San Francisco

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the leading financial and cultural center of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.

San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, giving it a density of about 17,179 people per square mile. It is the most densely settled large city in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California, and the 14th most populous city in the United States with a population of 805,235 as of the 2010 Census. The city is also the financial and cultural hub of the larger San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan area, with a population of 8.4 million.

San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for St. Francis of Assisi a few miles away. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. Due to the growth of its population, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later.

During World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.

Today, San Francisco is a top tourist destination, and was the sixth most visited destination in the United States in 2011. The city is renowned for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former prison on Alcatraz Island, and its Chinatown district. It is also a banking and finance center.

Alternate versions of San Francisco have been discovered in the multiverse:


 * Empire of San Francisco (Union timeline)
 * Pacific Bay City (Vegetarian World)
 * Romonan (The Kalmar Union)
 * San Francisco Bay Area (1983: Doomsday)

Other key events in the city in the multiverse include:


 * Battle of San Francisco (Napoleon's World)
 * Treaty of San Francisco (The Many Nations of North America)