Distillery District
The Distillery District is a commercial and residential district in Toronto, Canada. Located east of downtown, it contains numerous cafés, shops housed within heritage buildings of the former Gooderham and Worts Distillery; the 13 acres district comprises more than forty heritage buildings and ten streets, is the largest collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America. The district was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1988; the Gooderham and Worts Distillery was founded in 1832 and by the late 1860s was the largest distillery in the world. Once providing over 2 million US gallons of whisky for export on the world market, the company was bought out in years by rival Hiram Walker Co. another large Canadian distiller. Its location on the side of the Canadian National Railway mainline and its proximity to the mouth of the original route of the Don River outlet into Lake Ontario created a hard edge which separated the district from neighbouring communities; these did, allow for a facilitated transport connection to the rest of Canada and the world and acted as Toronto's domination as an industrial centre or transshipping hub.
With the deindustrialization of the surrounding area in the late 20th century, the winding-down of the distillery operations, the district was left derelict. Surrounding industrial and commercial buildings and structures were demolished, leaving the former distillery surrounded by empty lots. Nonetheless, the closing of the remaining distillery operations in 1990 created redevelopment and investment opportunities for a district that contained the largest and best preserved collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America; the Distillery District was designated as a National Historic Site, has been protected under the Ontario Heritage Act since 1976. It was listed by National Geographic magazine as a "top pick" in Canada for travellers; the economic recession of the early 1990s, the resulting crash in residential condominium prices and office lease rates in downtown Toronto, delayed efforts to revitalize the district. Nonetheless, two residential condominium buildings were constructed on the periphery of the district during the late 1990s.
While the site awaited redevelopment and reinvestment, the district's ambiance began to attract numerous film shoots. Since 1990, the site has served as a location for over 800 television productions. In 2001, the site was purchased by Cityscape Holdings Inc. which transformed the district into a pedestrian-orientated area. Work was completed and the district reopened to the public by 2003; the new owners refused to lease any of the retail and restaurant space to chains or franchises, accordingly, the majority of the buildings are occupied with boutiques, art galleries, jewellery stores, cafés, coffeehouses, including a well-known microbrewery, the Mill Street Brewery. The upper floors of a number of buildings have been leased to artists as studio spaces and to office tenants with a "creative focus". A new theatre, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, has opened on the site and serves as the home of the Soulpepper Theatre Company and the drama productions of nearby George Brown College.
There are plans to develop residential condominiums and more retail space on the vacant lands that surround the district. New condominium developments will be located at the south-east corner of the neighbourhood, bordering on Cherry Street and Tank House Lane; the Pan American Games' Athletes' Village was built in the area in 2015, in conjunction with an extension to the streetcar network constructed along Cherry Street. After the games, the athletes village was converted to townhouses, affordable housing, retail space; the Toronto Christmas Market is an annual outdoor tradition run within the Distillery District, for last year it was open from November 15 - December 23, 2018. It is turned into a magical'town-like' area covered with twinkly lights, in the center of the market is a 54 ft Christmas tree; the market includes "Santa's house", an Indigo pop-up shop, pet photos with Santa, a Ferris wheel and themed entertainment each day. There are multiple food vendors and dining locations that are popular tourist attractions such as French Canadian Poutine, the Gingerbread House, Maple Leaf Fudge, Mill Street Brewery, more.
In 2017, Canadian singer Shawn Mendes and American model Hailey Baldwin attended the Toronto Christmas Market. The Distillery District's traditional brick-paved streets and lanes are restricted to pedestrians and cyclists, with general motor vehicle traffic restricted to streets and parking areas outside of the district's historic centre. Several large sculptures installed along the lanes enliven its streetscapes, three being on Distillery Lane and the final one at the parking area at the end of Trinity Street. Another primary landmark is the chimney stack atop the Boiler House complex. There are informal public spaces on the pedestrianized streets with chairs and tables for general use, as well as formal patios for some of its coffee houses and restaurants. Trinity Street is the widest street in the district and functions as a public square for events such as market days; the main thoroughfares within the district are Distillery Lane from Parliament Street running southeast to Trinity Street, Trinity Street from Mill Street at its north end to the motor vehicle parking area at its south end, Tank House Lane from Trinity Street east to Cherry Street.
