San Francisco

San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States.

In 1776, the Spanish established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi on the site. The California Gold Rush in 1848 propelled the city into a period of rapid growth, increasing the population in one year from 1,000 to 25,000, and thus transforming it into the largest city on the West Coast at the time. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. During World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes, 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 was the home (and frequent story setting) for science fiction-alternate history pioneer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), whose collected works are sometimes edited by Harry Turtledove.

San Francisco in "Coming Across"
In 1979, San Francisco was one of the safest places in the world for homosexual men to practice their romantic preferences freely. And so did Gaetan, a vacationing Air Canada flight attendant, and Lingol, a beautiful foreign man, who hit it off together for a whirlwind courtship in that city. Unbeknownst to either, their brief encounter would doom Lingol's people to potential extinction.

San Francisco in Curious Notions
The Crosstime Traffic corporation chose San Francisco as one of the cities to set up an outpost in "Alternate 3477". The company established the retail store called Curious Notions, which specialized in electronics. San Francisco was chosen for two reasons. First, it was one of the few American cities to survive an atomic war with Imperial Germany in 1956 because the bombers headed for the city were shot down. Second, it was close to the Central Valley, a particularly fertile agricultural area in nearly every timeline.

As the United States had been under the rule of Imperial Germany, San Francisco had become rather rundown. Many buildings still bore the marks of the 1989 earthquake over a century later. It was also quite common to see officers of the Feldgendarmerie patrolling the streets.

The Chinese gangs known as the Triads maintained a quiet but powerful presence in the city.

When the Woo family was brought to the San Francisco of the home timeline, they were astonished to find a sophisticated, cultured, and world-class city.

San Francisco in The Valley-Westside War
People living in the various little states into which Los Angeles had been divided after the big war, knew of Frisco as a place far away to the north, which hardly any of them had visited or was likely to visit - since the trip there would be long, difficult and dangerous, requiring to cross the national boundaries of many small states as well as various lawless areas where robbers waited to prey on travelers.

San Francisco in Days of Infamy
San Francisco was bombed by Japanese flyers based in Hawaii in the Spring of 1942. The bombing came in response to Jimmy Doolittle's night raid on Oahu after Japan conquered the territory from the United States. The attack further humiliated the U.S. but was more of a nuisance raid than a damaging attack.

Joe Crosetti hailed from San Francisco. His uncle's family was wiped out by the bombing.

San Francisco in "The Fillmore Shoggoth"
In May, 1968, an iceberg which had broken off from the Ross Ice Shelf more than a year before and made its way north finally landed off the coast of San Francisco. A swarm of shoggoths attacked the city, destroying a number of artifacts pertaining to the Old Ones that were housed around the city.

The attack also killed several, including a pair of Old Ones who'd come to see a concert at the Fillmore, before it was finally halted. Members of the band HPL were witnesses to the Fillmore attacks.

San Francisco in The Hot War
San Francisco was one of several cities the Soviet Union successfully atom bombed on the morning of March 2, 1951 during World War III.

San Francisco in "The Maltese Elephant"
A bizarre series of murders were committed in San Francisco after one of the rare elephants of Malta was shipped there, triggering the violent desires of various criminals to possess it.

San Francisco in The Man With the Iron Heart
San Francisco was one of many cities Diana McGraw visited in 1947. Although the Eightieth Congress, dominated by the Republican Party, had cut off funding for the continued American occupation of Germany, McGraw still rallied her supporters against President Harry Truman.

After the speech, McGraw had an adulterous encounter with Marvin, a city supervisor. McGraw could never remember Marvin's last name, but remembered the physical act fondly.

San Francisco in Southern Victory
San Francisco had been a Mexican town until the US conquered it during the First Mexican War. After the 1848 gold rush, the town became the major city of the Pacific coast, and the prime base of the US Pacific Squadron.

During the War of Secession in 1861, San Francisco had been isolated from the conflict, but suffered heavily from the stock market collapse in 1863. By 1881, the city had pulled itself up, but was once more isolated when the Second Mexican War began, and Utah rebelled, cutting the city off from the East Coast. As the British entered the war, the Royal Navy bombarded San Francisco and detached marines to raid the US Mint. Samuel Clemens lived in the city at the time, witnessed this attack, and extensively reported on it in his paper.

In the twentieth century, the city was a major port of call for the US Navy and other Central Powers fleets in the Pacific. It was a staging area for the 1914 assault on the Sandwich Islands during the Great War.

In 1944, San Francisco was one of several U.S. cities Confederate President Jake Featherston idly threatened to destroy with a superbomb. It was a bluff as the CSA's only such bomb had already destroyed the outskirts of Philadelphia.

San Francisco in The Two Georges
Drakestown was a major city in the North American Union province of Upper California. It was situated on the west shore of San Francisco Bay which had retained its original Spanish name. Although people had talked for years of bridging the bay, they could never come up with an earthquake-proof design. Due to this absence, numerous ferries continued to adequately connect Drakestown with the cities and towns on the east side of the water.

Colonel Thomas Bushell, Captain Samuel Stanley, and Lieutenant Colonel Felix Crooke had an hour-and-a-half lay-over in Drakestown during their flight from New Liverpool to Wellesley on the airship Empire Builder in the course of their investigation into the theft of The Two Georges.