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195-581: A transcontinental railroad in the United States is any continuous rail line connecting a location on the U.S. Pacific coast with one or more of the railroads of the nation's eastern trunk line rail systems operating between the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers and the U.S. Atlantic coast. The first concrete plan for a transcontinental railroad in the United States was presented to Congress by Asa Whitney in 1845. A series of transcontinental railroads built over

390-442: A 103-foot (31 m) tall cross built in 1934. Dominating this area is Sutro Tower , a large red and white radio and television transmission tower reaching 1,811 ft (552 m) above sea level. The nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on

585-416: A GDP of $ 729 billion in 2022 . The wider San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland Combined Statistical Area is the nation's fifth-most populous, with around nine million residents, and the third-largest by economic output, with a GDP of $ 1.32 trillion in 2022 . In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $ 252.2 billion, and a GDP per capita of $ 312,000. San Francisco was ranked fifth in the world and second in

780-572: A busy port, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time; between 1870 and 1900, approximately one quarter of California's population resided in the city proper. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county . After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire , it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama–Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II , it

975-563: A combined population of over four million in 2005, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Missouri River basin. Other major population centers – mostly in the watershed's southeastern portion – include Omaha, Nebraska , north of the confluence of the Missouri and Platte Rivers; Kansas City, Missouri – Kansas City, Kansas , at the confluence of the Missouri with the Kansas River; and

1170-611: A common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google . The early 2020s featured an exodus of tech companies from Downtown San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and struggles with homelessness and public drug use. Although some observers have raised the possibility that office vacancies and declining tax revenues could cause San Francisco to enter an economic doom loop , other sources have refuted this broad-based characterization of

1365-493: A complex federal policy for purchasing, granting, conveying land. Some of these land-related acts included: George J. Gould attempted to assemble a truly transcontinental system in the 1900s. The line from San Francisco, California , to Toledo, Ohio , was completed in 1909, consisting of the Western Pacific Railway , Denver and Rio Grande Railroad , Missouri Pacific Railroad , and Wabash Railroad . Beyond Toledo,

1560-770: A connection between Puntarenas and Limón in 1,067 mm ( 3 ft 6 in ) gauge. It currently (2019) sees no passenger service. Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central and Mountain West regions of the United States . The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana , then flows east and south for 2,341 miles (3,767 km) before entering

1755-553: A debt crisis, Napoleon offered to sell the entirety of Louisiana, including the Missouri River, for $ 15 million – amounting to less than 3¢ per acre. The deal was signed in 1803, doubling the size of the United States with the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory . In 1803, Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis to explore the Missouri and search for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. By then, it had been discovered that

1950-640: A flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners," as in "1849"). With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia , raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships , saloons , and hotels; many were left to rot, and some were sunk to establish title to

2145-452: A fort on Alcatraz Island to secure San Francisco Bay. San Francisco County was one of the state's 18 original counties established at California statehood in 1850. Until 1856, San Francisco's city limits extended west to Divisadero Street and Castro Street, and south to 20th Street. In 1856, the California state government divided the county. A straight line was then drawn across the tip of

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2340-421: A gourmet marketplace. San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csb , Trewartha : Csll), characteristic of California's coast, with moist winters and dry summers. San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces

2535-554: A large African American population after World War II . The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley , the Fillmore , and Japantown , which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including

2730-578: A magnet for America's counterculture movement . Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love . In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement , with

2925-419: A period of record greater than fifty years is at Hermann, Missouri – 97.9 miles (157.6 km) upstream of the mouth of the Missouri – where the average annual flow was 87,520 cu ft/s (2,478 m /s) from 1897 to 2010. About 522,500 sq mi (1,353,000 km ), or 98.7% of the watershed, lies above Hermann. The highest annual mean was 181,800 cu ft/s (5,150 m /s) in 1993, and

3120-440: A port and naval base, post-Conquest San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a 19th-century settlement. These natural disadvantages forced the town's residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. Its 1847 population was said to be 459. The California gold rush brought

3315-424: A regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. USGS has released

3510-583: A significant portion of the Comstock Lode 's gold and silver mines, establishing a virtual monopoly. Using his incredible clout, Ralston was able to generate millions of dollars for San Francisco during its heady boom years. He founded the Bank of California , the first bank in the Western United States, and built the opulent Palace Hotel, a symbol of San Francisco's newfound prosperity and the largest hotel in

3705-460: A spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park . San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco

3900-484: A strait between Lake Huron and Lake Erie . Among rivers of North America as a whole, the Missouri is thirteenth largest, after the Mississippi, Mackenzie , St. Lawrence, Ohio, Columbia, Niagara, Yukon, Detroit, St. Clair, Fraser , Slave , and Koksoak . As the Missouri drains a predominantly semi-arid region, its discharge is much lower and more variable than other North American rivers of comparable length. Before

4095-519: A tributary of the Colorado, then on the south by the mainstem of the Colorado. Both the Colorado and Columbia Rivers flow to the Pacific Ocean. However, a large endorheic drainage called the Great Divide Basin exists between the Missouri and Green watersheds in western Wyoming. This area is sometimes counted as part of the Missouri River watershed, even though its waters do not flow to either side of

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4290-479: A wave of " Manhattanization " that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown. The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in

4485-483: Is essentially their original form, but most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek , have been partially or completely culverted and built over. Since the 1990s, however, the Public Utilities Commission has been studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks. An Historical Center of San Francisco monument, where the 1899–1906 City Hall was once located,

4680-768: Is for freight only. On December 6, 2017 the Brazilian President Michel Temer and his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales signed an agreement for an Atlantic - Pacific railway. The construction will start in 2019 and will be finished in 2024. The new railway is planned to be 3750 km in length. There are two possible tracks in discussion: Both have an Atlantic end in Santos , Brazil but the Pacific ends are in Ilo and Matarani in Peru. Another longer Transcontinental freight-only railroad linking Lima , Peru, to Rio de Janeiro , Brazil

4875-408: Is gone." Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini 's Bank of Italy , later to become Bank of America , provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address

5070-566: Is in United Nations Plaza , at 37°46′48″N 122°24′49″W  /  37.7800397°N 122.4135943°W  / 37.7800397; -122.4135943 The earliest center of San Francisco is Portsmouth Square , in the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. Here in the northeast quadrant, the Financial District is centered, with Union Square , the principal shopping and hotel district, and

5265-438: Is only one river with a personality, a sense of humor, and a woman's caprice; a river that goes traveling sidewise, that interferes in politics, rearranges geography, and dabbles in real estate; a river that plays hide and seek with you today and tomorrow follows you around like a pet dog with a dynamite cracker tied to his tail. That river is the Missouri. With a drainage basin spanning 529,350 square miles (1,371,000 km ),

5460-421: Is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022. San Francisco anchors the 13th most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States , with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area , the fifth-largest urban region in the U.S., had a 2023 estimated population of over 9 million. Prior to European settlement ,

