![\"Nearly](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/gold-miners.jpg\")
<\/p>\nEven before San Francisco became San Francisco \u2014 or really anything more than endless sand dunes \u2014 people arrived seeking fortune.<\/p>\n
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 27, 1776, the Anza Expedition wrapped up a 1,200 mile trek, landing in future San Francisco with the promise of land ownership. Their arrival was a tone-setter for the next 250 years. Less than a century later, the cry of gold drew many more dreamers to the burgeoning city hugging the bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt comes in existence in this enormous boom,\u201d said author and historian Gary Kamiya. \u201cAnd then it has these cataclysmic booms and bust throughout its whole history.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Lance Beeson, a descendant of Lt. Jos\u00e9 Joaquin Moraga, who led the Anza Expedition the final leg of its journey, the colonizers did what people who make the pilgrimage to San Francisco have always done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a commonality present in the history of San Francisco, is people come here seeking their fortune,\u201d Beeson said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tNational ArchivesNational Archives<\/p>\n
Nearly a century after the arrival of the Anza Expedition in San Francisco, the cry of gold lured thousands to San Francisco.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fitting San Francisco\u2019s official shield features a mythological phoenix. The city burned down several times even before the 1906 earthquake and fire leveled the place. By then it had also rebounded from a financial collapse in the 1870s brought on by the Panic of 1873.<\/p>\n
After the 1906 disaster, the city rebuilt itself once again \u2014 hosting the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, as well as the city\u2019s own tenacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boom and bust cycles continue,\u201d said Kamiya. \u201cThe city rebuilds, becomes very prosperous, then it goes into the Great Depression like the rest of the country. And then we have the successions of the dot-com booms and busts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remember Web Van? The food delivery service touted as a symbol for the dot-com boom and bust in the early 1990s? The liquidation sale included basketball hoops, ping pong tables alongside multi-thousand dollar office chairs. The bust hit with a pretty significant thud. A second dot-com boom \u2014 followed by a precipitous pandemic plummet. Now AI has scribbled yet another financial peak. Who knows what comes next?<\/p>\n
\u201cSan Francisco has sort of a character of repeated sort of attempts at raising your fortunes,\u201d opined Kari Jones, archaeologist at the Presidio, where the Anza party settled.<\/p>\n
Beyond its peaks and valleys, San Francisco has always been a place that attracted thinkers and dreamers, doers and shakers. Television was born here. Sourdough bread, too. The LGBT movement. Levi’s jeans. Poets and politicians. Bankers and beats. Jack Kerouac described the area as the end of the continent where nobody gave a damn. A license to aim big.<\/p>\n
\u201cSan Francisco has a deep strain of being intensely individualistic,\u201d said Kamiya. \u201cIt was founded by people that didn\u2019t have to deal with the manners and mores of the East Coast when they came out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/palace-of-fine-arts.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tJoe Rosato Jr.\/NBC Bay AreaJoe Rosato Jr.\/NBC Bay Area<\/p>\n
The Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, a celebration of San Francisco\u2019s return from the 1906 earthquake and fire.<\/p>\n
Even the arrival of the Anza Expedition 250 years ago signaled a mixed blessing of sorts \u2014 while the colonists found prosperity, the indigenous tribes living in the area saw their way of life stamped out. There\u2019s never been a pure payoff in San Francisco without a rub.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we should all be thankful for the fact that Anza and his men discovered this,\u201d said Kamiya, sweeping his gaze along the Financial District skyline. \u201cThe tragedy of the native people notwithstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even before San Francisco became San Francisco \u2014 or really anything more than endless sand dunes \u2014 people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-382891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}