The San Francisco Bay Area PortalThe San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California, United States. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.44 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail. The combined urban area of San Francisco and San Jose is the second largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth largest in the United States, and the 56th largest urban area in the world. The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not use the nine-county definition of the San Francisco Bay Area. The OMB has designated a more extensive 12-county Combined Statistical Area (CSA) titled the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area which also includes the three counties of San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, and San Benito that do not border San Francisco Bay, but are economically tied to the nine counties that do. The San Francisco Bay Area is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area has high incomes, performing above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)Selected articleThe eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is a construction project replacing an unsafe cantilever portion of the Bay Bridge with a new self-anchored suspension bridge (SAS) and viaduct. The new span is located in the U.S. state of California, and crosses the San Francisco Bay between Yerba Buena Island and Emeryville. It was built between 2002 and 2013, and does not have an official name other than that of the bridge as a whole. The eastern span replacement is the largest public works project in California history, with an estimated cost of $6.4 billion. Originally scheduled to open in 2007, several problems delayed the opening until September 2, 2013. It is currently the world's widest bridge, according to Guinness World Records. (more...) Selected biography
Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (March 24, 1881 – August 7, 1968) was a wealthy socialite and philanthropist in San Francisco, California. She was known both as "Big Alma" (she was 6 feet (1.8 m) tall) and "The Great Grandmother of San Francisco". Among her many accomplishments, she persuaded her first husband, sugar magnate Adolph B. Spreckels, to donate the California Palace of the Legion of Honor to the city of San Francisco. Spreckels' last major project was the construction of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. When it opened in 1951, her collection of model ships that had been on display at the 1939–40 Golden Gate International Exposition was the main exhibit. (more...)
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Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The city shares its borders with the cities of Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale, as well as Moffett Federal Airfield and the San Francisco Bay. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 74,066.
Situated in Silicon Valley, Mountain View is home to many high technology companies. In 1956, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first company to develop silicon semiconductor devices in what came to be known as Silicon Valley, was established in the city by William Shockley. Today, many of the largest technology companies in the world are headquartered in the city, including Google, Mozilla Foundation, Symantec, and Intuit. (more...) Selected imageRecently in the Bay Area
The Bay Area by year • Mare Island Naval Shipyard (pictured, left), the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean, is established in Vallejo, Solano County Selected historical imageDid you know...
Previous Did you know... • ... that Gladys Kathleen Parkin (pictured, left) was the first woman in California to obtain a first-class government-issued radio license? December 2014 Selected periodic eventDebuting in 1983, the San Francisco Jazz Festival is an annual fall three-week event, with over 30 concerts. It is produced by SFJAZZ (pictured), a non-profit organization dedicated to jazz and jazz education. Quote
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