5655-543: Is under development. The first railroad to directly connect two oceans (although not by crossing a broad "continental" land mass) was the Panama Canal Railway . Opened in 1855, this 77 km (48 mi) line was designated instead as an "inter-oceanic" railroad crossing Country at its narrowest point, the Isthmus of Panama , when that area was still part of Colombia . (Panama split off from Colombia in 1903 and became

5850-756: The American Fur Company founded Fort Union at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Fort Union gradually became the main headquarters for the fur trade in the upper Missouri basin. Fur trapping activities in the early 19th century encompassed nearly all of the Rocky Mountains on both the eastern and western slopes. Trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, St. Louis Missouri Fur Company, American Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company , North West Company and other outfits worked thousands of streams in

6045-614: The Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma and the beginning of the U.S. Conquest of California , American forces from the USS Portsmouth under the command of John B. Montgomery captured Yerba Buena on July 9, 1846, with little resistance from the local Californio population, raising the American flag over Yerba Buena plaza (later renamed Portsmouth Square in commemoration of this event). Following

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6240-686: The Bighorn , in southern Montana. Although the business started small, it quickly grew into a thriving trade. Lisa's men started construction of Fort Raymond , which sat on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Yellowstone and Bighorn, in the fall of 1807. The fort would serve primarily as a trading post for bartering with the Native Americans for furs. This method was unlike that of the Pacific Northwest fur trade, which involved trappers hired by

6435-562: The California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California. San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina , Mission Bay , and Hunters Point , as well as large sections of the Embarcadero , sit on areas of landfill . Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from

6630-585: The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) completed a line that spanned from the port of Montreal to the Pacific coast, fulfilling a condition of British Columbia 's 1871 entry into the Canadian Confederation . The City of Vancouver , incorporated in 1886, was designated the western terminus of the line. The CPR became the first transcontinental railway company in North America in 1889 after its International Railway of Maine opened, connecting CPR to

6825-510: The Columbia River system, which drains into the Pacific, had a similar latitude as the headwaters of the Missouri River, and it was widely believed that a connection or short portage existed between the two. However, Spain balked at the takeover, citing that they had never formally returned Louisiana to the French. Spanish authorities warned Lewis not to take the journey and forbade him from seeing

7020-785: The Golden Gate Bridge , cable cars , and Alcatraz . The city is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of California, San Francisco , the University of San Francisco , San Francisco State University , the San Francisco Conservatory of Music , the de Young Museum , the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , the San Francisco Symphony , the San Francisco Ballet ,

7215-685: The Grand , Moreau and Cheyenne Rivers all join the Missouri from the west. The Missouri makes a bend to the southeast as it winds through the Great Plains, receiving the Niobrara River and many smaller tributaries from the southwest. It then proceeds to form the boundary of South Dakota and Nebraska and is joined by the James River from the north. At Sioux City the Big Sioux River comes in from

7410-530: The Illinoian ) glaciation diverted the Missouri River southeastward toward its present confluence with the Mississippi and caused it to integrate into a single river system that cuts across the regional slope. In western Montana, the Missouri River is thought to have once flowed north then east around the Bear Paw Mountains . Sapphires are found in some spots along the river in western Montana. Advances of

7605-495: The Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway , allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood. The two recent decades have seen booms driven by the internet industry. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated

7800-464: The Mississippi River north of St. Louis , Missouri . The river drains semi-arid watershed of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 km ), which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although a tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River is slightly longer and carries a comparable volume of water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms

7995-450: The Mound builders , stayed along the Missouri, becoming the ancestors of the later Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Indigenous peoples of North America who have lived along the Missouri have historically had access to ample food, water, and shelter. Many migratory animals naturally inhabit the plains area. Before they were hunted by colonists and Native Americans, these animals, such as

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8190-690: The Musselshell River . Farther on, the river passes through the Fort Peck Dam , and immediately downstream, the Milk River joins from the north. Flowing eastward through the plains of eastern Montana, the Missouri receives the Poplar River from the north before crossing into North Dakota where the Yellowstone River , its greatest tributary by volume, joins from the southwest. At the confluence,

8385-579: The Otoe , Missouria , Omaha , Ponca , Dakota , Lakota , Arikara , Hidatsa , Mandan , Assiniboine , Gros Ventres and Blackfeet . In this pre-colonial and early-colonial era, the Missouri river was used as a path of trade and transport, and the river and its tributaries often formed territorial boundaries. Most of the Indigenous peoples in the region at that time had semi-nomadic cultures, with many tribes maintaining different summer and winter camps. However,

8580-487: The Pacific Northwest region, provided a foundation for future explorers and emigrants. They also negotiated relations with numerous Native American tribes and wrote extensive reports on the climate, ecology and geology of the region. Many present-day names of geographic features in the upper Missouri basin originated from their expedition. As early as the 18th century, fur trappers entered the extreme northern basin of

8775-802: The San Francisco Opera , the SFJAZZ Center , and the California Academy of Sciences . Two major league sports teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors , play their home games within San Francisco proper. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) offers flights to over 125 destinations, while a light rail and bus network , in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with

8970-495: The Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill , once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf , and Pier 39 , where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill , a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street ; North Beach ,

9165-696: The Treaty of Paris , France ceded its Canadian possessions to the British, gaining Louisiana from the Spanish in return. Initially, the Spanish did not extensively explore the Missouri and let French traders continue their activities under license. However, this ended after news of incursions by trappers working for the Hudson's Bay Company in the upper Missouri River watershed was brought back following an expedition by Jacques D'Eglise in

9360-520: The U.S. state of California behind Los Angeles , San Diego , and San Jose . It covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula , making it the second-most densely populated major U.S. city behind New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county , behind four of New York City's boroughs . Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco

9555-418: The buffalo , provided meat, clothing, and other everyday items; there were also great riparian areas in the river's floodplain that provided habitat for herbs and other staple foods. No written records from the tribes and peoples of the pre-European contact period exist because they did not yet use writing. According to the writings of early colonists, some of the major tribes along the Missouri River included

9750-527: The fluvial Arikaree Group were deposited between 29 and 19 million years ago. The Miocene -age Ogallala and the slightly younger Pliocene -age Broadwater Formation deposited atop the Arikaree Group, and are formed from material eroded off of the Rocky Mountains during a time of increased generation of topographic relief; these formations stretch from the Rocky Mountains nearly to the Iowa border and give

9945-693: The headwaters of the Missouri River first rose in the Laramide Orogeny , a mountain-building episode that occurred from around 70 to 45 million years ago (the end of the Mesozoic through the early Cenozoic ). This orogeny uplifted Cretaceous rocks along the western side of the Western Interior Seaway , a vast shallow sea that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and deposited

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10140-403: The world's fourth-longest river system . For over 12,000 years, people have depended on the Missouri River and its tributaries as a source of sustenance and transportation. More than ten major groups of Native Americans populated the watershed, with most leading a nomadic lifestyle and dependent on enormous bison herds that roamed through the Great Plains . The first Europeans encountered

10335-411: The 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate. In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of

