage lock company is founded in San Francisco by Walter Schlage
• The Solon and Schemmel Tile Company is founded in San Jose
• San Jose engineer Charles Herrold, after experimenting with radio broadcasting since 1909, receives a commercial license under the callsign KQW
• KLX, owned by Oakland Tribune publisher Joseph R. Knowland, begins broadcasting out of Oakland
• San Jose Junior College is established
• The original Stanford Stadium is completed on the Stanford University campus, as the home of the Stanford Cardinal football team
• The University of California Museum of Paleontology opens at the University of California, Berkeley, to hold fossils gathered during the 1860–1867 California Geological Survey
• The ' goes missing after leaving Mare Island
• KPO, owned by the Hale Brothers department store and the San Francisco Chronicle, begins broadcasting out of San Francisco
• Naturalist Henry A. Snow establishes the Oakland Zoo
• San Mateo Junior College is founded
• Huntington Apartments in San Francisco ', named after Collis Potter Huntington of the "Big Four", is completed

• The California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco ', modeled after the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur in Paris, opens
• KGO Radio begins broadcasting from General Electric's Oakland electrical facility
• Lawndale is incorporated in San Mateo County, at the behest of the cemetery owners in the area, which had been established after San Francisco banned all cemeteries in 1900, and removed most existing ones from the city
• Congregation Beth Israel is established in Berkeley
• San Francisco is reported to have the highest average per capita income of any city in the world

• George Whitney becomes general manager of a variously named complex of seaside attractions next to Ocean Beach in San Francisco, and christens it "Playland-at-the-Beach"
• The law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison is founded
• Marin Junior College in Kentfield is founded
• The Leimert Bridge in Oakland, a cement and steel arch bridge spanning 357 feet and rising 117 feet above Sausal Creek, becomes the largest single-span bridge on the West Coast
• The Weeks and Day designed Mark Hopkins Hotel opens on Nob Hill in San Francisco '
• During Prohibition, Frank Torres builds Frank's Place ' as a speakeasy and clandestine liquor smuggling center on the cliffs above Moss Beach in San Mateo County
• Governor C. C. Young signs the State Bar Act into law, establishing the State Bar of California, which begins operating out of San Francisco
• Menlo Park in San Mateo County is incorporated
• 680 acres of land in Oakland are purchased to create an airport runway, which, when finished in time for the Dole Air Race, at 7,020 feet, becomes the longest in the world. Later in the year the airport is dedicated by Charles Lindbergh
• The West Coast Oakland movie theatre ', built by Weeks and Day, opens
• The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District incorporates, its purpose to design, construct, and finance the Golden Gate Bridge
• Harvey Spencer Lewis of the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis presents his first exhibit of Egyptian antiquities, "The Rosicrucian Egyptian Oriental Museum", at their headquarters in San Jose
• Edy's Grand Ice Cream is established in Oakland
• The Emeryville Research Center of Shell Development Company is established in Emeryville by the Shell Oil Company
• Fleishhacker Zoo opens in San Francisco
• Air Corps Station, San Rafael begins service
• The Golden West Savings and Loan Association in Oakland opens
• The Berkeley Women's City Club building ' is built by Julia Morgan
• The Art Deco downtown Berkeley Public Library building is completed '
• International House Berkeley is established by YMCA official Harry Edmonds
• Stern Grove in the Sunset District, San Francisco opens to the public
• The Bal Tabarin nightclub opens, the same year as the 365 Club opens at 365 Market Street, San Francisco
• The state of California acquires enough land to create a small state park around the peak of Mount Diablo ' in Contra Costa County
• The Radiation Laboratory is established at University of California, Berkeley by Ernest O. Lawrence
• The War Memorial Opera House opens, becoming the new home of the San Francisco Opera
• Air Corps Station, San Rafael, begins formal development, and is renamed Hamilton Army Airfield
• The Art Deco Doelger Building is built as the offices for local developer Henry Doelger
• Coit Tower in San Francisco is completed '
• The Alley ', a restaurant and piano bar in Oakland, opens
• The Oakland Symphony is formed as a volunteer community orchestra
• The San Francisco City Clinic for treating sexually transmitted diseases is established
• The Black Cat Bar reopens in San Francisco, upon the repeal of Prohibition
• The alleged kidnappers and murderers of San Jose resident Brooke Hart are lynched

• Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary is opened '
• A waterfront strike along the West Coast begins in San Francisco '
• The San Jose Light Opera Association is established
• Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. opens a small bar/restaurant across from his parents' grocery store at San Pablo Avenue and 65th Street in Oakland, originally calling it "Hinky Dink's"
• The Wine Institute in San Francisco is cofounded by wine historian Leon Adams
• Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo was founded in Palo Alto by Josephine O'Hara in the basement of a local elementary school

• The San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic, in a ceremony attended by former U.S. president Herbert Hoover, among others '
• Cliff's Variety Store in The Castro, San Francisco opens for business
• Former San Francisco political boss Abe Ruef dies
• Lafayette Park is created in San Francisco

• The Anshen + Allen architectural firm ' is founded by Frank Lloyd Wright disciple Rob Anshen, and Steve Allen, in San Francisco
• Palo Alto Airport of Santa Clara County begins operations
• Neptunium and Plutonium are synthesized at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory
• steamship company Swayne & Hoyt retires from business
• Treasure Island is leased to the United States Navy, which opens Naval Station Treasure Island the next year
• World War II enlistment commences in the Bay Area '
• A two-masted schooner, Benicia, built in Tahiti by a shipwright who had worked in Matthew Turner's Benicia shipyard, arrives in San Francisco under the French flag
• The Xerces blue butterfly is last observed in San Francisco either this year, or in 1943
• The Concord Army Air Base in Contra Costa County begins operations
• The Santa Rosa Army Air Field in Sonoma County begins operations
• The transport of Japanese Americans to "War Relocation Camps" begins in the San Francisco Bay Area

• In Korematsu v. United States ', concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of citizenship, the Supreme Court sides with the government, ruling that the exclusion order was constitutional
• A munitions explosion ' at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago kills 320 sailors and civilians and injures 390 others, with most of the dead and injured enlisted African-American sailors.
• George P. Miller is elected to California's 6th congressional district
• The Hayward Area Recreation and Park District is created
• Americium and curium are synthesized at the University of California, Berkeley, with the discovery kept secret due to World War II
• The United Nations Charter is signed at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco
• Following the effective end of World War II on Victory over Japan Day, thousands of drunken people, the vast majority of them Navy enlistees who had not served in the war theatre, embarked in what the San Francisco Chronicle summarized in 2015 as "a three-night orgy of vandalism, looting, assault, robbery, rape and murder" and "the deadliest riots in the city's history", with more than 1000 people injured, 13 killed, and at least six women raped.
• The Tonga Room restaurant and tiki bar opens at the Fairmont San Francisco
• San Francisco-based Western Pipe and Steel Company ends operations
• The Bay Area Council for economic development is founded in San Francisco
• Samuel P. Taylor State Park is established in Marin County '
• Two guards and three inmates die during an unsuccessful escape attempt from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
• Cargo airline Emery Worldwide begins operating out of Redwood City
• Potato chip maker Granny Goose is founded in Oakland
• Overstock and government surplus Cannery Sales stores open in San Francisco
• Japanese American newspaper Nichi Bei Times begins publishing in San Francisco
• The Pacifica Foundation is created by World War II conscientious objectors E. John Lewis and Lewis Hill
• The Stanford Research Institute is founded in Menlo Park
• Sunset Books is founded by the San Francisco-based publishers of Sunset magazine
• Southwest Airways begins operations out of San Francisco International Airport
• The Contra Costa Times begins publishing in Walnut Creek
• Mel's Drive-In opens in San Francisco
• Trans International Airlines begins service out of Oakland International Airport
• The University of California Police Department is created at the University of California, Berkeley '
• KPIX-TV Channel 5, the first television station in Northern California and the first television station in the San Francisco Bay Area signs on the air in San Francisco

• KPFA community supported radio is founded in Berkeley
• KGO-TV Channel 7, the second television station in Northern California and the second television station in the San Francisco Bay Area signs on the air in San Francisco
• KRON-TV Channel 4, the third television station in Northern California and the second television station in the San Francisco Bay Area signs on the air in San Francisco
• East Contra Costa Junior College is founded in Pleasant Hill
• Fantasy Records is founded in San Francisco
• The first Mervyn's department store opens in San Lorenzo '
• The Western Air Defense Force is established at the Hamilton Air Force Base in Marin County
• Berkelium is synthesized at the University of California, Berkeley
• Children's Fairyland opens at Lake Merritt in Oakland
• Contra Costa College is established in San Pablo
• Californium is synthesized at the University of California, Berkeley

