San Francisco Map − EXPLAINED

san francisco stands as the western gateway for the united states today it runs seven miles by seven miles right here its geographic positioning on this peninsula makes it the perfect place for a city the bay it takes its name from is one of the largest cargo ports in the united states but if we just look at a map like this we can easily overlook the most influential characteristic of the city the hills it's built on [Music] here's a bright trip breakdown to help you understand the layout of san francisco [Music] way before san francisco looked like this the spanish showed up and took it from the olon people who had lived there for thousands of years in the 1780s the spanish built the mission dolores and today this church still stands as the oldest building in san francisco it sits right here this is the oldest part of the city and the neighborhood in the area has subsequently taken on the name the mission district in 1848 two massive things happened to make the san francisco we know today first the u.s acquired the land after winning the mexican-american war and second they found gold so many people came out searching for gold in such a short time that the city was almost built overnight in 1846 the population of san francisco was 200 and only six years later in 1852 the population was 36 000. not only the population of san francisco grew but the geography itself look at the street closest to the water in this 1846 map this is montgomery street and look at where the shore is in relation to montgomery street today many of the gold miners were in such a rush that they just abandoned their ships in the bay many of the ships began to crash into one another and wash up on shore and this is what became known as rotten row rotten road turned into a landfill which eventually became reclaimed land that many buildings stand on today this map shows exactly where the water used to be the military quickly assembled to protect this now invaluable city taking over the existing spanish fort right here on what is known as the presidio this base became incredibly active during world war ii and is now privatized it's a large park-like area worth exploring the military also built on this little island in the san francisco bay called alcatraz this is where the first lighthouse on the west coast was built and it's the site most known for the high security penitentiary built on it and you might already know this island well if you played tony hawk's pro skater like me the gold rush also brought over a large population of immigrants many chinese came and built the first chinatown in the u.s right here today it's the largest in north america and is one of the largest china towns in the world many italians also immigrated and built successful fishing businesses creating fisherman's wharf and pier 39 right here today this area is mostly a tourist attraction the massive influx of people began to settle into the city layout that already existed which was not a very great one here's a painting of san francisco in 1837 when it was called yerba buena this neighborhood here still carries on that name unfortunately the guy that painted this jean-jacques villager took on the job of designing the first urban layout on this landscape even though he had little experience this is what he came up with it was a plan that copied the city blocks he'd seen in spain and completely disregarded the hilly landscape except for columbus ave which you can see right here and is probably the one street that paid attention to the topography as it was an already existing trail that went between telegraph hill and russian hill his was a grid system that follows the cardinal directions and makes up where the financial district is today those that got rich from the gold rush were not the miners themselves but those that set up businesses that catered to the miners this created a lot of really wealthy land owners who had a large stake in saying what the future urban landscape of san francisco would look like so when a new planner jasper o'farrell was brought in about 10 years later to improve the design he also had the harder task of pleasing the landowners his grid makes up this portion of the city which is today called soma because it's south of market street market street right here is the road he designed to combine the two grids market street is perpendicular to columbus ave and compared to other streets in san francisco it's super flat and super wide it runs directly from the embarcadero to twin peaks the ferry building was built right on the shore looking down market street and is still where the ferry stock today even though market street connects these two portions of the city many streets don't line up causing perpetual traffic issues o'farrell knew this was inevitable so he made it as wide as he could 120 feet land owners really didn't like this and literally ran him out of town with death threats because of the rough start limited land and difficult geography san francisco has constantly been a battle and a puzzle of how to expand and how to grow you can see that the land is incredibly hilly and sandy making it a challenge for even the most skilled urban planner so the grid inevitably breaks apart when it approaches the steepest hills and as they say necessity is the mother of invention so one valuable invention enabled more of the san francisco landscape to be utilized in 1873 this guy invented the cable car right here in san francisco it's fitting that it was invented here because it's based on the design of a conveyance system for mining and today it's still a massive tourist attraction up to this point most of the building of the city had taken place in the valleys but the cable cars enabled building on the tops of the hills as well mostly by the rich knob hill for example was named for the rich that initially settled on it today nob hill is a neighborhood name for the hill it's on this method of naming neighborhoods based on the hill that they're on is very common throughout the city with neighborhoods like russian hill petrero hill and rincon hill the cable car also helped the city expand westward this neighborhood here is called the western edition even though it's now in the middle of the city as operational costs of buses became cheaper most of the streetcars were torn out but these are the routes that still run mostly just for tourists the city was growing