10530-408: The American West and a flood of settlers, farmers, ranchers, adventurers, hopefuls, financially bereft, and entrepreneurs took their place. The river roughly defined the American frontier in the 19th century, particularly downstream from Kansas City, where it takes a sharp eastern turn into the heart of the state of Missouri, an area known as the Boonslick . As first area settled by Europeans along

10725-465: The Atlantic Coast. There is activity to revive the connection between Valparaíso and Santiago in Chile and Mendoza , Argentina, through the Transandino project. Mendoza has an active connection to Buenos Aires . The old Transandino began in 1910 and ceased passenger service in 1978 and freight 4 years later. Technically a complete transcontinental link exists from Arica, Chile , to La Paz , Bolivia, to Buenos Aires, but this trans-Andean crossing

10920-422: The Atlantic coast. The construction of a transcontinental railway strengthened the connection of British Columbia and the North-West Territories to the country they had recently joined, and acted as a bulwark against potential incursions by the United States. Subsequently, two other transcontinental lines were built in Canada: the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) opened another line to the Pacific in 1915, and

11115-535: The Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to "Old Gold Mountain," creating the city's Chinatown quarter. By 1880, Chinese made up 9.3% of the population. The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for

11310-435: The Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair , the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939–40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it. During World War II , the city-owned Sharp Park in Pacifica was used as an internment camp to detain Japanese Americans . Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became

11505-449: The Continental Divide. To the north, the much lower Laurentian Divide separates the Missouri River watershed from those of the Oldman River , a tributary of the South Saskatchewan River , as well as the Souris , Sheyenne , and smaller tributaries of the Red River of the North . All of these streams are part of Canada's Nelson River drainage basin, which empties into Hudson Bay . There are also several large endorheic basins between

11700-508: The French colonial authorities since 1706, when he deserted his post as commandant of Fort Detroit after poorly handling an attack by the Ottawa that resulted in thirty-one deaths. However, his reputation was enhanced in 1720 when the Pawnee – who had earlier been befriended by Bourgmont – massacred the Spanish Villasur expedition near present-day Columbus, Nebraska , on the Missouri River, temporarily ending Spanish encroachment on French Louisiana. Bourgmont established Fort Orleans ,

11895-418: The Great Plains much of their gentle but persistent eastward tilt, and also constitute a major aquifer. Immediately before the Quaternary Ice Age , the Missouri River was likely split into three segments: an upper portion that drained northwards into Hudson Bay, and middle and lower sections that flowed eastward down the regional slope. As the Earth plunged into the Ice Age, a pre-Illinoian (or possibly

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12090-419: The Gulf at the confluence of the Arkansas River with the Mississippi. In 1682, France expanded its territorial claims in North America to include land on the western side of the Mississippi River, which included the lower portion of the Missouri. However, the Missouri itself remained formally unexplored until Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont commanded an expedition in 1714 that reached at least as far as

12285-403: The Kansas River and its tributary the Republican River as well as pair of smaller Colorado streams, Big Sandy Creek and the South Platte River , to near Denver. The gold rushes precipitated the decline of the Bozeman Trail as a popular emigration route, as it passed through land held by often-hostile Native Americans. Safer paths were blazed to the Great Salt Lake near Corinne, Utah , during

12480-461: The MacKay and Evans map of the Missouri, although Lewis eventually managed to gain access to it. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their famed expedition in 1804 with a party of thirty-three people in three boats. Although they became the first Europeans to travel the entire length of the Missouri and reach the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia, they found no trace of the Northwest Passage. The maps made by Lewis and Clark, especially those of

12675-409: The Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley , now popularly called the Castro , was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village , and is now the center of gay life in the city. Located near

12870-478: The Mississippi River. Over 95 significant tributaries and hundreds of smaller ones feed the Missouri River, with most of the larger ones coming in as the river draws close to the mouth. Most rivers and streams in the Missouri River basin flow from west to east, following the incline of the Great Plains; however, some eastern tributaries such as the James, Big Sioux and Grand River systems flow from north to south. The Missouri's largest tributaries by runoff are

13065-766: The Missouri River in the hopes of finding populations of beaver and river otter , the sale of whose pelts drove the thriving North American fur trade . They came from many different places – some from the Canadian fur corporations at Hudson Bay, some from the Pacific Northwest ( see also : Maritime fur trade ), and some from the midwestern United States. Most did not stay in the area for long, as they failed to find significant resources. The first glowing reports of country rich with thousands of game animals came in 1806 when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned from their two-year expedition. Their journals described lands amply stocked with thousands of buffalo, beaver, and river otter; and also an abundant population of sea otters on

13260-472: The Missouri River stretches for 2,639 miles (4,247 km). When combined with the lower Mississippi, the Missouri and its headwaters form part of the fourth-longest river system in the world , at 3,745 miles (6,027 km). By discharge , the Missouri is the ninth largest river of the United States, after the Mississippi, St. Lawrence , Ohio , Columbia, Niagara , Yukon , Detroit , and St. Clair . The latter two, however, are sometimes considered part of

13455-421: The Missouri River's catchment encompasses nearly one-sixth of the area of the United States or just over five percent of the continent of North America. Comparable to the size of the Canadian province of Quebec , the watershed encompasses most of the central Great Plains, stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River Valley in the east and from the southern extreme of western Canada to

13650-448: The Missouri and Nelson watersheds in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Minnesota and Des Moines Rivers, tributaries of the upper Mississippi, drain most of the area bordering the eastern side of the Missouri River basin. Finally, on the south, the Ozark Mountains and other low divides through central Missouri, Kansas and Colorado separate the Missouri watershed from those of the White River and Arkansas River, also tributaries of

13845-595: The Missouri flowed in a new course along the south side of the Bearpaws, and the lower part of the Milk River tributary took over the original main channel. The Missouri's nickname, the "Big Muddy", was inspired by its enormous loads of sediment or silt – some of the largest of any North American river. In its pre-development state, the river transported some 175 to 320 million short tons (159 to 290 million metric tons) per year. The construction of dams and levees has drastically reduced this to 20 to 25 million short tons (18 to 23 million metric tons) in

14040-399: The Missouri to start. As the 1830s drew to a close, the fur industry slowly began to die as silk replaced beaver fur as a desirable clothing item. By this time, also, the beaver population of streams in the Rocky Mountains had been decimated by intense hunting. Furthermore, frequent Native American attacks on trading posts made it dangerous for employees of the fur companies. In some regions,

14235-418: The Missouri watershed as well as the neighboring Columbia, Colorado, Arkansas, and Saskatchewan river systems. During this period, the trappers, also called mountain men , blazed trails through the wilderness that would later form the paths pioneers and settlers would travel by into the West. Transport of the thousands of beaver pelts required ships, providing one of the first large motives for river transport on

14430-563: The North American heartland for settlement. Much of the original route, especially on the Sierra grade west of Reno, Nevada, is currently used by Amtrak's California Zephyr , although many parts have been rerouted. The resulting coast-to-coast railroad connection revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West . It brought the western states and territories into alignment with