• The Purple Onion nightclub opens in San Francisco
• Dwinelle Hall is completed at the University of California, Berkeley
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is established in Livermore
• Russ Harvey adds hamburgers to the menu of his San Pablo hot dog stand, and renames it Harvey's Giant Hamburgers
• Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore 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
• Merritt College is established in Oakland
• Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is established in the Santa Cruz Mountains
• KQED (TV) Channel 9, the fourth television station in Northern California and the fourth television station in the San Francisco Bay Area signs on the air in Berkeley, California
• Brookside Hospital opens in San Pablo
• Howl, by Allen Ginsberg ', is written, then recited at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco
• The California Medical Facility, a state prison in Vacaville, opens
• Cazadero Performing Arts Camp is established in western Sonoma County
• The city of Cupertino ' is incorporated in Santa Clara County
• Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States, is formed in San Francisco
• KNTV Channel 11, the first television station in San Jose, California signs on the air
• Newark is incorporated in Alameda County
• Caffe Trieste opens in San Francisco
• The Republican National Convention is held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco
• The Argonaut ceases publication in San Francisco
• Half Moon Bay State Beach is established in San Mateo County
• The Hayward Area Historical Society is founded
• Williams Sonoma opens its first store in Sonoma
• George Christopher is elected mayor of San Francisco
• While living with poet Gary Snyder outside Mill Valley, Jack Kerouac works on a book centering on Snyder, which he considers calling Visions of Gary
• The San Francisco International Film Festival is founded
• Fairchild Semiconductor is founded in San Jose
• [California State University, East Bay|The State College for Alameda County, California|Alameda County] is founded in Hayward
• The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee, is published
• The Kingston Trio folk music group forms in San Francisco
• Pacifica is incorporated in San Mateo County
• KTVU Channel 2 signs on the air in Oakland, California
• Rice-A-Roni, "The San Francisco Treat", is introduced
• The first Cost Plus store opens at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco
• The New York Giants move to San Francisco and become the San Francisco Giants
• San Francisco columnist Herb Caen coins the term Beatnik, adding the suffix "-nik" from Sputnik I to the Beat Generation, or "Beats"
• The Embarcadero Freeway opens in San Francisco, the same year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors votes to cancel seven of ten planned freeways
• The Montgomery Block building ' in San Francisco is demolished
• Henry W. Coe State Park ', in the Diablo Range in Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties, is established
• Jack London State Historic Park, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain, is established
• The Crown-Zellerbach Building in San Francisco is completed
• The San Francisco Mime Troupe is formed in San Francisco, performing musical political satire
• Union City is established in Alameda County
• Owen Chamberlain and Emilio Segrè at the University of California, Berkeley are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the antiproton

• George Miller is re-elected to California's 8th congressional district
• Bothe-Napa Valley State Park is established
• Candlestick Park opens in San Francisco
• The Air Force Satellite Test Center , in Santa Clara County, becomes operational
• Sonoma State University is established
• Donald A. Glaser at the University of California, Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber
• San Jose's population is 204,196, an increase by 114% from 1950's 95,280
• Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) begins service in October.
• The Moore Dry Dock Company in Oakland ceases operations
• Chabot College is established in Hayward
• The Frontier Village amusement park in San Jose opens
• Melvin Calvin of the University of California, Berkeley, Andrew Benson and James Bassham are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of the Calvin cycle
• Marine World opens in Redwood Shores
• Ramparts, a left-wing political and literary magazine, is founded in Menlo Park
• The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is established in Menlo Park
• Sproul Plaza is completed at the University of California, Berkeley
• General Motors' Fremont Assembly plant opens
• The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is founded
• The Committee improvisational theatre group is formed in San Francisco
• The Reverend Cecil Williams becomes pastor of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco
• General Motors Oakland Assembly closes
• The Republican National Convention is held at the Cow Palace, San Francisco
• The Christmas flood hits Sonoma County
• The Free Speech Movement begins at the University of California, Berkeley
• Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near San Ramon after a gunman kills the pilot and co-pilot, with no survivors
• Don Edwards is elected to California's 9th congressional district
• The Oakland California Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is completed
• The Grateful Dead forms in Palo Alto
• Jefferson Airplane forms in San Francisco
• The Acid Tests begin to be given by author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the West Coast
• Condominium 1 is built at Sea Ranch on the Sonoma County coast
• The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission is created to protect and preserve the San Francisco Bay

• Jonathan Jackson attempts to negotiate the freedom of the Soledad Brothers by kidnapping Superior Court judge Harold Haley from the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael. The resulting shootout leaves four men dead, including both Jackson and Judge Haley.
• People v. Newton reverses the voluntary manslaughter conviction of Huey P. Newton in the death of an Oakland Police officer
• A pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonates on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Golden Gate Park station, killing one officer and wounding nine
• The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive opens
• Ron Dellums is elected to California's 7th congressional district
• San Jose's population is 459,913, an increase by 125% from 1960's 204,196
• Two Standard Oil tankers collide in the San Francisco Bay, spilling 800,000 gallons of oil
• Annadel State Park is established in the Sonoma Valley
• Erhard Seminars Training is founded in San Francisco
• Eugene O'Neill's Tao House , in what is now Danville, is declared a National Historic Landmark
• Chez Panisse restaurant ' is established in Berkeley
• Filmmaker George Lucas founds Lucasfilm in San Rafael, the same year he releases THX 1138, filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Japanese American city councilman Norman Mineta is elected Mayor of San Jose
• The Palo Alto Community Cultural Center is founded in Palo Alto
• The Stanford marshmallow experiment results are published
• The Tiffany Building in San Francisco is completed
• Playland ' in San Francisco closes
• Bay Area Rapid Transit begins operations
• The Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco opens to the public
• Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is founded in Menlo Park
• Stag's Leap Wine Cellars in the Napa Valley produces its first vintage
• The first San Francisco Pride festival, then called Christopher Street West, attracts an estimated 54,000 attendees '
• The Oakland A's win the World Series
• The pornographic film Behind the Green Door is released, directed by the San Francisco-based Mitchell Brothers
• Burst of Joy, depicting United States Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm being reunited with his family, after spending more than five years in captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, is taken at Travis Air Force Base ' in Solano County
• 16 people are killed, during a string of racially motivated attacks, dubbed the Zebra murders, committed by African-American men against mostly white victims, in San Francisco, continuing into 1974
• The Oakland A's win the World Series
• Bill Owens' photoessay Suburbia, featuring images of Livermore, is published by Straight Arrow Press in San Francisco
• The University of California, Berkeley College of Natural Resources is established
• Symbionese Liberation Army members hold up a Hibernia Bank in San Francisco, where an iconic image ' of kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst is caught on security footage
• The serial Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin appears in the Pacific Sun alternative newsweekly
• George Moscone is elected mayor of San Francisco
• KDTV Channel 60 signs on the air in San Francisco
• The Marine Mammal Center ' is established in the Marin Headlands at a former Nike Missile site
• Gary Snyder's 1974 Turtle Island wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• The San Francisco Review of Books is founded by Ronald Nowicki
• The Golden State Warriors win the NBA Finals

• 909 members of the San Francisco-based People's Temple die, primarily from cyanide poisoning, at an agricultural project coined Jonestown in Guyana, following the murder of five others by Temple members at Port Kaituma, including United States Congressman Leo Ryan ' of the Bay Area
• San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk are shot and killed in San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White
• Retailer Banana Republic is founded in Mill Valley
• The Dead Kennedys are formed in San Francisco
• The French Laundry restaurant opens in Yountville in the Napa Valley
• The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus is formed
• The whaling ship Niantic is uncovered near the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco
• The body of Tammy Vincent is found in Tiburon
• The White Night riots erupt in San Francisco
• Dianne Feinstein is elected mayor of San Francisco
• The Gilroy Garlic Festival is founded
• Huey Lewis and the News is founded in San Francisco
• Experimental music group Negativland is founded in Concord
• Data storage company Seagate Technology is founded in Cupertino
• David Carpenter commits his first trailside killings in the Bay Area
• A 5.7 magnitude earthquake strikes with an epicenter near Coyote Lake in Santa Clara County
• Hughes Airwest, based out of San Francisco International Airport, is acquired by Republic Airlines
• The Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco is completed
• A medical patient in San Francisco is reported to have both Kaposi's sarcoma and Cryptococcus
• KSAN radio switches formats from freeform rock to country music
• University of California, Berkeley Slavic Languages and Literature Professor Czesław Miłosz is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

