The village of Yerba Buena
Long before San Francisco, was the town of Yerba Buena. And before the town, there was a village, before the village was a settlement. Before the settlement, there were a handful of places - an island, a cove, a stopping-place - named after the sprawling, sweet-scented native plant, yerba buena or “good herb”.
The village or settlement of Yerba Buena was officially founded in 1834, when the then-governor, José Figueroa, opened the area to settlers and gave William Richardson permission to open a port and trading post. Richardson and his family erected the first canvas and redwood shelter there on June 25, 1835, and commenced building.
An Ohioan named Jacob Leese, built a house nearby in 1836, threw a 3-day 4th of July celebration. Richardson and de Haro, as alcalde, laid out a street grid.
The original buildings were built in a typically Spanish arrangement around a square, which would later become Portsmouth Square. At that time the shoreline was only about 500 feet away, lapping up against what’s now Montgomery St, with an inlet poking in at the junction of Columbus and Kearny.
Yerba Buena’s intercultural, interethnic mingling was a rarity in American history.
In early 1841 James Douglas of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), operating on the Pacific coast from Fort Vancouver, went to Yerba Buena to establish an HBC trading post.
as late as 1844 it had only a dozen buildings and less than 50 inhabitants
July 31 1846, population doubled when the Brooklyn arrived (led by infamous Sam Brannan, and carrying John M Horner as well as others).
Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a 19th-century settlement. These natural disadvantages forced the town’s residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. The first of many environmental transformations was the city’s reliance on filled marshlands for real estate. Much of the present downtown is built over the former Yerba Buena Cove
In August 1846, Lt. Washington A. Bartlett was named alcalde of Yerba Buena. On January 30, 1847, Lt. Bartlett’s proclamation changing the name Yerba Buena to San Francisco took effect.