14625-701: The Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset can refer to the more western portions of their respective district and the Inner Richmond and Inner Sunset can refer to the more eastern portions. Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building , while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as

14820-404: The Pacific Northwest coast. In 1807, explorer Manuel Lisa organized an expedition which would lead to the explosive growth of the fur trade in the upper Missouri River country. Lisa and his crew traveled up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, trading manufactured items in return for furs from local Native American tribes, and established a fort at the confluence of the Yellowstone and a tributary,

15015-455: The Pacific Ocean. In late June, Jolliet and Marquette became the first documented European discoverers of the Missouri River, which according to their journals was in full flood. "I never saw anything more terrific," Jolliet wrote, "a tangle of entire trees from the mouth of the Pekistanoui [Missouri] with such impetuosity that one could not attempt to cross it without great danger. The commotion

15210-510: The Platte is longer and drains a larger area. In fact, the Yellowstone's flow is about 13,800 cu ft/s (390 m /s) – accounting for sixteen percent of total runoff in the Missouri basin and nearly double that of the Platte. On the other end of the scale is the tiny Roe River in Montana, which at 201 feet (61 m) long is one of the world's shortest rivers. The table on the right lists

15405-428: The Platte provided an abundant and reliable source of water for the pioneers as they headed west. Covered wagons, popularly referred to as prairie schooners , provided the primary means of transport until the beginning of regular boat service on the river in the 1850s. During the 1860s, gold strikes in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and northern Utah attracted another wave of hopefuls to the region. Although some freight

15600-571: The Presidio garrison, commanded by Mariano Vallejo , relocated to the Presidio of Sonoma , which was regarded as needing a greater military presence due the proximity of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross . Only a small detachment remained at the Presidio of San Francisco. Mission Dolores sold most of its property in 1836, retaining only the church and related structures. In 1833, Juana Briones de Miranda

15795-673: The Rockies provide the majority of the flow in the Missouri and its tributaries. The Missouri and many of its tributaries cross the Great Plains, flowing over or cutting into the Ogallala Group and older mid-Cenozoic sedimentary rocks. The lowest major Cenozoic unit, the White River Formation , was deposited between roughly 35 and 29 million years ago and consists of claystone , sandstone , limestone , and conglomerate . Channel sandstones and finer-grained overbank deposits of

15990-469: The Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado eastward through the Great Plains. An early expedition led by Robert Stuart from 1812 to 1813 proved the Platte impossible to navigate by the dugout canoes they used, let alone the large sidewheelers and sternwheelers that would later ply the Missouri in increasing numbers. One explorer remarked that the Platte was "too thick to drink, too thin to plow". Nevertheless,

16185-714: The Rocky Mountains, three streams rise to form the headwaters of the Missouri River: The Missouri River officially starts at the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison in Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks, Montana , and is joined by the Gallatin a mile (1.6 km) downstream. It then passes through Canyon Ferry Lake , a reservoir west of the Big Belt Mountains . Issuing from

16380-688: The San Francisco Peninsula just north of San Bruno Mountain . Everything south of the line became the new San Mateo County while everything north of the line became the new consolidated City and County of San Francisco. The California Gold Rush triggered a wave of entrepreneurial activity as individuals sought to capitalize on the newfound wealth. The discovery of silver deposits, notably the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further fueled rapid population growth and economic expansion. San Francisco, as

16575-453: The San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified . Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000,

16770-450: The Spanish ship San Carlos , commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala , became the first ship to anchor in the bay. Soon after, on March 28, 1776, Anza established the Presidio of San Francisco . On October 9, Mission San Francisco de Asís , also known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Padre Francisco Palóu . In 1794, the Presidio established the Castillo de San Joaquín , a fortification on

16965-487: The St. Louis metropolitan area, south of the Missouri River just below the latter's mouth, on the Mississippi. In contrast, the northwestern part of the watershed is sparsely populated. However, many northwestern cities, such as Billings, Montana , are among the fastest growing in the Missouri basin. With more than 170,000 square miles (440,000 km ) under the plow, the Missouri River watershed includes roughly one-fourth of all

17160-489: The United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2023 . Despite a continuing exodus of businesses from the downtown area of San Francisco, the city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce , Uber , Airbnb , X , Levi's , Gap , Dropbox , and Lyft . In 2022, San Francisco had more than 1.7 million international visitors –

17355-637: The Yellowstone River, which was called Roche Jaune ("Yellow Rock") by the French. Although MacKay and Evans failed to accomplish their original goal of reaching the Pacific, they did create the first accurate map of the upper Missouri River. In 1795, the young United States and Spain signed Pinckney's Treaty , which recognized American rights to navigate the Mississippi River and store goods for export in New Orleans. Three years later, Spain revoked

17550-498: The Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming, the Platte in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, and the Kansas – Republican / Smoky Hill and Osage in Kansas and Missouri. Each of these tributaries drains an area greater than 50,000 square miles (130,000 km ) or has an average discharge greater than 5,000 cu ft/s (140 m /s). The Yellowstone River has the highest discharge, even though

17745-767: The Yellowstone is actually the larger river. The Missouri then meanders east past Williston and into Lake Sakakawea , the reservoir formed by Garrison Dam . Below the dam the Missouri receives the Knife River from the west and flows south to Bismarck , the capital of North Dakota, where the Heart River joins from the west. It slows into the Lake Oahe reservoir just before the Cannonball River confluence. While it continues south, eventually reaching Oahe Dam in South Dakota ,

17940-453: The agricultural land in the United States, providing more than a third of the country's wheat, flax, barley, and oats. However, only 11,000 square miles (28,000 km ) of farmland in the basin is irrigated. A further 281,000 square miles (730,000 km ) of the basin is devoted to the raising of livestock, mainly cattle. Forested areas of the watershed, mostly second-growth , total about 43,700 square miles (113,000 km ). Urban areas, on

18135-458: The area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center , which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors . West of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue , lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with

18330-503: The arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities , high-tech , healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services sectors. As of 2020 , the metropolitan area, with 4.5 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($ 874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($ 131,082) across the OECD countries, ahead of global cities like Paris , London , and Singapore . It is the fourth-largest by aggregate income and economic output, with

18525-456: The basin relied heavily on the bison as a food source, and their hides and bones served to create other household items. In time, the species came to benefit from the indigenous peoples' periodic controlled burnings of the grasslands surrounding the Missouri to clear out old and dead growth. The large bison population of the region gave rise to the term great bison belt , an area of rich annual grasslands that extended from Alaska to Mexico along

18720-582: The beginning of the assimilation of the Ramaytush people, and the decline of their language and culture. The Spanish Empire claimed San Francisco as part of Las Californias , a province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain . The Spanish first arrived in what is now San Francisco on November 2, 1769, when the Portolá expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portolá and Juan Crespí arrived at San Francisco Bay . Having noted

18915-482: The border of the Arkansas River watershed. Compared with the Mississippi River above their confluence, the Missouri is twice as long and drains an area three times as large. The Missouri accounts for 45 percent of the annual flow of the Mississippi past St. Louis, and as much as 70 percent in certain droughts. In 1990, the Missouri River watershed was home to about 12 million people. This included