• The Caldecott Tunnel fire kills seven people in the third bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, on State Route 24 between Oakland and Orinda
• San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana throws a memorable touchdown pass to Dwight Clark in the NFC Championship Game with the Dallas Cowboys
• The [1982 California Golden Bears American football|football team|University of California Golden Bears] perform The Play, a kickoff return during a college football game with the Stanford Cardinals, which is among the most memorable events in American sports.
• E-Trade is founded in Palo Alto
• Symantec is founded in Mountain View
• General Motors' Fremont Assembly closes
• The San Francisco 49ers 'win the Super Bowl for the first time
• Cleve Jones and Marcus Conant establish the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation
• Severe flooding in the Bay Area results in 33 deaths and $280 million in losses.
• The San Jose School District declares bankruptcy
• Dianne Feinstein ' is re-elected mayor of San Francisco
• Tax preparation software company Intuit is founded in Mountain View
• KRCB-TV Channel 22 signs on the air in Cotati, California
• San Francisco General Hospital establishes the first inpatient ward and outpatient clinic in the United States to treat Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
• Charles McCabe, writer of the "Fearless Spectator" and "Himself" columns for the San Francisco Chronicle, dies at his home in North Beach
• The 1984 Democratic National Convention '' is held at Moscone Center in San Francisco
• An earthquake with an epicenter near Mount Hamilton, close to Morgan Hill in the South Bay, inflicts over US$7 million in damage
• The Alexander Valley AVA is established
• California State Prison, Solano in Vacaville is completed
• The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco is established by publisher Malcolm Whyte
• New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. opens at the site of the former General Motors Fremont Assembly
• Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh personal computer '

• Barbara Boxer ' is elected to the United States Senate
• Nicholas C. Petris is re-elected to the 9th State Senate district
• Lynn Woolsey is elected to the 6th congressional district
• Eight people are killed and six others injured by a gunman at the 101 California Street building in San Francisco
• Polly Hannah Klaas is kidnapped from her home in Petaluma and subsequently strangled
• The magazine Wired begins publishing in San Francisco
• The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts ' opens in San Francisco
• Employees of San Francisco's two major daily newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner, walk off the job for eleven days
• The San Francisco-based I. Magnin department store chain is liquidated '
• Yahoo! is founded in Sunnyvale
• The Mount Vision fire ' burns 12,000 acres at the Point Reyes National Seashore
• Willie Brown is elected mayor of San Francisco
• Craigslist is founded by Craig Newmark ' in San Francisco
• The San Jose Earthquakes soccer team is established
• The St. Helena AVA is established
• The Salon website is established in San Francisco
• The San Francisco 49ers win the Super Bowl for the fifth time
• Grateful Dead co-founder, guitarist and singer/songwriter Jerry Garcia dies in Marin County
• The Computer History Museum ' is established in Mountain View
• The Internet Archive is established in San Francisco
• San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen wins a Special Pulitzer Prize for "his extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of his city"
• Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research into prions
• The Silicon Graphics campus in Mountain View is completed
• Netflix is founded in Los Gatos
• San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen '' dies
• Steve Jobs returns as CEO of Apple Computer
• Naval Air Station Alameda is closed on 25 April.
• Google is founded in Menlo Park
• The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art is founded in Sonoma
• Ron Gonzales is elected mayor of San Jose
• Jerry Brown is elected mayor of Oakland
• The Elihu M. Harris State Office Building in Oakland is completed
• Apple Computer introduces the iMac
• Willie Brown is re-elected mayor of San Francisco
• The San Francisco Bay AVA is designated
• The Union Landing Shopping Center in Union City is completed
• AT&T Park opens in San Francisco
• Pandora Radio is founded in Oakland
• The Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park is designated in Richmond '
• Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz dies at his home in Santa Rosa
• The Dot-com bubble, affecting many Silicon Valley''' internet companies, peaks

21st century

• 30 inches of snow falls on Mount Hamilton
• The collapse of the Dot-com bubble accelerates
• City Lights Bookstore is declared a San Francisco Designated Landmark
• Michael Chabon's 2000 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• Apple, Inc. releases iTunes, and later in the year introduces the iPod

• Gwen Araujo is murdered in Newark
• Laci Peterson is murdered at an unknown location along the San Francisco Bay
• The Berkeley I-80 bridge opens
• The JPMorgan Chase Building in San Francisco is completed
• Tom Bates is elected mayor of Berkeley
• The Paramount residential tower in San Francisco is completed
• 555 City Center, a skyscraper in Oakland, is completed

• Gavin Newsom is elected mayor of San Francisco
• The Los Esteros Critical Energy Facility goes online in San Jose
• Tesla Motors is founded in Palo Alto
• Adobe World Headquarters, Almaden tower in San Jose is completed

• San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom directs the city-county clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples
• Bob Wasserman is elected mayor of Fremont
• Johan Klehs is elected to California's 18th State Assembly district

• Thin-film solar cell manufacturer Solyndra is founded in Fremont
• YouTube is founded in San Bruno by three founders, which are Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim
• The new San Jose City Hall is completed
• The Sobrato Office Tower in San Jose is completed

• The first Maker Faire takes place at the San Mateo County Event Center
• Microblogging site Twitter is founded in San Francisco
• Knight Ridder, a media company based in San Jose, is purchased by The McClatchy Company
• Gayle McLaughlin is elected mayor of Richmond
• Chuck Reed is elected mayor of San Jose
• Ron Dellums is elected mayor of Oakland
• Ellen Corbett is elected to the 10th State Senate district
• Leland Yee is elected to the 8th State Senate district
• George Smoot at the University of California, Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, with John C. Mather for work that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

• Members of Code Pink begin protesting in front of a United States Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley
• Teachers go on strike against the Hayward Unified School District
• A tiger escapes from her open-air enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacks three visitors, killing one
• Village Music in Mill Valley closes
• Gavin Newsom ' is re-elected mayor of San Francisco
• The Año Nuevo State Marine Conservation Area is established '
• The Greyhound Rock State Marine Conservation Area, adjacent to Año Nuevo, is established
• Zodiac, a film about the Zodiac killer, debuts
• The container ship Cosco Busan strikes a base tower of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in thick fog, spilling of heavy fuel oil into San Francisco Bay
• Apple Inc. introduces the iPhone

• Three people are fatally shot at the office of SiPort, a start-up company in Silicon Valley
• The Hayward-based Mervyn's department store chain is liquidated '
• The Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival premieres at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco
• A fire on Angel Island ' scorches a third of the island
• One Rincon Hill South Tower in San Francisco is completed
• The 555 Mission Street office tower in San Francisco is completed
• The 88, a residential skyscraper in San Jose, is completed
• Tesla Motors introduces the Tesla Roadster, the first fully electric sports car
• Vintner Robert Mondavi dies in Yountville

• Oscar Grant is fatally shot by BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle
• A convicted felon shoots and kills four Oakland police officers
• Jack's Restaurant closes in San Francisco after operating since 1863
• Millennium Tower in San Francisco is completed
• The Infinity complex, consisting of 2 high-rise towers and 2 low-rise buildings in San Francisco, is completed

• A fight on an AC Transit Bus is recorded on video and uploaded to YouTube
• A pipeline explosion in San Bruno registers a shock wave equivalent to a magnitude 1.1 earthquake
• Sun Microsystems is acquired by Oracle
• The Calistoga AVA is established
• Onizuka Air Force Station in Santa Clara County closes
• Jean Quan is elected mayor of Oakland
• Michael Sweeney is re-elected mayor of Hayward
• The San Francisco Giants win the World Series
• The NUMMI automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont closes, then reopens as the Tesla Factory

• Steve Jobs dies at his home in Palo Alto
• Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis dies in his suite at the Oakland Airport Hilton Hotel
• A gunman kills 3 co-workers and wounds 6 others at Permanente Quarry in Cupertino
• Occupy Oakland protests and demonstrations ' at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
• Ed Lee is elected mayor of San Francisco
• Fremont solar panel manufacturer Solyndra closes
• Former San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris begins serving as California's first female Attorney General

• The San Francisco Giants win the World Series
• Matt Cain ' 'pitches a perfect game at AT&T Park in San Francisco
• Five people are found dead at a home in San Francisco's Ingleside neighborhood
• The Novato meteorite ' crosses the North Bay
• A gunman kills seven people inside Oikos University in Oakland
• The South San Francisco Ferry Terminal opens
• Nadia Lockyer resigns as Alameda County Supervisor
• Gus Morrison is appointed mayor of Fremont
• Eric Swalwell is elected to California's 15th congressional district
• A large fire erupts at the Chevron Richmond Refinery '', and a shelter in place order is given by Contra Costa County
• Tesla Motors introduces the Tesla Model S

