Page 104 - A History of the World in 25 Cities

Life in
The citizens of San Francisco rightly enjoy a reputation for being freethinking. The city was central to the birth of the hippie counterculture movement in the 1960s, as well as contributing to the peace movement, and the gay rights movement. But like most big cities, San Francisco has issues with homelessness and wage inequalities between the best- and worst-paid people.
In its very early days, the population of San Francisco grew quickly because of the California Gold
Rush. People arrived from all over the world, hoping to dig up gold
and get rich quick. Between 1848 and the end of 1849, the population jumped
from 1,000 to 20,000 people, displacing many of the Ohlone people, the original indigenous inhabitants of the region. The greed for gold was so strong that hundreds of ships lay abandoned in the harbour as their crews headed to
the hills to seek treasure! Some of the ships were converted and used as floating bars and hotels before they eventually rotted and sank.
Harvey Milk was a resident of the Castro District and the first openly gay elected official in California. He was an activist in the 1970s and made enormous strides for gay rights, including sponsoring a bill banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He was assassinated in 1978.
San Francisco is built close to the San Andreas Fault, an area where two plates of the Earth’s crust move past each other, causing regular earth tremors. On 18 April 1906, the thriving city was hit by an enormous earthquake. For around a minute, the ground moved, shaking apart the city’s buildings and reducing many to ruins.
To try and stop the resulting fires spreading through the damaged buildings, whole city blocks were blown up using gunpowder, to create a firebreak to stop the flames. Unfortunately, the explosions started many new fires and made the situation worse. The city burned for three days, 3,000 people died and over 250,000 people lost their homes. However, the
city soon began to be rebuilt, rising out of the ashes with new, safer buildings.
100