19110-426: The capture, U.S. forces appointed both José de Jesús Noé and Washington Allon Bartlett to serve as co- alcaldes (mayors), while the conquest continued on in the rest of California. On January 30, 1847, Mayor Bartlett ordained that the city should officially change its name from "Yerba Buena" to "San Francisco", as the former name was only locally recognized and the latter name was in use on international maps. There

19305-580: The center of Native American wealth and trade lay along the Missouri River in the Dakotas region on its great bend south. A large cluster of walled Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara villages situated on bluffs and islands of the river was home to thousands, and later served as a market and trading post used by early French and British explorers and fur traders. Following the introduction of horses to Missouri River tribes, possibly from feral European-introduced populations, Natives' way of life changed dramatically. The use of

19500-401: The chiefs back to North America. Fort Orleans was either abandoned or its small contingent massacred by Native Americans in 1726. The French and Indian War erupted when territorial disputes between France and Great Britain in North America reached a head in 1754. By 1763, France's army in North America had been defeated by a combined British-American force and was forced to sue for peace. In

19695-466: The city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people died, though modern estimates put the number in

19890-516: The city as a whole, asserting that the issues of concern are restricted primarily to the urban core of San Francisco. As of March 2024, Union Square was in "sorry shape" and had lost its traditional position as the Bay Area's regional shopping hub to Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose. The Ferry Station Post Office Building , Armour & Co. Building , Atherton House , and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in

20085-541: The city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation ; and Telegraph Hill , which features Coit Tower . Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown , the oldest Chinatown in North America. The South of Market , which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies . New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot

20280-479: The city's alcalde , renamed it from Yerba Buena (Spanish for "Good Herb"), which had been the name of the first civilian pueblo in San Francisco, as well as the name of Yerba Buena Cove , which the pueblo was on the shore of. Earlier in San Francisco's history, the uninhabited area on the northeastern side of San Francisco was called El Paraje de Yerba Buena , after the herb that was growing abundantly there. The name Yerba Buena continues to be used in locations in

20475-417: The city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001 and again in 2023, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and

20670-560: The city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and urban renewal projects. The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening

20865-563: The city, according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco . San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States , at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands — Alcatraz , Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island , and small portions of Alameda Island , Red Rock Island , and Angel Island —are part of

21060-839: The city, such as on Yerba Buena Island and in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Yerba Buena Gardens . While people residing outside the San Francisco Bay Area use nicknames including "Frisco" and "San Fran", local residents in the Bay Area sometimes refer to San Francisco as "the City" or "SF". The choice of nickname a person uses is a common way for locals to distinguish long-time residents from tourists and recent arrivals. "San Fran" and "Frisco" are sometimes considered controversial as nicknames among San Francisco residents. The earliest archeological evidence of human habitation of

21255-432: The city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands , 27 miles (43 km) offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a "seven-by-seven-mile square," a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly 232 square miles (600 km ). There are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after

21450-597: The combined Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTPR)/ National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) system opened in 1917 following the completion of the Quebec Bridge , although its line to the Pacific opened in 1914. The CNoR, GTPR, and NTR were nationalized to form the Canadian National Railway , which currently is now Canada's largest transcontinental railway, with lines running all the way from the Pacific Coast to

21645-542: The construction of dams, the river flooded twice each year – once in the "April Rise" or " Spring Fresh ", with the melting of snow on the plains of the watershed, and in the "June Rise", caused by snowmelt and summer rainstorms in the Rocky Mountains. The latter was far more destructive, with the river increasing to over ten times its normal discharge in some years. The Missouri's discharge is affected by over 17,000 reservoirs with an aggregate capacity of some 141 million acre-feet (174 km ). By providing flood control,

21840-456: The continental ice sheets diverted the river and its tributaries, causing them to pool up into large temporary lakes such as Glacial Lakes Great Falls , Musselshell and others. As the lakes rose, the water in them often spilled across adjacent local drainage divides, creating now-abandoned channels and coulees including the Shonkin Sag , 100 miles (160 km) long. When the glaciers retreated,

22035-507: The country at the time. His financial empire, however, collapsed in 1875 as a result of the Panic of 1873 , triggering a major economic crisis in San Francisco. Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support ) helped make

22230-678: The development of West Portal , and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood . Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District , a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population. The northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond , a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues . These two districts are each sometimes further divided into two regions:

22425-535: The early 1790s. In 1795 the Spanish chartered the Company of Discoverers and Explorers of the Missouri, popularly referred to as the "Missouri Company", and offered a reward for the first person to reach the Pacific Ocean via the Missouri. In 1794 and 1795 expeditions led by Jean-Baptiste Truteau and Antoine Simon Lecuyer de la Jonchšre did not even make it as far north as the Mandan villages in central North Dakota. Arguably

22620-491: The eastern flank of the Continental Divide. However, after the arrival of Europeans in North America, both the bison and the Native Americans saw a rapid decline in population. Massive over-hunting for sport by colonists eliminated bison populations east of the Mississippi River by 1833 and reduced the numbers in the Missouri basin to a mere few hundred. Foreign diseases brought by settlers, such as smallpox , raged across

22815-482: The eastern terminus of the First transcontinental railroad via a ferry ride across the Missouri between Council Bluffs, Iowa , and Omaha. The Hannibal Bridge became the first bridge to cross the Missouri River in 1869, and its location was a major reason why Kansas City became the largest city on the river upstream from its mouth at St. Louis. True to the then-ideal of Manifest Destiny , over 500,000 people set out from

23010-500: The emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village , the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors , and his assassination , along with that of Mayor George Moscone , in 1978. Bank of America , now based in Charlotte , North Carolina , was founded in San Francisco; the bank completed 555 California Street in 1969. The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting

23205-630: The end of the Pleistocene . During the end of the last glacial period , large migration of humans were taking place, such as those via the Bering land bridge between the Americas and Eurasia. Over centuries, the Missouri River formed one of these main migration paths. Most migratory groups that passed through the area eventually settled in the Ohio Valley and the lower Mississippi River Valley, but many, including

23400-564: The entire population of the U.S. state of Nebraska, parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, and small southern portions of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan . The watershed's largest city is Denver , Colorado, with a population of more than six hundred thousand. Denver is the main city of the Front Range Urban Corridor whose cities had

23595-748: The excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake . A few natural lakes and creeks ( Lake Merced , Mountain Lake , Pine Lake , Lobos Creek , El Polin Spring ) are within parks and remain protected in what

23790-520: The fact that there were no churches to be found, prompted missionaries like William Taylor to come to San Francisco where he began preaching in the streets, using an upright barrel as his pulpit. Taylor was able to garner enough generous donations from successful gold miners with which he used to build a church. One of the most influential figures of this era was William Chapman Ralston . A shrewd banker and investor, Ralston amassed considerable wealth and influence in San Francisco. He gained control over