• March
• * Democratic California State Senator Leland Yee is arrested by the FBI on charges related to public corruption and gun trafficking
• June
• *A new Kaiser Permanente Medical Center opens in San Leandro
• *Barbara Halliday is elected mayor of Hayward
• * San Francisco political consultant Ryan Chamberlain is apprehended by the FBI and the San Francisco Police Department after explosive materials are allegedly discovered in his apartment
• *Amelia Rose Earhart departs from Oakland on June 26, and lands back in Oakland on July 1, successfully recreating her namesake Amelia Earhart's unsuccessful 1937 circumnavigation of the Earth
• * The San Jose Repertory Theatre ceases operations and files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
• July
• *Levi's Stadium opens in Santa Clara as the new home of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League
• August
• *Actor and comedian Robin Williams dies from an apparent suicide at his home outside Tiburon
• *Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University becomes the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal in mathematics
• * The East Bay Municipal Utility District and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission impose mandatory water rationing measures, as a consequence of the ongoing drought in California
• * Paul McCartney plays a concert at Candlestick Park, the last event to be held at the venue, and 50 years after The Beatles performed their last concert there
• * Two owners and two staff of the now defunct Rancho Feeding Corporation in Petaluma are indicted on federal charges of violating the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act
• * A magnitude 6.0 earthquake strikes in Napa County , with an epicenter northwest of the city of American Canyon, the largest earthquake to hit the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, sending at least 172 people to the hospital
• September
• * The Berkeley city council passes an ordinance to provide free medical marijuana for low-income patients
• *Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook presents the Apple Watch ', the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus at the Flint Performing Arts Center in Cupertino
• * Stanford University social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt is awarded a Macarthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship
• *Larry Ellison ' steps down as CEO of Oracle Corporation, to become chief technical officer, and executive chairman of the board of directors
• October
• *Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman announces plans for the company to split in two, forming Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP, Inc.
• *Stanford University professor William E. Moerner , Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their use of fluorescence in microscopy
• * Livermore golf coach Andrew Nisbet is sentenced to 27 years in prison on charges of molesting three of his juvenile students, and then plotting to kill them while being held in jail
• * The Daughters of Charity Health System approves the sale of Daly City's 'Seton Medical Center and San Jose's O'Connor Hospital to Prime Healthcare Services
• * The San Francisco Bay Guardian free weekly alternative newspaper ceases publication after 48 years '
• * The San Francisco Giants defeat the Kansas City Royals to win the World Series, their third championship in five seasons
• *Ross William Ulbricht is arrested in San Francisco, charged with running the Silk Road dark web online illicit marketplace
• *Apple, Inc. CEO Tim Cook states in an editorial that he is "proud to be gay", becoming the first openly gay leader of a major U.S. company
• *University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks announces plans for a Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay, to develop existing UC campuses in Richmond
• * Susan Xiao-Ping Su, founder and former president of the defunct Pleasanton-based Tri-Valley University, is sentenced to 16 years in prison for visa and mail fraud
• November
• *Libby Schaaf '' is elected mayor of Oakland, defeating incumbent mayor Jean Quan
• * Measure D, a sugary drink tax, is approved by Berkeley voters, the first such tax in the United States
• *Mike Honda is elected to California's 17th congressional district, defeating Ro Khanna
• *David Chiu is elected to California's 17th State Assembly district, defeating David Campos
• *Sam Liccardo is elected mayor of San Jose, defeating Dave Cortese
• * A new, unnamed species ' in the coral genus Leptogorgia is discovered off the coast of Sonoma County, near the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries
• * Up to 18,000 nurses from at least 21 Kaiser Permanente hospitals and 35 clinics around the Bay Area go on strike, citing issues with patient care standards and Ebola safeguards
• * The 27 story 535 Mission Street office skyscraper opens in the South of Market district of San Francisco
• *Marian Brown of the San Francisco Twins, dies, her sister Vivian having died in January 2013 '
• * The Oakland Airport Connector automated guideway transit system begins operating between the BART Coliseum station and Oakland International Airport station
• * The Watershed Alliance of Marin reports that no coho salmon had returned to Redwood Creek in 2014, prompting concerns of likely local extinction of the species.
• *The remains of the SS City of Rio de Janeiro ', which shipwrecked in 1901, are found off the shores of San Francisco at the Golden Gate
• December
• *Protesters of the grand jury decision in the death of New Yorker Eric Garner take to the streets in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco
• *A large storm ' leaves 150,000 households without power across the Bay Area
• *San Jose demolishes The Jungle, the nation's largest homeless person encampment
• *Google unveils a fully functioning prototype of the Google driverless car, with plans to test it on Bay Area roads beginning in 2015

• January
• *Personal genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe announces a $60 million investment by Genentech for Parkinson's research
• *The Golden Gate Bridge closes to automobile traffic for the first time in its history, in order to install a mobile concrete median '
• *Birds coated with an unidentified sticky grey substance are found along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, and are sent to International Bird Rescue in Fairfield for cleanup efforts
• *Ford Motor Company announces the creation of the Ford Research and Innovation Center, located in Palo Alto '
• *The Tesoro refinery in Martinez closes due to a strike affecting nine refineries in the US
• February
• *The National Weather Service announces that due to the ongoing California drought, San Francisco received no January rainfall for the first time in 165 years. The Bay Area had the driest January on record.
• *The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center opens a new hospital in the Mission Bay district of San Francisco '
• *President Barack Obama attends the White House Cybersecurity Summit at Stanford University
• *San Francisco resident Christie White, battling cancer, sues the state of California for the right to die at home, by physician assisted suicide
• *Shipowners at the Port of Oakland suspend the unloading of container and other cargo ships, due to a slowdown during contract negotiations with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
• *The UCSF Medical Center receives a philanthropic donation of $100 million from Chuck Feeney, the largest gift by an individual in the history of the UC system.
• *Avaya Stadium, the new home of the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team, stages its first Earthquakes soccer game
• March
• *Scientists ' at the Ames Research Center announce they have synthesized "...uracil, cytosine, and thymine, all three components of RNA and DNA, non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space."
• *Patrick Willis, linebacker for eight years with the San Francisco 49ers, retires at age 30 due to a foot injury
• *Prime Healthcare Services rejects an offer to purchase Daly City's 'Seton Medical Center and San Jose's O'Connor Hospital from the Daughters of Charity Health System
• *The U.S. Geological Survey report, "Third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast", estimates there is a 72 percent chance that a magnitude-6.7 or larger quake will strike the Bay Area before the year 2044
• *Professor Ronald Rael, of the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley unveils a 9' high 3D printed architectural experiment, entitled "Bloom", the first printed structure of its type.
• *The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration more than doubles the size of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuaries '
• *The San Francisco Police Department relocates its headquarters from the Hall of Justice to a new facility at Mission Bay '
• *Lawyer and Reddit executive Ellen Pao loses in a gender discrimination lawsuit against Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• April
• *The Brookings Institution reports that San Francisco has the wealthiest people, in the top 5% of its population, of any major U.S. city, and the fastest growing income inequality
• *Governor Jerry Brown imposes mandatory water rationing for the first time in state history, requiring all local water supply agencies, including the Alameda County, Marin, Sonoma and Santa Clara Valley Water Districts, reduce water use by 25%, due to the ongoing drought in California
• *Author and community activist Eddy Zheng is pardoned by governor Brown, for crimes he committed at age 16
• *Apple, Inc. introduces the Apple Watch '
• *Over 100 prominent Bay Area Catholics sign a full page advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle appealing to Pope Francis to replace Salvatore Cordileone as archbishop of the San Francisco Archdiocese, for fostering "an atmosphere of division and intolerance."
• *The World War II era aircraft carrier ' is rediscovered near the Farallon Islands by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• *Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo closes
• *The San Francisco-based Heald College system shuts down, when its parent company, Corinthian Colleges, goes out of business
• *Tesla Motors announces the Powerwall, a battery system for home use
• May
• *Golden State Warriors basketball player Stephen Curry ' is awarded the NBA Most Valuable Player Award
• *The San Mateo–Hayward Bridge closes to traffic, for the first time since opening in 1967, for resurfacing and maintenance.
• *San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón orders a review of at least 3,000 arrests over the last 10 years, in response to evidence that San Francisco Police Department officers may have shown racial bias, based on their having sent racist and homophobic text messages
• *San Francisco becomes the first city in the United States to ban chewing tobacco at sports venues, including AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants
• *The Regional Renewable Energy Procurement Project dedicates its first project, a future solar farm at Hayward's former landfill site
• *Dead gray whales wash ashore at Half Moon Bay, then at Portuguese Beach in Sonoma County, with a sperm whale also washing ashore at Point Reyes National Seashore, the third, fourth and fifth dead whales found on Bay Area beaches in less than 2 months
• *Oakland based start-up Next Thing Co. raises over $1.5m in its Kickstarter campaign for its forthcoming $9 miniature computer, Chip.
• *The population of San Jose is now officially over 1,000,000, making it the tenth largest city in the United States, according to the U.S. census
• *Vandals damage an inflatable dam across Alameda Creek in Fremont, releasing 50 million gallons of drinking water into San Francisco Bay
• *The Solar Energy Research Center opens at the newly built Chu Hall at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley
• *The Golden State Warriors beat the Houston Rockets in the National Basketball Association Playoffs, and advance to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1975
• June
• *Surgeons at University of California, San Francisco and California Pacific Medical Center successfully complete 18 surgeries in the nation's first nine-way, two-day kidney transplant chain in a single city
• *Six people are killed and eight are injured, some with life-threatening injuries, after a balcony collapses in Berkeley, near the campus of the University of California, Berkeley; five of the casualties are Irish students.
• *The Golden State Warriors win the National Basketball Association Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, their first championship since 1975
• *The surviving members of the Grateful Dead play the first concerts of their Fare Thee Well farewell tour, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Dead, at Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium
• July
• *Former state senator Leland Yee pleads guilty to a federal racketeering charge, confessing to using his bids for secretary of state and Mayor of San Francisco to extort bribes
• *A gunman opens fire at Pier 14 in San Francisco's Embarcadero district, killing Kathryn Steinle. An illegal immigrant from Mexico, Francisco Sanchez, is subsequently arrested and charged with murder.
• *The Wragg Fire wildland fire ' starts just off of California State Route 128 near Lake Berryessa in Napa County
• August
• *Alphabet, a holding company and conglomerate owning several companies owned by or sprung from Google, is founded
• September
• *The Valley Fire encroaches into Napa and Sonoma Counties
• *Tesla Motors begins shipping the Model X SUV ' from its Fremont factory
• *UC Berkeley chemistry and materials science professor Peidong Yang is awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant
• *Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi releases the documentary San Francisco 2.0, chronicling the recent high tech takeover and gentrification of the City
• *The Golden State Warriors finalize the purchase of 12 acres of land in Mission Bay, San Francisco, to house a future stadium
• November
• *San Jose is the richest city in the United States, according to Bloomberg
• *Topless stripper Carol Doda, an iconic Condor Club performer, dies in San Francisco '
• *Wang Hall, housing the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, opens at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• December
• *Artificial intelligence laboratory OpenAI is founded in San Francisco
• *Linux software pioneer and Debian founder Ian Murdock ' dies in San Francisco at age 42
• *CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin, the largest container ship to visit a US port, comes to the Port of Oakland