The four borders of the Distillery District are Parliament Street to the west, Mill Street to the north, Cherry Street to the east, the parking area to the south with the condominiums along
Shoemaking
Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not in quality, attention to detail, or craftsmanship. Shoemakers may produce a range of footwear items, including shoes, sandals and moccasins; such items are made of leather, rubber, jute or other plant material, consist of multiple parts for better durability of the sole, stitched to a leather upper part. Trades that engage in shoemaking have included cobbler's trades. Today, shoes are made on a volume basis, rather than a craft basis. For most of history, shoemaking has been a handicraft, limited to time-consuming manufacturing by hand. Traditional shoemakers used more than 15 different techniques for making shoes; some of these were: pegged construction, English welted, goyser welted, stitchdown, German sewn, bolognese stitched, blake-stitched. The most basic foot protection, used since ancient times in the Mediterranean area, was the sandal, which consisted of a protective sole, held to the foot with leather thongs or cords of various materials.
Similar footwear worn in the Far East was made from plaited palm fronds. In climates that required a full foot covering, a single piece of untanned hide was laced with a thong, providing full protection for the foot and so made a complete covering; the production of wooden shoes was widespread in medieval Europe. They were made from a single piece of wood cut into shoe form. A variant of this form was the clog; the sole and heel were made from one piece of maple or ash two inches thick, a little longer and broader than the desired size of shoe. The outer side of the sole and heel was fashioned with a long chisel-edged implement, called the clogger’s knife or stock. With the use of a'hollower', the inner sole's contours were adapted to the shape of the foot; the leather uppers were fitted to the groove around the sole. Clogs were of great advantage to workers in muddy and damp conditions, keeping the feet dry and comfortable. By the 1600s, leather shoes came in two main types.'Turn shoes' consisted of one thin flexible sole, sewed to the upper while outside in and turned over when completed.
This type was used for making similar shoes. The second type united the upper with an insole, subsequently attached to an out-sole with a raised heel; this was the main variety, was used for most footwear, including standard shoes and riding boots. The traditional shoemaker would measure the feet and cut out upper leathers according to the required size; these parts were stitched together. The sole was next assembled, consisting of a pair of inner soles of soft leather, a pair of outer soles of firmer texture, a pair of welts or bands about one inch broad, of flexible leather, lifts and top-pieces for the heels; the insole was attached to a last made of wood, used to form the shoe. Some lasts were straight, while curved lasts came in pairs: one for left shoes, the other for right shoes. The'lasting' procedure secured the leather upper to the sole with tacks; the soles were hammered into shape. The finishing operation included paring, scraping, smoothing and burnishing the edges of soles and heels, sand-papering, burnishing the soles, withdrawing the lasts, cleaning out any pegs which may have pierced through the inner sole.
Other types of ancient and traditionally made shoes included furs wrapped around feet, sandals wrapped over them, moccasins - simple shoes without the durability of joined shoes. Shoemaking became more commercialized in the mid-18th century. Large warehouses began to stock footwear in warehouses, made by many small manufacturers from the area; until the 19th century, shoemaking was a traditional handicraft, but by the century's end, the process had been completely mechanized, with production occurring in large factories. Despite the obvious economic gains of mass-production, the factory system produced shoes without the individual differentiation that the traditional shoemaker was able to provide; the first steps towards mechanisation were taken during the Napoleonic Wars by the engineer, Marc Brunel. He developed machinery for the mass-production of boots for the soldiers of the British Army. In 1812 he devised a scheme for making nailed-boot-making machinery that automatically fastened soles to uppers by means of metallic pins or nails.