23985-489: The famous " Painted Ladies ," standing alongside Alamo Square . To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury , famously associated with 1960s hippie culture. The Haight is now home to some expensive boutiques and a few controversial chain stores, although it still retains some bohemian character. North of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights , an affluent neighborhood that features

24180-447: The farthest source. Although the plains of the watershed have extremely little local vertical relief, the land rises about 10 feet per mile (1.9 m/km) from east to west. The elevation is less than 500 feet (150 m) at the eastern border of the watershed, but is over 3,000 feet (910 m) above sea level in many places at the base of the Rockies. The Missouri's drainage basin has highly variable weather and rainfall patterns, Overall,

24375-407: The fifth-most visited city from abroad in the United States after New York City, Miami , Orlando , and Los Angeles – and approximately 20 million domestic visitors for a total of 21.9 million visitors. It is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods , its Chinatown and Mission districts, its cooling summers, fog , and landmarks including

24570-423: The first European settlement of any kind on the Missouri River, near present-day Brunswick, Missouri , in 1723. The following year Bourgmont led an expedition to enlist Comanche support against the Spanish, who continued to show interest in taking over the Missouri. In 1725 Bourgmont brought the chiefs of several Missouri River tribes to visit France. There he was raised to the rank of nobility and did not accompany

24765-593: The first land grant in Yerba Buena: to William Richardson , a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth. Richardson had arrived in San Francisco aboard a whaling ship in 1822. In 1825, he married Maria Antonia Martinez, eldest daughter of the Californio Ygnacio Martínez . Yerba Buena began to attract American and European settlers; an 1842 census listed 21 residents (11%) born in the United States or Europe, as well as one Filipino merchant. Following

24960-511: The gateway to the goldfields, experienced a surge in population and commercial activity. However, the influx of fortune seekers also brought challenges. Lawlessness was rampant, and the Barbary Coast district became synonymous with vice, attracting criminals, prostitutes, and illicit activities, including but not limited to prostitution, bootlegging , and gambling. The rapidly growing population, with its lawlessness, gambling and other vices, and

25155-504: The generation of hydroelectric power . Fifteen dams impound the main stem of the river, with hundreds more on tributaries. Meanders have been cut off and the river channelized to improve navigation, reducing its length by almost 200 miles (320 km) from pre-development times. Although the lower Missouri valley is now a populous and highly productive agricultural and industrial region, heavy development has taken its toll on wildlife and fish populations as well as water quality. From

25350-521: The gold rush period, which led to the large-scale settlement of the Rocky Mountains region and eastern Great Basin . San Francisco, California San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco , is a commercial, financial , and cultural center within Northern California . With a population of 808,988 residents as of 2023, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in

25545-424: The higher elevations of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. Extreme maxima — almost all prior to 1960 — have exceeded 115 °F (46.1 °C) in all US states in the basin. As one of the continent's most significant river systems, the Missouri's drainage basin borders on many other major watersheds of the United States and Canada. The Continental Divide , running along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, forms most of

25740-453: The hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill , Potrero Hill , and Russian Hill . Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks , a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson , is 928 feet (283 m) high and is capped with

25935-551: The homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina , a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay. In the southeast quadrant of the city is the Mission District —populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In

26130-514: The horse allowed them to travel greater distances, and thus facilitated hunting, communications, warfare, the Siouxoan genocide and expulsion of many tribes,and the abundance of trade. Once, tens of millions of American bison (commonly called buffalo), one of the keystone species of the Great Plains and the Ohio Valley, roamed the plains of the Missouri River basin. Most Native American nations in

26325-475: The independent Republic of Panama ). By spanning the isthmus, the line thus became the first railroad to completely cross any part of the Americas and physically connect ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans . Given the tropical rain forest environment, the terrain, and diseases such as malaria and cholera , its completion was a considerable engineering challenge. The construction took five years after ground

26520-524: The industry continued well into the 1840s, but in others such as the Platte River valley, declines of the beaver population contributed to an earlier demise. The fur trade finally disappeared in the Great Plains around 1850, with the primary center of industry shifting to the Mississippi Valley and central Canada. Despite the demise of the once-prosperous trade, however, its legacy led to the opening of

26715-549: The land, decimating Native American populations. Left without their primary source of sustenance, many of the remaining indigenous people were forced onto resettlement areas and reservations, often at gunpoint. In May 1673, the French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet and the French explorer Jacques Marquette left the settlement of St. Ignace on Lake Huron and traveled down the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers, aiming to reach

26910-533: The larger Port of Oakland . The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population. Over this period, San Francisco became

27105-679: The last third of the 19th century created a nationwide transportation network that united the country by rail. The first of these, the 3,103 km (1,928 mi) "Pacific Railroad" , was built by the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad , as well as the Western Pacific Railroad (1862-1870) , to link the San Francisco Bay at Alameda, California , with the nation's existing eastern railroad network at Omaha, Nebraska / Council Bluffs, Iowa — thereby creating

27300-509: The line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and then across Nevada to their meeting in northern Utah . Chinese workers made up ninety percent of the workforce on the line. The Chinese Labor Strike of 1867 was peaceful, with no violence, organized across the entire Sierra Nevada route, and was carried out according to a peaceful Confucian model of protest. The strike began with the Summer Solstice in June, 1867 and lasted for eight days. The Transcontinental Railroad required land and

27495-486: The lower and middle basin, although the upper basin is known for short-lived but intense summer thunderstorms such as the one which produced the 1972 Black Hills flood through Rapid City, South Dakota . Winter temperatures in the northern and western portions of the basin typically drop to −20 °F (−28.9 °C) or lower every winter with extremes as low as −60 °F (−51.1 °C), while summer highs occasionally exceed 100 °F (37.8 °C) in all areas except

27690-430: The lowest was 41,690 cu ft/s (1,181 m /s) in 2006. Extremes of the flow vary even further. The largest discharge ever recorded was over 750,000 cu ft/s (21,000 m /s) on July 31, 1993, during a historic flood . The lowest, a mere 602 cu ft/s (17.0 m /s) – caused by the formation of an ice dam – was measured on December 23, 1963. The Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana at

27885-419: The missions were made to divest themselves of their extensive landholdings and emancipate the indigenous people under their control. As part of the process of secularization, Governor José Figueroa opened up San Francisco to civilian settlement. Prior to secularization, the only settlements in San Francisco had been the military settlement at the Presidio and the religious settlement at Mission Dolores. In 1835,

28080-415: The modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu , who spoke a language now referred to as Ramaytush Ohlone . On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate , and the Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi . The California gold rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, transforming an unimportant hamlet into

28275-406: The most successful of the Missouri Company expeditions was that of James MacKay and John Evans . The two set out along the Missouri, and established Fort Charles about 20 miles (32 km) south of present-day Sioux City as a winter camp in 1795. At the Mandan villages in North Dakota, they forcefully expelled several British traders, and while talking to the populace they pinpointed the location of