• January
• *Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including Peidong Yang '', announce they were able to induce Moorella thermoacetica to photosynthesize, despite its not being photosynthetic. It also synthesized semiconductor nanoparticles, thus using light to produce chemical products other than those produced in photosynthesis.
• *A federal court jury in San Francisco finds Raymond Chow Kwok-cheung guilty of all 162 charges against him, including murder, after a five year long undercover federal operation
• *William Del Monte, the last known survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, dies in Marin County at age 109
• *Paul Kantner , guitarist, vocalist and co-founder of Jefferson Airplane, dies in San Francisco
• *The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive opens its new building to the public '
• February
• *The Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers, in Super Bowl 50, held at Levi's Stadium '
• *Apple Inc says it will not comply with an FBI request to provide unblocking software for an IPhone owned by one of the perpetrators of the 2015 San Bernardino attack
• March
• * An Altamont Corridor Express train derails in Sunol
• *Ben Bagdikian, journalist, author, and dean emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, dies in Berkeley
• *The first Silicon Valley Comic Con, organized by Steve Wozniak and Stan Lee, is held at the San Jose Convention Center
• *Former Intel CEO and chairman Andy Grove , one of the major figures in the growth of Silicon Valley, dies
• *The wreck of the ' ' is confirmed in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, 95 years after it had gone missing
• *Tesla Motors announces the Model 3, pre-orders of which reach 115,000 within 4 hours of the announcement.
• April
• *The Oakland Tribune ceases publication after 142 years, and is replaced by the East Bay Times
• *Hundreds of pages of University of California, Berkeley records are released, showing a pattern of documented sexual harassment and firings of non-tenured staff
• *The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes a parental leave law requiring employers to offer six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents, the first city in the US to do so.
• *The long closed UC Theatre in Berkeley, formerly a revival house movie theater, reopens as a music venue
• *The Golden State Warriors win against the Memphis Grizzlies, their 73rd win of the season, breaking the previous NBA record, held by the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls, for the most victories in a single season
• *Napster founder and philanthropist Sean Parker donates $250 million to create the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, with funds going to over 300 scientists at 40 laboratories, in 6 institutions, including the University of California at San Francisco
• *The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes a law requiring all new buildings below 10 stories to have rooftop solar panels, making it the first major US city to do so
• *Sanford and Joan Weill donate $185 million to the University of California, San Francisco to create the Weill Institute for Neurosciences
• May
• *A poll of 1,000 people, by the Bay Area Council, showed that 34 percent are considering leaving the area, due primarily to the high costs of living and housing, and traffic.
• *McDonald's tests garlic fries at four restaurants in the South Bay, using locally grown garlic from Gilroy '
• *The Golden State Warriors' 'Stephen Curry ' is named NBA MVP, in their first unanimous vote
• * It is revealed that the FBI hid microphones outside an Oakland Alameda County Superior Court 'building ', between March 2010 and January 2011, as part of an investigation into bid rigging and fraud by Alameda and San Mateo County real estate investors, this done without a warrant
• *The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reopens after the completion of a two-and-a-half-year expansion, by architecture firm Snøhetta, more than doubling the gallery space
• *Pittsburg moves to install surveillance cameras along California State Route 4, in response to a series of 20 freeway shootings in the area that have taken the lives of six people, and injured 11, in the past year
• *Scientists find evidence of methane-producing microbes in water coming from underground at The Cedars, freshwater springs along Austin Creek in Sonoma County, the first time these methanogens that thrive in harsh environments have been discovered beyond the ocean floor
• *The San Jose Sharks win against the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup ice hockey playoffs, advancing them to the Stanley Cup Finals, their first trip to the finals since their founding in 1991
• *San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr resigns after the officer-involved shooting death of a woman.
• *The Golden State Warriors beat Oklahoma City Thunder in the National Basketball Association Playoffs, and advance to the NBA Finals for the second consecutive year
• June
• *The San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority's ballot measure, the San Francisco Bay Clean Water, Pollution Prevention, and Habitat Restoration Program, passes with 2/3 of the vote in the 9 Bay Area counties, providing $500 million in funding for wetland restoration and other projects
• *Protesters attack Trump supporters at a Donald Trump campaign stop in San Jose, leaving one supporter bloodied after having their head bludgeoned
• *Public protest erupts over the sentencing of former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, convicted of three charges of felony sexual assault, to six months of jail and three years of probation, by Santa Clara County Superior Court judge Aaron Persky
• *Oakland Police Department 'chief Sean Whent steps down, while the department is being investigated for an alleged sex scandal possibly involving an underage girl, following the suicide of one officer associated with the scandal
• *Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf appoints City Administrator Sabrina Landreth as head of the Oakland Police Department, putting it under civilian control, after 3 police chiefs resign within 9 days, while the department is under multiple investigations
• *In San Francisco's highly volatile housing market, a North Beach resident's rent is increased by 344%, from $1,800 a month to $8,000, with him facing eviction for nonpayment
• *The Oakland City Council votes unanimously to ban the handling of coal and coke at the city's shipping and storage facilities, including the as yet unfinished Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal
• *Stanford University researchers, including study co-author Robert Jackson, find evidence for new groundwater in the California Central Valley, tripling the previous estimates for deep aquifer reserves in the region
• *The Sonoma Stompers professional baseball team add two female players to their roster, outfielder-pitcher Kelsie Whitmore and infielder Stacy Piagno, the first women to play professional baseball for a mixed-gender team in the US since the 1950s.
• *San Francisco bans the sale of products made from expanded polystyrene ', including packing material, buoys and cups, the most stringent ban on foam-type plastics in the US
• July
• *The augmented reality mobile game Pokémon GO, developed by San Francisco-based Niantic, Inc. '', is published by The Pokémon Company, reaching 15 million downloads within one week
• *More than 140 Silicon Valley technology figures, including Steve Wozniak, Vinod Khosla , and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, sign a statement opposing Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency, saying it will potentially have a negative impact on innovation
• *Verizon Communications announces their intent to acquire Yahoo's internet business for US$4.8 billion
• August
• *The San Francisco Millennium Tower is found to have sunk 16 inches since construction, and is tilting 2 inches towards the northwest
• *California declares that Napa County, and California, are free of the invasive species Lobesia botrana ', known as the "European grapevine moth", with no moths found since June 2014
• *A statue of Tony Bennett is unveiled outside the Fairmont Hotel, the venue at which he first sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in 1961
• *Governor Jerry Brown signs legislation banning the use of state transportation funds for new coal export terminals, in response to a developer's failed proposal to build a coal terminal at the Port of Oakland
• *San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick '' refuses to stand for the national anthem at a preseason football game, in protest of police brutality and racism in the United States
• September
• *Napa Valley's 'Margrit Mondavi, the widow of wine pioneer Robert Mondavi, and advocate for the culture of the region, dies at her home in Napa at age 91
• *Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz ' donates $20 million to a number of elections organizations, with the express purpose of supporting Democratic Party candidates and issues, and defeating Donald Trump, making him the 3rd largest donor in the 2016 campaigns
• *Discovery Bay former realtor Marco Gutierrez, the co-founder of Latinos for Trump, says to Joy Reid on MSNBC that Mexican culture in the US is "dominant" and that "If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner"
• *Influential San Francisco political activist and broker Rose Pak, an advocate for the Chinatown community, dies in San Francisco
• *The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announces a new science program, Chan Zuckerberg Science, with $3 billion in investment over the next decade, with the goal of helping to cure, manage, or prevent all disease by the year 2100. $600 million is to be spent on Biohub, a location in San Francisco's Mission Bay District near the University of California, San Francisco
• *The Sawmill Fire breaks out in rural Cloverdale, near The Geysers, in Sonoma County, followed by the Loma Fire '' in the Santa Cruz Mountains
• *The MacArthur "Genius" grant recipients are announced, including Stanford University bioengineering professor and inventor Manu Prakash, San Jose graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang, and San Francisco sculptor Vincent Fecteau
• *The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes a law, authored by Scott Wiener, barring the city from doing business with companies that have a home base in states such as North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, that forbid civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people
