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Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

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The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

California Bay Area county map
California Bay Area county map

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.68 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)

Selected article

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that practically everyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents around 1871, had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under a law restricting Chinese immigration and prohibiting immigrants from China from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed essentially everyone born in the U.S.—even the U.S.-born children of foreigners—and could not be limited in its effect by an act of Congress. (more...)

Selected biography

Reginald Martinez "Reggie" Jackson (born May 18, 1946) is an American former baseball right fielder who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for five different teams (1967–1987). He was nicknamed "Mr. October" for his clutch hitting in the postseason with the Oakland A's and the New York Yankees. Jackson won five consecutive American League West divisional pennants, three consecutive American League pennants and two consecutive World Series titles as a member of the Oakland Athletics (he did not play in the 1972 World Series due to injury) from 1971 to 1975; four American League East divisional pennants, three American League pennants and two consecutive World Series titles with the Yankees from 1977 to 1981; and two American League West divisional pennants with the California Angels in 1982 and 1986. He is perhaps best remembered for hitting three consecutive home runs in the clinching game of the 1977 World Series.

Jackson played for the Kansas City / Oakland Athletics (1967–1975, 1987), Baltimore Orioles (1976), New York Yankees (1977–1981), and California Angels (1982–1986). A 14-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion, Jackson won two Silver Slugger Awards, the 1973 American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, two World Series MVP Awards, and the 1977 Babe Ruth Award. (more...)

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Old Courthouse Square, Downtown Santa Rosa
Old Courthouse Square, Downtown Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California United States. The 2012 census reported a population of 170,685. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's North Coast, Wine Country and the North Bay; the fifth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont; and the 26th most populous city in California. (more...)

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The Bay Area by year

1926
Big Dipper at Playland
Big Dipper at Playland
Mural detail from the Mark Hopkins
Mural detail from the Mark Hopkins

Selected historical image

Officers of the Chinese Six Companies, Chinatown (date not known)
image credit: Roy D. Graves

Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

San Francisco Ballet Building
San Francisco Ballet Building
California Hotel
California Hotel

 • ... that before The Jabberwock was a Berkeley folk music club, it was the jazz club Tsubo, where Wes Montgomery recorded his live album Full House on July 25, 1962?
 • ... that the San Francisco Ballet Building (pictured, right), designed by architect Beverly Willis, was “the first building in the United States to be designed and constructed exclusively for the use of a major ballet company”?
 • ... that Oakland's California Hotel (pictured, left), starting in 1953, was the only full service hotel in the East Bay that welcomed black people?
 • ... that El Tecolote, published in San Francisco, is the longest running bilingual newspaper in California that is printed in both English and Spanish?
 • ... that the Sir and Star hotel in Olema was constructed by the area's original Spanish land grantee, Rafael Garcia, in 1876 as part of a 9,000 acre land grant from Mexico?
 • ... that after the San Francisco Fire of 1851, "Nothing remained of the city but the sparsely settled outskirts"?
 • ... that the Manhattan Project's calutrons used 14,700 short tons (13,300 t) of silver?

November 2015

Selected periodic event

Albert Dieudonné in Abel Gance's Napoleon
Albert Dieudonné in Abel Gance's Napoleon

San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented every July at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States. In 2012, The festival presented, in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions, and the British Film Institute, a restored version of Abel Gance's Napoléon. (Albert Dieudonné as Napoléon pictured)

Quote

~ Colonel Albert S. Evans, 1873
*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

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Conversation of air traffic controllers and pilots at San Francisco International Airport (KSFO) during the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash landing
credit: public domain

Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

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