28470-409: The mountains near Cascade , the river flows northeast to the city of Great Falls , where it drops over the Great Falls of the Missouri , a series of five substantial waterfalls. It then winds east through a scenic region of canyons and badlands known as the Missouri Breaks, receiving the Marias River from the west then widening into the Fort Peck Lake reservoir a few miles above the confluence with

28665-436: The mouth of the Platte River. It is unclear exactly how far Bourgmont traveled beyond there; he described the blond-haired Mandans in his journals, so it is likely he reached as far as their villages in present-day North Dakota. Later that year, Bourgmont published The Route To Be Taken To Ascend The Missouri River , the first known document to use the name "Missouri River"; many of the names he gave to tributaries, mostly from

28860-442: The mouth, is 21,920 cu ft/s (621 m /s). This is from a drainage area of 186,400 sq mi (483,000 km ), or 35% of the total river basin. At Kansas City, 366.1 miles (589.2 km) from the mouth, the river's average flow is 55,400 cu ft/s (1,570 m /s). The river here drains about 484,100 sq mi (1,254,000 km ), representing about 91% of the entire basin. The lowermost gage with

29055-454: The native tribes that lived along them, are still in use today. The expedition's discoveries eventually found their way to cartographer Guillaume Delisle , who used the information to create a map of the lower Missouri. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville requested that the French government bestow upon Bourgmont the Cross of St. Louis because of his "outstanding service to France". Bourgmont had in fact been in trouble with

29250-412: The north, after which the Missouri forms the Iowa –Nebraska boundary. It flows south to the city of Omaha where it receives its longest tributary, the Platte River , from the west. Downstream, it begins to define the border between the states of Nebraska and Missouri , then flows between the states of Missouri and Kansas . The Missouri swings east at Kansas City , where the Kansas River enters from

29445-413: The northern Union states and made transporting passengers and goods coast-to-coast considerably quicker, safer and less expensive. It replaced most of the far slower and more hazardous stagecoach lines and wagon trains . The number of emigrants taking the Oregon and California Trails declined dramatically. The sale of the railroad land grant lands and the transport provided for timber and crops led to

29640-461: The other hand, comprise less than 13,000 square miles (34,000 km ) of land. Most built-up areas are along the main stem and a few major tributaries, including the Platte and Yellowstone Rivers. Elevations in the watershed vary widely, ranging from just over 400 feet (120 m) at the Missouri's mouth to the 14,293-foot (4,357 m) summit of Mount Lincoln in central Colorado. The river drops 8,626 feet (2,629 m) from Brower's Spring,

29835-405: The period of Mexican rule , although it was not until 1833 that the missions would be secularized. Agricultural land became largely privatized as ranchos , as was occurring in other parts of California. Coastal trade increased, including a half-dozen barques from various Atlantic ports which regularly sailed in California waters. With the enactment of the Mexican Secularization Act of 1833 ,

30030-431: The planned route would have used the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad (1900) , Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway , Little Kanawha Railroad , West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway , Western Maryland Railroad , and Philadelphia and Western Railway , but the Panic of 1907 strangled the plans before the Little Kanawha section in West Virginia could be finished. The Alphabet Route was completed in 1931, providing

30225-410: The portion of this line east of the Mississippi River . With the merging of the railroads, only the Union Pacific Railroad and the BNSF Railway remain to carry the entire route. The completion of Canada's first transcontinental railway with the driving of the Last Spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia , on November 7, 1885, was an important milestone in Canadian history . Between 1881 and 1885,

30420-467: The present day. Much of this sediment is derived from the river's floodplain , also called the meander belt; every time the river changed course, it would erode tons of soil and rocks from its banks. However, damming and channeling the river has kept it from reaching its natural sediment sources along most of its course. Reservoirs along the Missouri trap roughly 36.4 million short tons (33.0 million metric tons) of sediment each year. Despite this,

30615-406: The primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations . The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South , to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations

30810-547: The quality of housing after the earthquake. The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights , where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in the Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915. During this period, San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy

31005-408: The rapid settling of the "Great American Desert". The Union Pacific recruited laborers from Army veterans and Irish immigrants, while most of the engineers were ex-Army men who had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the American Civil War . The Central Pacific Railroad faced a labor shortage in the more sparsely settled West. It recruited Cantonese laborers in China, who built

31200-449: The region and blazed trails. Pioneers headed west en masse beginning in the 1830s, first by covered wagon , then by the growing numbers of steamboats that entered service on the river. Conflict between settlers and Native Americans in the watershed led to some of the most longstanding and violent of the American Indian Wars . During the 20th century, the Missouri River basin was extensively developed for irrigation, flood control, and

31395-424: The reservoirs dramatically reduce peak flows and increase low flows. Evaporation from reservoirs significantly reduces the river's runoff, causing an annual loss of over 3 million acre-feet (3.7 km ) from mainstem reservoirs alone. The United States Geological Survey operates fifty-one stream gauges along the Missouri River. The river's average discharge at Bismarck, 1,314.5 miles (2,115.5 km) from

31590-439: The rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution , the peace movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War , and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States . San Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and

31785-399: The river in the late seventeenth century, and the region passed through Spanish and French hands before becoming part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase . The Missouri River was one of the main routes for the westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century. The growth of the fur trade in the early 19th century laid much of the groundwork as trappers explored

31980-408: The river it was largely populated by slave-owning southerners following the Boone's Lick Road . The major trails for the opening of the American West all have their starting points on the river, including the California , Mormon , Oregon , and Santa Fe trails. The first westward leg of the Pony Express was a ferry across the Missouri at St. Joseph, Missouri . Similarly, most emigrants arrived at

32175-418: The river still transports more than half the total silt that empties into the Gulf of Mexico; the Mississippi River Delta , formed by sediment deposits at the mouth of the Mississippi, constitutes a majority of sediments carried by the Missouri. Archaeological evidence, especially in Missouri, suggests that human beings first inhabited the watershed of the Missouri River between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago at

32370-427: The river town of Independence, Missouri , to their various destinations in the American West from the 1830s to the 1860s. These people had many reasons to embark on this strenuous year-long journey – economic crisis, and later gold strikes including the California Gold Rush , for example. For most, the route took them up the Missouri to Omaha, Nebraska, where they would set out along the Platte River , which flows from

32565-401: The sediments that now underlie much of the drainage basin of the Missouri River. This Laramide uplift caused the sea to retreat and laid the framework for a vast drainage system of rivers flowing from the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains , the predecessor of the modern-day Mississippi watershed. The Laramide Orogeny is essential to modern Missouri River hydrology , as snow and ice melt from

32760-420: The several thousands. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay . Jack London is remembered for having famously eulogized the earthquake: "Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco

32955-419: The southern side of the Golden Gate , which later came to be known as Fort Point. In 1804, the province of Alta California was created, which included San Francisco. At its peak in 1810–1820, the average population at the Mission Dolores settlement was about 1,100 people. In 1821, the Californias were ceded to Mexico by Spain. The extensive California mission system gradually lost its influence during