quickly so expansion plans were made to keep building west until they hit the ocean san francisco decided to turn the sand dunes on the western side of the peninsula then called the outside lands into a massive park in 1870 the golden gate park opened which is comparable to the size of new york's central park the park borders ocean beach right here which is an amazing place to watch the sunset over the pacific there were big plans for the city a massive park to the south new diagonal thoroughfares to break up the blocks but just as plans for the city were coming together disaster struck in 1906 a massive earthquake rippled across the city destroying water lines and starting fires the city burned for four days here's a map that shows the portion of the city destroyed the ferry building was one of the few in this whole area that survived many people died and thousands were left homeless taking refuge in the golden state park the rebuilding of downtown only continued the expansion of the city this neighborhood just north of golden gate park is the richmond district it was developed quickly to house those that had been displaced from the destruction of the earthquake because of the small lot sizes and building height restriction of 40 feet much of this area hasn't been commercially developed and it is an incredibly expensive residential area the richmond district and the sunset district this area just south of golden gate park are sometimes collectively referred to as the avenues this is because the avenues in this area go up numerically starting at 2nd ave and working their way west to 48th ave this makes navigation in this area super easy even for the newcomers because the streets are the names of spanish explorers in alphabetical order starting up here and working south although this gets a little broken apart at golden state park something to keep in mind is that the streets in petrero hill rather than the avenues are numerical so be careful when looking up an address with a numerical street or avenue because it can be easy to mix up the two the ever living battle with the hills led to the building of the twin peaks tunnel in 1918 a tunnel over two miles long traveling directly beneath the twin peaks this led to more development west of the hills in 1936 the san francisco oakland bay bridge or as it's locally known the bay bridge was completed and the famous golden gate bridge named for the street of water it spans followed just a year later the golden gate was the tallest and longest bridge in the world when it opened and provided a new way into the city both these bridges helped to relieve the traffic of the ferries in the bay they even built an island treasure island right here in celebration of completing the bridges the decades that followed shaped the city that we know today during world war ii the san francisco port became incredibly valuable in its position along the pacific rim many soldiers that were given the blue discharge for being homosexual were discharged at this port enabling a hub for the lgbt community to thrive when shipping containers were invented all the small ports in the city stopped shipping and all the major ports moved across the bay then there were proposals for freeway system that would crisscross the city which were mostly rejected in an effort to keep the city walkable and connected there was one freeway built along the embarcadero connecting the two bridges but after proposals to demolish it an earthquake in 1989 was the final straw that led to its demolition the entire upper deck so you'll see today that even highway 101 which comes into the city across the golden gate bridge has to stop at each intersection as it runs through san francisco these factors make for a very walking friendly tourist city the 50s were also a time where the engineers became confident in their precautions against earthquakes they began building skyscrapers in the financial district the long period of no high rises led to a general distaste of skyscrapers in the city leading to very strict laws and regulations to build tall buildings this leaves most of the city with the 40-foot limit allowing sunlight to filter through all of san francisco and one last note because the city is filled with hills and one-way streets the walking routes can often look very different from the driving routes and on these walking routes you can come across amazing staircases like these peppered all throughout the city that climb these steep hills [Music] san francisco is a beautiful city and this is just a start but i hope this helps you travel smarter while you're there [Music] thank you so much for watching we at bright trip make travel explainers like this we have courses that go far more in depth with specific cities or how to travel solo or how to travel with kids so we'd love to see you at brighttrip.com where you can find the entire catalog in addition while i was researching this video i found several maps that i thought were really fun to play with like this one that shows the grade of the streets and which direction they run in visually so i've left some links in the description below to those maps that you can poke around at please like this video and subscribe and we will see you next time peace

Channel: Bright Trip

Views: 483,491

Keywords: bright trip, iz harris, johnny harris, travel courses, learn to travel smarter, travel tutorials, how to travel 2020, how to travel 2021, travel youtube channel new, travel education channel youtube, California Map, San Francisco breakdown, Travel explainer, cable cars of San Francisco, san francisco orientation, Urban Layout, San Francisco Landscape, map of manhattan, design of SF, getting around sf, travel in 2021, traveling smarter, Map of San Francisco, the bay, sf

Id: xWmMEZaQ5mM

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GoatLegRedux]

Golden State park?

[u/grantoman]

Not bad! My only two objections are:

1. Golden "Gate" Park, not Golden "State" Park, and
2. I'm pretty sure Treasure Island was constructed for the military or as an airport. Not just to celebrate the opening of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge.

[u/behappyftw]

I just moved to the bay area for school and found this video quite interesting

[u/LJAkaar67]

Where is this staircase (at 10:13)

https://i.imgur.com/GRa7FJp.jpg

[u/befree224]

Nice!! Love it!

[u/FreeMelania2020]

Great video - thanks for posting!