• October
• *Theranos announces it will close its laboratory operations, shutter its wellness centers and lay off around 40 percent of its work force, while focusing on an initiative to create miniature medical testing machines
• *Researchers led by Ali Javey at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announce the creation of a transistor with a working 1-nanometer gate, the smallest transistor reported to date
• *A new California law, authored by San Jose Assemblywoman Nora Campos , will allow San Jose to be the first California city to create "tiny homes" for the homeless, bypassing some state building codes
• *The new control tower ' at San Francisco International Airport begins operating
• *The US Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services releases a 432-page report stating that the San Francisco Police Department stops and searches African Americans at a higher rate than other groups, and inadequately investigates officers use of force. The report details "numerous indicators of implicit and institutionalized bias against minority groups", with a large majority of suspects killed by police being people of color
• *Peninsula Clean Energy begins providing electricity to 20 percent of residential customers in San Mateo County, all municipalities, and all small- to mid-size businesses, as a Community Choice Aggregation program, an alternative to Pacific Gas and Electric
• *Wells Fargo chairman and CEO John Stumpf announces he will retire, shortly after the bank is issued $185 million in fines for creating over 1.5 million checking and savings accounts and 500,000 credit cards that its customers never authorized. This includes $100 million in fines from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the largest in the agency's history.
• *Tesla Motors posts a profitable quarter, their first in 8 quarters, defying industry expectations
• November
• *The San Francisco – Oakland Metropolitan Region has the worst road conditions of any major US metropolitan area, with the San Jose region rated third nationwide '
• *The nine Bay Area counties all vote overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton for president, from 62% to 85%
• *Hundreds of people turn out in San Francisco ', Oakland and Berkeley, protesting the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, blocking freeways, lighting fires and chanting, "Not our president" and "Fuck Trump"
• *Half the students at Berkeley High School, as well as students at Oakland Technical High School, Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd High School, and high schools in San Jose and Contra Costa County walk out of classes the morning after Donald Trump is elected president
• *The cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Albany pass 1 cent/ounce soda taxes, to combat health risks from excessive sugar consumption
• *Protesters against President-Elect Donald Trump join hands around Lake Merritt in Oakland
• *Mayor Ed Lee declares that San Francisco will remain a sanctuary city, in response to the election of Donald Trump as president, stating, "I know that there are a lot of people who are angry and frustrated and fearful, but our city's never been about that. We have been and always have been a city of refuge, a city of sanctuary, a city of love."
• *With the approval of both companies' shareholders, Tesla Motors will merge with SolarCity, which will expedite Elon Musk's plans to introduce solar roofing tiles to integrate with home automobile charging
• *An American-born, non-Muslim woman in Fremont, finds a note on her car, reading "Hijab wearing bitch this is our nation now get the fuck out", after making a peace walk to the top of Mission Peak, where presumably the note writer had observed her wearing a head scarf, which she wears to protect her scalp from the sun, due to having lupus. The incident is part of a wave of 437 incidents of hateful intimidation or harassment, since the presidential election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center
• *During a concert at the SAP Center at San Jose, Kanye West is booed by shoe-throwing fans, as he goes on a political tirade, including stating that he had not voted in the presidential election, but that "If I would have voted, I would have voted for Trump"
• *San Jose teacher and transgender activist Dana Rivers, who made headlines in 1999 for fighting unsuccessfully to keep a teaching position in Sacramento after sharing her transition with her high school students, is arrested in Oakland, charged with the murders of 3 acquaintances: married couple Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed, and their 19-year-old son, Toto Diambu-Wright
• *Robert P. Goldman, professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley, publishes the 7th and final volume of his translation of the critical edition of Valmikis epic poem, the Ramayana, one of the foundational texts in the history of India, with core themes dating back to the Vedic period
• *Copies of an anti-Muslim letter are sent to the Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose, and Islamic Centers in Long Beach and Claremont, reading, in part, "Your day of reckoning has arrived, there's a new sheriff in town — President Donald Trump. He's going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And, he's going to start with you Muslims... going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the jews ."
• *A liberal household in Concord is targeted at night by vandals, who plant 56 United States flags defaced with pro-Trump remarks such as "Build The Damn Wall" and "I Luv The Donald", and who then cut the house's power, causing a loud explosion
• *The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is hit by hackers, using ransomware, demanding $70,000 in bitcoins, with fare machines reading "OUT OF SERVICE", resulting in passengers riding for free
• *San Francisco area activist Gregory Lee Johnson, the defendant in the landmark 1989 Supreme Court decision Texas v. Johnson abolishing laws against flag burning on free speech grounds, declares that Donald Trump is "using the bully pulpit for fascism and forced patriotism", after Trump tweets "Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!"
• December
• *A fire at an Oakland warehouse ', which was hosting a music event, kills 36 people, the deadliest fire in Oakland history.
• *The Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at the University of California, Berkeley designs a wall-jumping robot, called Salto, modelled after the galago, and which is described as the most vertically agile robot ever built
• *John Stewart, chief judge at the San Francisco Superior Court, discards 66,000 arrest warrants for criminal infractions, like sleeping on the sidewalk, public urination and public drunkenness, stating "You're putting somebody in jail because they're poor and can't pay a fine. We got a lot of criticism, but we thought it was the right thing to do."
• *More than 300 Silicon Valley technology company employees sign a letter declaring they will not help build a registry, for the upcoming Trump Administration, to be used to track Muslims in the United States, stating "We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable"
• *Uber rolled out self-driving cars ' in San Francisco, its headquarter city, and is almost immediately ordered to stop the service by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which cited it as illegal until an autonomous vehicle testing permit is acquired
• *Yahoo reports that hackers had, in 2013, stolen data on more than 1 billion user accounts, the largest hack worldwide to date
• *Apple, Google, Uber and Twitter all took the Never Again pledge, declaring that they will not support the development of a registry of Muslims in the United States as proposed by President-Elect Donald Trump
• *Scientists at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory created the world's thinnest wire, 3 atoms thick, using diamondoids to aid the manufacturing process
• January
• *After a series of storms hit California, including January storms causing flooding on the Russian River, Northern California, including the Bay Area, is no longer in drought
• *The Land Trust of Napa County, with The Trust for Public Land, secures the largest conservation easement in its history, 7,260 acres northeast of Calistoga known as Montesol Ranch, near Mount St. Helena, and contiguous to Robert Louis Stevenson State Park
• *Kevin Starr ', American historian and California's State Librarian, best known for his multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called "Americans and the California Dream", dies in San Francisco, the home of his birth as a seventh-generation Californian
• *Protests of the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump occur in cities across the Bay Area ', including local versions of the Women's March on Washington, a human chain along the span of the Golden Gate Bridge ', and a 90% no show of dockworkers at the Port of Oakland
• *Due to severe storms, Governor Jerry Brown declares states of emergency in multiple counties, including all nine Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties
• *The cities of Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley affirm their formal status as Sanctuary cities, after a Trump Administration executive order is issued that will require cities to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement orders, or face cuts to federal spending, more than $1 billion in the Bay Area alone
• *Pacific Gas and Electric is ordered by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to publicly advertise its guilt in violating pipeline safety laws, and obstruction of justice, in the 2010 San Bruno explosion , pay $3 million in fines, and make its employees perform 10,000 hours of community service, including at least 2,000 hours by high-level officials
• *Google, Inc. recalls all staff travelling overseas who may be affected by President Trump's executive order suspending all entry of citizens from certain Middle Eastern nations, out of concern they may be barred from re-entry to the US
