San Francisco

The designation “San Francisco” was first applied to the San Francisco Bay in the early-16th Century when Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed into the inlet. Cabrillo named the bay, and the surrounding expanse, for Saint Francis of Assisi, a Catholic monk identified with poverty, charity, and humility. 

In 1775 Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala called the area that’d become the city “Yerba Buena.” The name means “good herb”, likely referring to the abundance of wild mint. “San Francisco” was first applied to the town in 1847, possibly as a nod to its large population of Italian immigrants. Less than 500 people lived in the vicinity at the time. By 1850 more than 200 Italian Americans resided in San Francisco. Those drawn by the Gold Rush quickly bought land or worked in service industries rather than stay in the mines.

Franciscan missions and presidios were built throughout North American as part of a strategy to expand and protect the Spanish empire, as well as convert Native Americans to Christianity. Mission San Francisco de Asís was founded in 1776 by Father Serra, just five days before the Declaration of Independence was signed on the other side of what’d become the United States of America. Mission Dolores Basilica was built 100 years later. San Francisco de Asís is often called Mission Dolores, due to its proximity to a nearby, now undergrounded, creek, Arroyo de los Dolores. Having survived the great earthquake and fire of 1906, the mission church is San Francisco’s oldest intact building and the only complete Mission Chapel in the chain of twenty-one established under Father Serra.

Born in 1181, St. Francis of Assisi, who was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1228, founded the Franciscan Order of the Friars Minor, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order. He was a leader of a movement of evangelical poverty. His zeal, consecration to poverty, charity, and personal charisma drew thousands of followers. Francis’s devotion to Jesus and his desire to follow Jesus’ example reflected and reinforced important developments in medieval spirituality. “The Poverello” is one of the most venerated religious figures in Roman Catholic history; he and St. Catherine of Siena are the patron saints of Italy. In 1979 Pope John Paul II recognized him as the patron saint of ecology.

It’s said that in 1214 St. Francis embarked on a journey to Spain early in the development of his new religious order, making a pilgrimage to the burial site of St. James, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, considered the first apostle to be martyred. 

The Ohlone people occupied the Bay Area for thousands of years, spread amongst 40 tribal settlements: the Tamien, Chochenyo, Matalan, Sagan, and others. Spanish settlers brought waves of epidemics, chiefly smallpox and measles, decimating their population, dwindling to 2,500 by 1830. After Mexican independence from Spain in 1822 accelerated the collapse of the mission system, successive floods of prospectors and pioneers from the Eastern U.S. and unscrupulous fixers pushed the remaining Ohlone to the margins of California society.