With the support of the Duke of York, the shoes were manufactured, due to their strength and durability, were introduced for the use of the army. In the same year, the use of screws and staples was patented by Richard Woodman. Brunel's system was described by Sir Richard Phillips as a visitor to his factory in Battersea as follows: "In another building I was shown his manufactory of shoes, like the other, is full of ingenuity, and, in regard to subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory of pins; every step in it is effected by the most precise machinery.
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, sometimes known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U. S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-most populous U. S. city, with a 2017 census-estimated population of 1,580,863. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U. S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis; the Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States. William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city in 1682 to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia played an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at the Second Continental Congress, the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.
Several other key events occurred in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War including the First Continental Congress, the preservation of the Liberty Bell, the Battle of Germantown, the Siege of Fort Mifflin. Philadelphia was one of the nation's capitals during the revolution, served as temporary U. S. capital while Washington, D. C. was under construction. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became a railroad hub; the city grew from an influx of European immigrants, most of whom came from Ireland and Germany—the three largest reported ancestry groups in the city as of 2015. In the early 20th century, Philadelphia became a prime destination for African Americans during the Great Migration after the Civil War, as well as Puerto Ricans; the city's population doubled from one million to two million people between 1890 and 1950. The Philadelphia area's many universities and colleges make it a top study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational and economic hub. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Philadelphia area had a gross domestic product of US$445 billion in 2017, the eighth-largest metropolitan economy in the United States.
Philadelphia is the center of economic activity in Pennsylvania and is home to five Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is expanding, with a market of 81,900 commercial properties in 2016, including several nationally prominent skyscrapers. Philadelphia has more outdoor murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the United States; the city is known for its arts, culture and colonial history, attracting 42 million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent US$6.8 billion, generating an estimated $11 billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia has emerged as a biotechnology hub. Philadelphia is the birthplace of the United States Marine Corps, is the home of many U. S. firsts, including the first library, medical school, national capital, stock exchange and business school. Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks and the World Heritage Site of Independence Hall.
The city became a member of the Organization of World Heritage Cities in 2015, as the first World Heritage City in the United States. Although Philadelphia is undergoing gentrification, the city maintains mitigation strategies to minimize displacement of homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods. Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape Indians in the village of Shackamaxon; the Lenape are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government. They are called Delaware Indians, their historical territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases smallpox, violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquois people fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin; the American Revolutionary War and United States' independence pushed them further west.
In the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape reside in Oklahoma, with some communities living in Wisconsin, in their traditional homelands. Europeans came to the Delaware Valley in the early 17th century, with the first settlements founded by the Dutch, who in 1623 built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River opposite the Schuylkill River in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey; the Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina and spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their military defeat of the English colony of Maryland. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill near the present-day Eastwick neighborhood, to reassert their dominion over the area.
The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority. In 1655, a
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest city in the state of Maryland within the United States. Baltimore was established by the Constitution of Maryland as an independent city in 1729. With a population of 611,648 in 2017, Baltimore is the largest such independent city in the United States; as of 2017, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be just under 2.808 million, making it the 20th largest metropolitan area in the country. Baltimore is located about 40 miles northeast of Washington, D. C. making it a principal city in the Washington-Baltimore combined statistical area, the fourth-largest CSA in the nation, with a calculated 2017 population of 9,764,315. Baltimore is the second-largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic; the city's Inner Harbor was once the second leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. In addition, Baltimore was a major manufacturing center. After a decline in major manufacturing, heavy industry, restructuring of the rail industry, Baltimore has shifted to a service-oriented economy.
Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University are the city's top two employers. With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a "city of neighborhoods." Famous residents have included writers Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, Ogden Nash, H. L. Mencken. During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Baltimore after the bombardment of Fort McHenry, his poem popularized as a song. Baltimore has more public statues and monuments per capita than any other city in the country, is home to some of the earliest National Register Historic Districts in the nation, including Fell's Point, Federal Hill, Mount Vernon; these were added to the National Register between 1969–1971, soon after historic preservation legislation was passed. Nearly one third of the city's buildings are designated as historic in the National Register, more than any other U. S. city. The city has 33 local historic districts. Over 65,000 properties are designated as historic buildings and listed in the NRHP, more than any other U.
S. city. The historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives; the city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore of the Irish House of Lords and founding proprietor of the Province of Maryland. Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland. Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning "town of the big house." The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, when Paleo-Indians first settled in the region. One Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland period archaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period. During the Late Woodland period, the archaeological culture, called the "Potomac Creek complex" resided in the area from Baltimore south to the Rappahannock River in present-day Virginia. In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was sparsely populated, if at all, by Native Americans.
The Baltimore County area northward was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock living in the lower Susquehanna River valley. This Iroquoian-speaking people "controlled all of the upper tributaries of the Chesapeake" but "refrained from much contact with Powhatan in the Potomac region" and south into Virginia. Pressured by the Susquehannock, the Piscataway tribe, an Algonquian-speaking people, stayed well south of the Baltimore area and inhabited the north bank of the Potomac River in what are now Charles and southern Prince George's counties in the coastal areas south of the Fall Line. European colonization of Maryland began with the arrival of an English ship at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River on March 25, 1634. Europeans began to settle the area further north, beginning to populate the area of Baltimore County; the original county seat, known today as "Old Baltimore", was located on Bush River within the present-day Aberdeen Proving Ground. The colonists engaged in sporadic warfare with the Susquehanna, whose numbers dwindled from new infectious diseases, such as smallpox, endemic among the Europeans.
In 1661 David Jones claimed the area known today as Jonestown on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream. The colonial General Assembly of Maryland created the Port of Baltimore at old Whetstone Point in 1706 for the tobacco trade; the Town of Baltimore, on the west side of the Jones Falls, was founded and laid out on July 30, 1729. By 1752 the town had just 27 homes, including two taverns. Jonestown and Fells Point had been settled to the east; the three settlements, covering 60 acres, became a commercial hub, in 1768 were designated as the county seat. Being a colony, the Baltimore street names were laid out to demonstrate loyalty to the mother country. For example King George, King and Caroline streets. Baltimore grew swiftly in the 18th century, its plantations producing grain and tobacco for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean; the profit from sugar encouraged the cultivation of cane in the Caribbean and the importation of food by planters there. As noted, Baltimore was as the county seat, in 1768 a courthouse was built to serve both the city and county.
Its square was a center of community discussions. Baltimore established its public market system in 1763. Lexington Market, founded in 1782, i
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the South American continent's southeastern coast. "Buenos Aires" can be translated as "fair winds" or "good airs", but the former was the meaning intended by the founders in the 16th century, by the use of the original name "Real de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre". The Greater Buenos Aires conurbation, which includes several Buenos Aires Province districts, constitutes the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas, with a population of around 15.6 million. The city of Buenos Aires is the Province's capital. In 1880, after decades of political infighting, Buenos Aires was federalized and removed from Buenos Aires Province; the city limits were enlarged to include the towns of Flores. The 1994 constitutional amendment granted the city autonomy, hence its formal name: Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, its citizens first elected a chief of government in 1996.
Buenos Aires is considered an'alpha city' by the study GaWC5. Buenos Aires' quality of life was ranked 91st in the world, being one of the best in Latin America in 2018, it is the most visited city in South America, the second-most visited city of Latin America. Buenos Aires is a top tourist destination, is known for its preserved Eclectic European architecture and rich cultural life. Buenos Aires held the 1st Pan American Games in 1951 as well as hosting two venues in the 1978 FIFA World Cup. Buenos Aires hosted the 2018 the 2018 G20 summit. Buenos Aires is a multicultural city, being home to multiple religious groups. Several languages are spoken in the city in addition to Spanish, contributing to its culture and the dialect spoken in the city and in some other parts of the country; this is because in the last 150 years the city, the country in general, has been a major recipient of millions of immigrants from all over the world, making it a melting pot where several ethnic groups live together and being considered one of the most diverse cities of the Americas.
