Daily Alta California, Volume 1, Number 103, 29 April 1850
REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE
On the Derivation and Definition
of the Names of the several Counties
of the State of California, &c.
SAN FRANCISCO. — The name of this County is famous throughout the Catholic world as being that of the creator of the religious order of Franciscans in Europe and America, in whose name the mission of San Francisco de Asis (Dolores) was established in the year 1776, under the immediate superintendence of the Rev Franciscan, Father Junipero de Serra.
In the same year and in the name of H. Catholic Majesty, the harbor of San Francisco was taken possession of, and a fort or redoubt erected with the same name; which it still retains. The bay is also called San Francisco, and lately it was given to the town of Yerba Buena, by the municipal authorities of that place, doubtless so to harmonise the three places (distant one league from another, and forming a triangle,) that they may amicably respond to the same name when the astounding activity and rapid growth of one will have united all three into an immense commercial city.
In 1830 there were only two houses in San Francisco — one belonging to Capt. Richardson, and the other to J. P. Leese — and up to 1840 the place had made little progress. In 1848, however, it received so wonderful an impulse from the discovery of the gold mines in the Sierra Nevada, that it can be said, San Francisco is an enchanted or magical city, built by spirits such as are spoken of in the Arabian Nights.
The town now contains a fluctuating population of from 20,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, made up in the short space of two years. The bay is large enough to accommodate the naval and commercial fleets of the world; there are now on its broad, magnificent bosom, five hundred vessels, and more than two thousand other crafts, steamboats, scows. &c, actually engaged in the ramifications of trade. San Francisco possesses theatres and good substantial wharves; it is the starting point of navigation to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries, which embrace an extent of two hundred leagues ; it is the present seat of the Supreme Court of California, and the residence of the Collector of Customs, wherein more than two millions of dollars have been collected within two years.