When we visited San Francisco for a weekend in mid-May, we decided to try something new. We love walking tours, but we’d never been on one in San Francisco, which was previously our home city for more than five years.
There are more than 90 different San Francisco City Guides walking tours, which are led by local volunteers who love the City, its history, lore and legends. The tours are free but are supported mainly by participants’ donations.
To join a walk, you just check out the current tour schedule, pick the one that interests you, and show up at the appointed time and place.
We chose the 1850’s San Francisco: Paris Of The Pacific tour, mostly because it best fit our schedule and location in the city during our brief weekend visit.
At 1:30 pm on a Saturday afternoon, we met the volunteer guide and other tour participants at the corner of Clay and Montgomery under the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid.
West of the spot we were standing near Transamerica Pyramid had been the water of the San Francisco Bay in the early 1840’s. This was to change.
On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall discovered gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California, kicking off the California Gold Rush. Before long, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the “forty-niners,” invaded the Gold Country of California or “Mother Lode”.
The rush to find gold changed San Francisco forever, as the city population grew from 1,000 residents in January, 1848, to more than 2,500 residents by December 1849. The rapid growth continued through the 1850s and under the influence of the 1859 Comstock Lode silver discovery. Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the California Gold Rush.
San Francisco was the arrival place for those heading to the gold fields, and a wave of French Parisians arrived to set up shops to supply those working the gold fields.
This walking tour traces some of the places in San Francisco that grew in the 1850’s under the influence of the newly arriving French Parisians, who brought their taste for the finer things of life.
This French connection helped San Francisco to blossom almost overnight from the mud of Yerba Buena Cove into a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city.
Our walk covered the locations in the Financial District, in Chinatown, and then we walked toward Union Square. A stop at the French Catholic Notre Dame des Victoires Church was included on our walk.
As we walked up Bush Street, we passed by the Le Central French bistro, a hang-out for some of San Francisco’s prominent politicians.
Our tour ended at Union Square under the Dewey Monument, while our guide continued to share of more French connections to the city of San Francisco in this location.
The tour lasted about 1.5 hours. We would highly recommend the free (but funded through donations) San Francisco City Guides Walking Tours.
If you are traveling to San Francisco, or live in the area, check out the tour schedule.
Any scheduled tour is open to the public but NOT open to parties of 8 or more. If you plan to bring 8 or more walkers to a regular tour, please click here for more information on booking private group tours.
The next 1850’s San Francisco: Paris Of The Pacific tour is scheduled for Saturday, June 20 at 1:30 pm, to be given by Harry Rabin.
Have you participated in one of the San Francisco City Guides tours? If so, please share your favorite tour in comments below.
Check out these other posts related to San Francisco:
- Going to San Francisco? 8 Tips for First-Time Visitors
- Discovering Fort Funston for a Beach Walk in San Francisco
- Trying Out San Francisco’s New Cruise Ship Terminal at Pier 27
- A Peek Inside the San Francisco Marriott Union Square Hotel
- A Peek inside the Stanford Court Renaissance Hotel – San Francisco
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