In 1579, Sir Francis Drake and crew, midway through their circumnavigation of the globe, steered their Golden Hind into a foggy North Pacific Cove surrounded by buff cliffs that reminded them of the White Cliffs of Dover.

San Francisco started life in the 1770s as a Spanish garrison town called Presido of San Francisco. In 1849, when the Gold Rush started, the town boomed as 40,000 people poured in hoping to get rich quick.
In 1906 an earthquake and subsequent fire caused $350m damage and killed 450 people. However, the CBD was rebuilt quickly and the town continued to thrive.

In the 1950s the city became the spiritual home of the beatnik movement, and in the 1960s saw the birth of 'flower power' and the hippie philosophy.