• *Protesters of the executive order suspending entry of certain foreign nationals are joined at San Francisco International Airport by Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of Alphabet, who states "I'm here because I'm a refugee", while the airport issues a statement in support of the protesters, saying "We share their concerns deeply, as our highest obligation is to the millions of people from around the world whom we serve. Although Customs and Border Protection services are strictly federal and operate outside the jurisdiction of all U.S. airports, including SFO, we have requested a full briefing from this agency to ensure our customers remain the top priority. We are also making supplies available to travelers affected by this Executive Order, as well as to the members of the public who have so bravely taken a stand against this action by speaking publicly in our facilities." '
• *San Francisco becomes the first city to sue the Trump Administration over his executive order to deny federal funds to sanctuary cities, joining 2 states that have sued
• February
• *The University of California, Berkeley cancels a talk by inflammatory speaker and Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, and puts the campus on lockdown, due to massive protests, violence, property destruction and fire-setting
• *Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguín receives thousands of hateful, racist, abusive and threatening messages, including death threats, following his criticism of Milo Yiannopoulos' attempted talk at UC Berkeley, initially describing him as a white nationalist, then apologizing and changing the description to "alt-rightist"
• *Thousands attend a protest at Civic Center, San Francisco to protest the immigration/travel ban on seven majority-Muslim nations ', one of a number of nationwide protests against the ban
• *In San Francisco, three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reject the US Government argument that a stay of the executive order barring nationals from seven majority-Muslim nations should be lifted, stating that any argument limiting or dismissing the courts ability to serve as a check on Executive Branch power "runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy"
• *Historically strong Pineapple Express storms bring flooding and mudslides to the Bay Area, destroying homes and closing numerous roads, including State Route 17, State Route 35, State Route 37, Interstate 80, State Route 12, State Route 1, State Route 84, State Route 9, and State Route 152
• *California Governor Jerry Brown requests a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration from President Donald Trump, following a series of storms that hit California, including the Bay Area
• *The Kunal Patel San Francisco Open has its first tournament, at the Bay Club SF Tennis Center, part of the ATP Challenger Tour
• *The United States Patent Office rules that the Broad Institute's patent claims on the CRISPR gene manipulation technology are valid for Eukaryotic cells, ruling against claims made by the University of California, Berkeley, and granting UC Berkeley a patent limited to its use on Prokaryotic cells
• *Thousands gather at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, to stand together in protest against Donald Trump and spell out the word "Resist !!", with overflow crowds creating an underline
• *A Day without Immigrants, modeled on the Great American Boycott of 2006, protesting the Trump Administration immigration policy, has businesses across the Bay Area closing in solidarity with the nationwide day of action
• *San Francisco is ranked third in traffic congestion of all major US cities, according to the traffic and driver analytics company INRIX '
• *More than 200 residents are rescued by boat, in the Rocksprings neighborhood of San Jose, due to flooding at Coyote Creek from storm water released at Anderson Lake ' Over 14,000 households are subject to mandatory evacuation due to widespread flooding that exceeds the 100-year flood zone
• *Richmond is the first city in the United States to pass a resolution calling on the United States Congress to investigate, and if necessary, impeach, President Donald Trump, for violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution in his international business relations
• *Santa Clara County is the first county in the nation to file a motion requesting that a Federal judge halt implementation of the Trump Administration's executive order withholding federal funding for sanctuary cities
• *The Jewish Anti-Defamation League offices in San Francisco receive two consecutive bomb threats, as do other Bay Area Jewish community centers, part of a widespread wave of over 100 threats and criminal actions directed against the US Jewish community in 2017
• March
• *House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, from California's 12th congressional district in San Francisco, and other senior Democratic congressional leaders, call on United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign, following reports that he had lied under oath to Congress about phone contacts he had had with Russian officials prior to taking his post, and during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, for who he campaigned
• *Violence at a Berkeley March 4 Trump rally results in injuries to 7, and the arrests of 10 people
• *The Warm Springs / South Fremont 'Bay Area Rapid Transit station ' begins operating in Fremont
• *Berkeley is the first city in the US to declare they will refuse to conduct business with companies that are involved with the US/Mexico border wall proposed by President Trump, and will move to divest from those companies that they have investments in
• *The National Football League approves the Oakland Raiders 'move from Oakland to Las Vegas, Nevada, once a new stadium is constructed there, despite efforts by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf to create financing for a new stadium complex in Oakland
• April
• *A collection of the works of Arthur Szyk ', consisting of 450 paintings, drawings and sketches owned by Burlingame Rabbi Irvin Ungar, is purchased for $10.1 million by the University of California, Berkeley's 'Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, through a donation by Taube Philanthropies, the largest single monetary gift to acquire art in UC Berkeley history
• *Santa Clara County and San Francisco ask U.S. District Judge William Orrick to block an executive order by President Donald Trump that threatens to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities and counties, arguing that it violates the Constitution and federal laws
• *Suicide barriers begin to be installed under the Golden Gate Bridge after years of debate and delays.
• *At least 21 people are arrested, and 7 hospitalized, at a clash between approximately 200 Pro-Trump and Anti-Trump demonstrators in Berkeley, at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, during which numerous fights broke out, with reports of the use of firecrackers and pepper spray
• *Computer scientist Robert W. Taylor ', who was integral in the development of the Internet, and who founded the Digital Equipment Corporation 'Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, dies at his home in Woodside
• *Women's clothing retailer Bebe begins closing all 175 of its stores, to become an exclusively online retailer
• *The area's first officially sanctioned "Weed Day" takes place in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park
• *Tens of thousands turn out in San Francisco on Earth Day at the local March for Science, to protest federal budget cuts to science research, with MythBusters host Adam Savage saying "The enemy of science isn't politics or a party or an ideology or a law — it is bias, and bias is everywhere. Science is the rigorous elimination of bias. That is a good thing."
• *In response to requests by Santa Clara County and San Francisco, U.S. District Judge William Orrick temporarily blocks Executive Order 13768, which had threatened to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities, writing "The statements of the President, his press secretary and the Attorney General belie the Government's argument in the briefing that the Order does not change the law. They have repeatedly indicated an intent to defund sanctuary jurisdictions in compliance with the Executive Order."..."The threat of the Order and the uncertainty it is causing impermissibly interferes with the Counties' ability to operate, to provide key services, to plan for the future, and to budget."
• May
• *At least 80 leopard sharks wash up dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay, possibly due to a fungal infection, with likely as many as 1,000 dying and sinking since early March
• June
• *The Golden State Warriors become NBA champions over the Cleveland Cavaliers, with Kevin Durant earning the Bill Russell M.V.P. Award, with coach Steve Kerr joking, "We have very little talent, actually, it was most coaching"
• *A gunman kills 3 people at a San Francisco UPS facility before killing himself
• July
• *The Tesla Model 3 electric car begins production at the Fremont Tesla Factory '
• *Air Canada Flight 759 narrowly misses a runway incursion at San Francisco International Airport that one retired pilot called "close to the greatest aviation disaster in history".
• August
• *Bay Area rapper Keak Da Sneak is shot and critically injured in Richmond, in a targeted attack
• *The Consulate-General of Russia in San Francisco is ordered to close by the Trump Administration, in retaliation to Russia ordering staff reductions at the US Embassies there
• September
• *San Francisco reaches a daytime temperature of 106 degrees Fahrenheit, its highest recorded temperature since record keeping began in 1874.
• *Hiking and mountain bike trails open to the peak of Mount Umunhum in San Mateo County, a spur of the Bay Area Ridge Trail
• October
• *Fourteen large wildfires, including the Atlas and Tubbs Fires, spread over a 200-mile region north of San Francisco, in Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties, kill at least 10 people and destroy over 1,500 structures '
• November
• *A rare mountain lion spotted in San Francisco is tranquilized and released into the wild, far south of the city
• *The La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve, a 6,142-acre open space reserve in San Mateo County, California, part of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, opens to the public
• *Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant, is found not guilty of murder for the 2015 shooting of Kathryn Steinle on a San Francisco pier, in a case that had touched off a national immigration debate.
• December
