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Friday, February 01, 2008

An Introduction to the City Of San Francisco

The City of San Francisco is the 14th most populous city in America founded in 1776 with population of 744,500 which is considered to on the densely populated cities in United States. The city's larger part of the San Francisco Bay Area has nearly 7.3 million people, with diverse and cosmopolitan population. San Francisco is located at the tip of the Peninsula, with Pacific Ocean on the west, San Francisco Bay on the east and The Golden Gate on the north. Today the city is considered to be one the most popular international destination for tourists, and there are many well-known landmarks to visit, like the Golden Gate Bridge, Cable Cars, Alcatraz Island, China Town and Coit Tower.

Based on archaeological evidences, the territory of San Francisco was inhabited around 3000BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people lived in many small villages, when the Spanish exploration party arrived on November 1769. A major history of the city is the San Francisco earth quake on April 18, 1906 at 5:11am. Buildings and houses all across the city rattled, causing fire accidents which burnt the city for several days. Nearly three quarters of the city perished, which left nearly 400,000 people homeless. Most of the refugees took temporary shelters in places like beaches and Golden Gate Park, but many fled to East Bay permanently.

When speaking about the city's climate, San Francisco's climate is a characteristic of California's Mediterranean climate with wet winters and dry summers. Apart from being surrounded by water on three sides, the city's climate is strongly influenced by the Pacific Ocean's cold currents which tend to moderate temperature swings and produce amazing mild climate with slight seasonal temperature variations. Snowfall in San Francisco is very rare, where only ten incidences were recorded. During the combination of the city's high heat and cold ocean water, the western half of the city is covered by fog during early summer and spring.

The city has beautiful Ocean Beach which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline, but is not suitable for swimming as the waters off the coast are cold and have deadly rip currents. The city has amazing entertaining and performing arts center and museums. There are good public transport systems like the San Francisco Municipal Railway, trolley buses and cable car system. Bicycling is considered to be a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco with 40,000 residents commuting to work regularly by bicycle. If you love traveling or love to spend a wonderful time with your family, then you should be hitting to San Francisco.