33150-445: The strategic benefits of the area due to its large natural harbor, the Spanish dispatched Pedro Fages in 1770 to find a more direct route to the San Francisco Peninsula from Monterey , which would become part of the El Camino Real route. By 1774, Juan Bautista de Anza had arrived to the area to select the sites for a mission and presidio . The first European maritime presence in San Francisco Bay occurred on August 5, 1775, when

33345-553: The subsequent operation of the Panama Canal , due to its proximity to the canal. Currently, the railway operates under the private administration of the Panama Canal Railroad Company, and its upgraded capacity complements the cargo traffic through the Panama Canal. A second Central American inter-oceanic railroad began operation in 1908 as a connection between Puerto San José and Puerto Barrios in Guatemala, but ceased passenger service to Puerto San José in 1989. A third Central American inter-oceanic railroad began operation in 1910 as

33540-414: The ten longest tributaries of the Missouri, along with their respective catchment areas and flows. Length is measured to the hydrologic source, regardless of naming convention. The main stem of the Kansas River, for example, is 148 miles (238 km) long. However, including the longest headwaters tributaries, the 453-mile (729 km) Republican River and the 156-mile (251 km) Arikaree River , brings

33735-437: The territory of San Francisco dates to 3000 BCE. The Yelamu group of the Ramaytush people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay . The Ohlone name for San Francisco was Ahwaste , meaning, "place at the bay." The arrival of Spanish colonists, and the implementation of their Mission system, marked

33930-448: The total length to 749 miles (1,205 km). Similar naming issues are encountered with the Platte River, whose longest tributary, the North Platte River , is more than twice as long as its mainstream. The Missouri's headwaters above Three Forks extend much farther upstream than the main stem. Measured to the farthest source at Brower's Spring, the Jefferson River is 298 miles (480 km) long. Thus measured to its highest headwaters,

34125-459: The treaty and in 1800 secretly returned Louisiana to Napoleonic France in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso . This transfer was so secret that the Spanish continued to administer the territory. In 1801, Spain restored rights to use the Mississippi and New Orleans to the United States. Fearing that the cutoffs could occur again, President Thomas Jefferson proposed to buy the port of New Orleans from France for $ 10 million. Instead, faced with

34320-402: The underwater lot. By 1851, the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870, Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and

34515-403: The various fur enterprises, namely Hudson's Bay . Fort Raymond was later replaced by Fort Lisa at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone in North Dakota; a second fort also called Fort Lisa was built downstream on the Missouri River in Nebraska. In 1809 the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company was founded by Lisa in conjunction with William Clark and Pierre Choteau, among others. In 1828,

34710-429: The watershed is defined by a continental climate with warm, wet summers and harsh, cold winters. Most of the watershed receives an average of 8 to 10 inches (200 to 250 mm) of precipitation each year. However, the westernmost portions of the basin in the Rockies as well as southeastern regions in Missouri may receive as much as 40 inches (1,000 mm). The vast majority of precipitation occurs in summer in most of

34905-409: The west, and so on into north-central Missouri. To the east of Kansas City, the Missouri receives, on the left side, the Grand River . It passes south of Columbia and receives the Osage and Gasconade Rivers from the south downstream of Jefferson City . The river then rounds the northern side of St. Louis to join the Mississippi River on the border between Missouri and Illinois . There

35100-417: The western border of the Missouri watershed. The Clark Fork and Snake River , both part of the Columbia River basin, drain the area west of the Rockies in Montana, Idaho and western Wyoming. The Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River watersheds meet at Three Waters Mountain in Wyoming's Wind River Range . South of there, the Missouri basin is bordered on the west by the drainage of the Green River ,

35295-421: The wider region. San Francisco, which is Spanish for "Saint Francis," takes its name from Mission San Francisco de Asís , which in turn was named after Saint Francis of Assisi . The mission received its name in 1776, when it was founded by the Spanish under the leadership of Padre Francisco Palóu . The city has officially been known as San Francisco since 1847, when Washington Allon Bartlett , then serving as

35490-412: The world's second transcontinental railroad when it was completed from Omaha to Alameda on September 6, 1869. (The first transcontinental railroad was the Panama Railroad of 1855.) Its construction was made possible by the US government under Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862, 1864, and 1867 . Its original course was very close to current Interstate 80 . The United States' first transcontinental railroad

35685-415: Was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill , and a thriving arts scene. The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904 . At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across

35880-425: Was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater . In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers . After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration , liberalizing attitudes,

36075-434: Was also concern that a new town being planned by General Vallejo on the Carquinez Strait was to be called "Francisca", after the first name of his wife. After the name change to "San Francisco", the name of Vallejo's town was changed to Benicia , after his wife's middle name. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Alta California was ceded from Mexico to the United States . Despite its attractive location as

36270-469: Was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge , completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz , a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone , and Robert Franklin Stroud ,

36465-431: Was built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa , with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay . Its construction was considered to be one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century. Known as the "Pacific Railroad" when it opened, it served as a vital link for trade, commerce, and travel and opened up vast regions of

36660-412: Was centered on a plaza that is now Portsmouth Square . A land survey of Yerba Buena was made by the Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget as prelude to the city plan. Francisco de Haro , a non- Californio Mexican native, became the first alcalde of Yerba Buena. The second alcalde José Joaquín Estudillo was a Californio from a prominent Monterey family. In 1835, while in office, he approved

36855-536: Was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers . Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways , of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition . The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to

37050-409: Was first broken for the line in May, 1850, cost eight million dollars, and required more than seven thousand workers drawn from "every quarter of the globe." This railway was built to provide a shorter and more secure path between the United States' East and West Coasts. This need was mainly triggered by the California Gold Rush . Over the years the railway played a key role in the construction and

37245-437: Was granted a small rancho at El Polín Spring , near the Presidio, founding the first non-indigenous civilian household in San Francisco. In 1834, the pueblo of Yerba Buena was founded. Yerba Buena Cove (named after a native herb ) was already a favored anchorage spot and the new settlement and trading post was founded by its shores. Yerba Buena was located in what is now the city's Chinatown and Financial District and

37440-452: Was hauled overland, most transport to and from the gold fields was done through the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, as well as the Snake River in western Wyoming and the Bear River in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. It is estimated that of the passengers and freight hauled from the Midwest to Montana, over 80 percent were transported by boat, a journey that took 150 days in the upstream direction. A route more directly west into Colorado lay along

37635-465: Was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel , the Twin Peaks Tunnel , the San Francisco Municipal Railway , the Auxiliary Water Supply System , and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system, of which the J , K , L , M , and N lines survive today, was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It

37830-457: Was such that the water was made muddy by it and could not clear itself." They recorded Pekitanoui or Pekistanoui as the local name for the Missouri. However, the party never explored the Missouri beyond its mouth, nor did they linger in the area. In addition, they later learned that the Mississippi drained into the Gulf of Mexico and not the Pacific as they had originally presumed; the expedition turned back about 440 miles (710 km) short of

38025-410: Was the O'Shaughnessy Dam , Hetch Hetchy Reservoir , and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco. An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today. In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash , not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it

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