• *A data breach at Stanford University reveals that the university secretly ranked fellowship applicants on their potential value to the university, rather than the university's publicly stated method of by need
• *Silicon Valley software engineer Susan Fowler and San Francisco lobbyist Adama Iwu are featured, with other women, on the cover of Time's 2017 Person of the Year issue, this year given to "The Silence Breakers", people who spoke out against sexual abuse and harassment
• *San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, the city's first Asian-American mayor, dies from a heart attack, with San Francisco Board of Supervisors president London Breed ' sworn in as acting mayor
• *Senator Dianne Feinstein formally asks Immigration and Customs Enforcement to investigate the West County Detention Center, where multiple federal detainees have stated that they were not allowed to use restrooms. Feinstein wrote, "It has been reported that the conditions are so deplorable that detainees are requesting deportation over pursuing claims in immigration court"
• *Buddy's Cannabis Shop, in San Jose, is the first California business to obtain a state Marijuana Micro-Business License, which, along with a city business license, will make it the first fully licensed recreational marijuana shop in California, when it becomes legal on 1 January 2018
• *Everitt Aaron Jameson, a 25-year-old former marine, is arrested by the FBI on suspicion of planning a terror attack in the Pier 39 area of San Francisco over Christmas.
• January
• *Starting January 1, with the Adult Use of Marijuana Act going into effect statewide, Harborside Health Center, Berkeley Patients Group, and many other Marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area begin retail sales of Marijuana to the general public '
• *Parks in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, including Muir Woods National Monument and Fort Point National Historic Site, experience partial or total closure, due to the January 2018 United States federal government shutdown
• *More than 150,000 people attend 2018 Women's March protests across the Bay Area, adding the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements to the protests against President Donald Trump '
• *The San Francisco Board of Supervisors votes to replace acting mayor London Breed with an interim mayor, former supervisor Mark Farrell , amid accusations of racism
• *San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo resigns from the Federal Communications Commission Broadband Advisory Board, citing undue influence from telecommunications companies
• *San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announces his department will begin to retroactively apply Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which legalized the possession and recreational use of marijuana for adults ages 21 years or older, to misdemeanor and felony convictions dating back to 1975, recalling and re-sentencing up to 4,940 felony marijuana convictions and dismissing and sealing 3,038 misdemeanors
• February
• *The Berkeley City Council declares Berkeley a "sanctuary city" for recreational cannabis sales, prohibiting the use of city resources to assist in enforcing federal marijuana laws or providing information on legal cannabis sales, the first city in California to do so
• *Marin County is ranked worst among all California counties in racial disparity, according to Race Counts and Advancement Project California, with a spokesperson for the groups stating, "We were surprised, and were not expecting Marin to be the number-one county in terms of disparity...It's not that progressive counties have it all figured out"
• *Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley announces that her office will review thousands of marijuana convictions, dating back to 1974, for possible dismissal under Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, guidelines, following closely after San Francisco announced a similar plan
• *Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf alerts city residents to imminent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, earning criticism from some federal authorities. She responds, "I was sharing information in a way that was legal and was not obstructing justice, and it was an opportunity to ensure that people were aware of their rights."
• March
• *A man with a rifle enters the Veterans Home of California Yountville, the largest veterans home in the United States, holds employees hostage, and is found dead, along with 3 hostages
• May
• *Two studies conclude that the housing crisis in the Bay Area and California is reaching emergency proportions, with one study estimating that two counties alone, Santa Clara and Alameda, will need more than 50,000 new homes to meet the demand for affordable housing for lower-income residents, while homelessness increased by 36% in Alameda County from 2016-2017
• *The father of some of the ten children that were removed from a home in Fairfield, where they were living in conditions of severe neglect and abuse, is arrested and booked on seven counts of torture and nine counts of felony child abuse
• *A nine-story electronic sculpture, "Day for Night", created by artist Jim Campbell, that features low resolution, abstract videos of San Francisco, debuts at the top of Salesforce Tower
• June
• *San Francisco voters pass an ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products, due in part to concerns that candy-flavored products may lure teenagers into nicotine addiction
• *Santa Clara County voters remove Santa Clara County Superior Court judge Aaron Persky, who came to national attention in 2016 when he sentenced a Stanford University student to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman
• *London Breed is elected Mayor of San Francisco in a special election, defeating close rival Mark Leno
• *Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and former president and COO Ramesh Balwani are indicted on charges of wire fraud, accused of carrying out a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients. Theranos announced that Holmes would resign as CEO, but retain her position as chairwoman of the board
• *Hanabiko "Koko", a female western lowland gorilla born at the San Francisco Zoo, who was known for having learned a large number of hand signs from a modified version of American Sign Language. dies at her home in Woodside, California
• July
• *The West County Detention Center severs ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and will no longer incarcerate undocumented migrants at the Contra Costa County facility.
• *Nia Wilson, an African American woman, is killed while exiting MacArthur BART station, when a white male attacked her and one of her two sisters with her, with strong suspicions that this was a racially motivated hate crime
• *Ron Dellums , former East Bay US Representative and mayor of Oakland, known for his fiery anti-Vietnam War oratory and progressive politics, dies at his home in Washington, D.C.
• August
• *Apple Inc becomes the first company in history to reach $1,000,000,000,000 in value
• *The Salesforce Transit Center opens in San Francisco, initially as a hub for bus lines including MUNI and AC Transit, and eventually nearly a dozen other transit agencies, including BART and Caltrain
• *A study by the California Association of Realtors shows that only about 1 in 5 Bay Area residents can afford the median purchase price for a home, with state home affordability rates at a 10 year low
• *A jury in San Francisco awards 46-year-old former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson US$289m in damages against Monsanto, after alleging that it had spent decades hiding the cancer-causing dangers of its Roundup herbicides.
• September
• *The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholds a patent filed by the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University involving Crispr Cas-9 gene-editing, ruling that the patent didn't infringe on another patent filed two years prior by the University of California, Berkeley, where the technique was first developed
• *The Global Climate Action Summit convenes in San Francisco, hosted by California governor Jerry Brown, who pledges to uphold state environmental guidelines despite moves by the United States to roll them back
• *San Francisco businessman and co-founder of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff, and his wife, Lynn Benioff, purchase Time magazine for $190 million
• *Psychologist and Palo Alto University statistics professor Christine Blasey Ford accuses Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in 1982
• January
• *Pacific Gas and Electric Company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its recent roles in the California wildfires.
• February
• *Oakland teachers go on strike.
• *Elected San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi dies at the age of 59.
• *Rainstorms cause the Russian River to flood, engulfing the town of Guerneville in the highest floodwaters in 25 years
• March
• *California governor Gavin Newsom declares a moratorium on the death penalty in California, and orders the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison, the state's only site for the administration of capital punishment, to be dismantled and closed
• April
• *East Bay congressperson Eric Swalwell 'announces his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2020 election
• *A Google, Inc offshoot company, Wing, becomes the first drone delivery service to receive Air Carrier Certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.
• June
• *Oakland' becomes the second city in the United States to decriminalize some entheogens, including "Magic Mushrooms"
• March
• *During the week of March 16, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States across San Francisco Bay Area, all 9 Bay Area counties issued directives for residents to shelter-in-place until at least April 7.
• May
• *George Floyd protests in the San Francisco Bay Area begin.
• May
• *On May 26, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in San Jose. Ten people were killed during the shooting, including the gunman, a VTA employee who then committed suicide. It is the deadliest mass shooting in the Bay Area's history.

Cities in California

• Timeline of Fresno, California
• Timeline of Los Angeles
• Timeline of Mountain View, California
• Timeline of Oakland, California
• Timeline of Riverside, California
• Timeline of Sacramento, California
• Timeline of San Bernardino, California
• Timeline of San Diego
• Timeline of San Francisco
• Timeline of San Jose, California