It is recorded under the archives of Aragonese that Catalan missionaries and Jesuits arriving in Cagliari under the Crown of Aragon, after its capture from the Pisans in 1324 established their headquarters on top of a hill that overlooked the city. The hill was known to them as Bonaira, as it was free of the foul smell prevalent in the old city, adjacent to swampland. During the siege of Cagliari, the Catalans built a sanctuary to the Virgin Mary on top of the hill. In 1335, King Alfonso the Gentle donated the church to the Mercedarians, who built an abbey that stands to this day. In the years after that, a story circulated, claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary was retrieved from the sea after it miraculously helped to calm a storm in the Mediterranean Sea; the statue was placed in the abbey. Spanish sailors Andalusians, venerated this image and invoked the "Fair Winds" to aid them in their navigation and prevent shipwrecks. A sanctuary to the Virgin of Buen Ayre would be erected in Seville.
In the first foundation of Buenos Aires, Spanish sailors arrived thankfully in the Río de la Plata by the blessings of the "Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires", the "Holy Virgin Mary of the Good Winds", said to have given them the good winds to reach the coast of what is today the modern city of Buenos Aires. Pedro de Mendoza called the city "Holy Mary of the Fair Winds", a name suggested by the chaplain of Mendoza's expedition – a devotee of the Virgin of Buen Ayre – after the Sardinian Madonna de Bonaria. Mendoza's settlement soon came under attack by indigenous people, was abandoned in 1541. For many years, the name was attributed to a Sancho del Campo, said to have exclaimed: How fair are the winds of this land!, as he arrived. But Eduardo Madero, in 1882 after conducting extensive research in Spanish archives concluded that the name was indeed linked with the devotion of the sailors to Our Lady of Buen Ayre. A second settlement was established in 1580 by Juan de Garay, who sailed down the Paraná River from Asunción.
Garay preserved the name chosen by Mendoza, calling the city Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Aire. The short form "Buenos Aires" became the common usage during the 17th century; the usual abbreviation for Buenos Aires in Spanish is Bs. As, it is common as well to refer to it as "B. A." or "BA". While "BA" is used more by expats residing in the city, the locals more use the abbreviation "Baires", in one word. Seaman Juan Díaz de Solís, navigating in the name of Spain, was the first European to reach the Río de la Plata in 1516, his expedition was cut short when he was killed during an attack by the native Charrúa tribe in what is now Uruguay. The city of Buenos Aires was first established as Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre after Our Lady of Bonaria on 2 February 1536 by a Spanish expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza; the settlement founded by Mendoza was located in what is today the San Telmo district of Buenos Aires, south of the city centre. More attacks by the indigenous
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, 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. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. 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 great 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 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
Zacatecas City
Zacatecas is a city and municipality in Mexico, the capital and largest city of the state of Zacatecas. Located in north-central Mexico, the city had its start as a Spanish mining camp in the mid-16th century. Native Americans had known about the area's rich deposits of silver and other minerals. Due to the wealth that the mines provided, Zacatecas became one of the most important cities in New Spain, with much of its silver enriching the Spanish crown; the area saw battles during the turbulent 19th century, but the next major event was the Battle of Zacatecas during the Mexican Revolution when Francisco Villa captured the town, an event still celebrated every anniversary. Today, the colonial part of the city is a World Heritage Site, due to the Baroque and other structures built during its mining days. Mining still remains an important industry; the name Zacatecas has its roots in Nahuatl. The name means "people of the grasslands"; the first people to populate the area arrived 10,000 years ago, when the climate was wetter and warmer, with different vegetation and wildlife.
