Source: Watson, Douglas S., An Hour’s Walk Through Yerba Buena — Courtesy sfgenealogy.com
A recent post about early San Francisco settler, William Richardson, mentioned that he was commissioned by the Mexican government to build a settlement along Yerba Buena cove in 1835. That settlement would later become the booming gold rush town of San Francisco. Using this walking tour of old Yerba Buena on SF Genealogy, you can revisit the settlement and locate important historic sites. In addition to a helpful map, the site includes a wealth of background information by Douglas S. Watson that originally appeared in his 1957 booklet, An Hour’s Walk Through Yerba Buena.
You can also compare Richardson’s 1847 Yerba Buena to gold rush San Francisco seven years later using this annotated Google map. It’s only a taste of a much larger gold rush history but, like the Yerba Buena map, is very useful in understanding the relationship of the historic places to the modern day city.
SF Genealogy is free to use and is an excellent source of historical information about San Francisco and the Bay Area.