The area came to be dominated by Chichimeca tribes such as the Caxcans, Guamares, Huichols and others, with the Zacatecos being the most numerous in the area of the city today. These peoples were mining silver and other metals in these hills long before the Europeans arrived, making the area important in pre-Columbian times; the Spanish came to the Zacatecas area via Guadalajara. In 1540, Nuño de Guzmán traveled from Mexico City conquering what are now the states of Michoacán and Jalisco. One of Guzmán's lieutenants, Cristóbal de Oñate, conquered the area around. Another, Pedro Almindes Chirinos Peralmindes, went to explore the lands to the north, taking Zacatecas with little trouble but not knowing of the riches underneath the soil, and the area was frontier. Other expeditions followed, including one by Juan de Tolosa in 1546, who brought back rock samples from Cerro de la Bufa, which were determined to contain high concentrations of silver and lead. A mining camp was soon established at the foot of Cerro de la Bufa.
The Zacatecos fought the permanent presence of the Spanish, but the mining potential of the area strengthened the Europeans’ resolve and the natives were defeated in the 1540s. Surveys of the other surrounding hills were undertaken by Tolosa, Diego de Ibarra, Baltasar Temiño de Bañuelos, Andrés de Villanueva and others. A military mining camp was formally established in 1548 and called Minas de Nuestra Señora de Remedios; the first major vein of silver was found in 1548 in a mine called San Bernabé. This was followed by similar finds in mines called Albarrada de San Benito, Vetagrande, Pánuco and others; this brought a large number of people to Zacatecas, including craftsmen, merchants and adventurers. In 1550, royalty found its way to Zacatecas in the person of Leonor Cortés Moctezuma, the illegitimate daughter of conquistador Hernán Cortés and Isabel Moctezuma, daughter of the Aztec emperor. Doña Leonor married Juan de Tolosa; the settlement grew over the space of a few years into one of the most important cities in New Spain and the most populous after Mexico City.
The camp became a parish in 1550, in 1585 it was declared a city with the name of "Muy Noble y Leal Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de Zacatecas", receiving its coat of arms from Philip II of Spain at the same time. The success of the mines led to the arrival of indigenous people and the importation of black slaves to work in them; the mining camp spread southwards along the course of the Arroyo de la Plata, which now lies underneath Hidalgo Avenue, the old town's main road. Tall buildings where constructed along here due to the lack of flat area on which to build; the first house was built in 1547, just before the fortress and metal foundry. Hospitals and hospices were built in the 1550s. Zacatecas was one of the richest states in Mexico. One of the most important mines from the colonial period is the El Edén mine, it began operations in 1586 in the Cerro de la Bufa. It principally produced gold and silver with most of its production occurring in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, the opening of this mine is within the city limits and was closed to mining in 1960.
It was reopened as a tourist attraction in 1975. By the end of the 16th century, the city was the second most important, after Mexico City, the income its mines produced for the Spanish Crown made it one of the most powerful in Europe, its importance was not only due to mining. Most of the monastic orders in New Spain established monasteries, making Zacatecas an important center for evangelization; the Franciscans arrived in 1558, the Augustinians in 1576 and the Dominicans in 1604. Many of the missionary expeditions to what are now California and Texas came from this city. Over the rest of the colonial period, the riches from the ground financed the building important religious and secular constructions; the peak of this construction occurred in the 18th century. One of these constructions is the Colegio de San Luis Gonzaga, established in 1796. Ignacio López Rayón led a group of Mexican rebels capturing the city of Zacatecas on April 15, 1811, early in the fight for Mexican independence from Spain.
Víctor Rosales and José María Cos were leaders of Hidalgo's rebellion. Shortly after Independence, the Mexican government established the city of Zacatecas as the capital of the newly formed state of Zacatecas. In the mid-1820s, institutions such as the first opera house, first teachers’ college, the state treasury, the state supreme court and other institutions were founded in the ci
