Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WELCOME TO THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA   BAY AREA CITIES   RECOGNIZED BAY AREA CONTENT

The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

California Bay Area county map
California Bay Area county map

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, 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 7.68 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 statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs 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 article

SRI International (SRI), founded as Stanford Research Institute, is an American nonprofit research institute headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. SRI is now one of the largest contract research institutes in the world.

The institute formally separated from Stanford University in 1970 and became known as SRI International in 1977. SRI describes its mission as discovery and the application of science and technology for knowledge, commerce, prosperity, and peace. It performs client-sponsored research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses, and private foundations. It also licenses its technologies, and creates spin-off companies.

SRI's headquarters are located near the Stanford University campus. Physicist Curtis Carlson has been SRI's president and CEO since 1998. SRI's annual revenue in 2013 was approximately $540 million. SRI employs about 2,300 people. Sarnoff Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of SRI since 1988, was fully integrated into SRI in January 2011. SRI International Sarnoff is used as a brand name for business activities based in Princeton, New Jersey.

SRI's focus areas include biomedical sciences, chemistry and materials, computing, Earth and space systems, economic development, education and learning, energy and environmental technology, security and national defense, as well as sensing and devices. SRI has received more than 1,000 patents and patent applications worldwide. (more...)

Selected biography

Luis Walter Alvarez, 1961
Luis Walter Alvarez, 1961

Luis W. Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist and inventor, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968. The American Journal of Physics commented, "Luis Alvarez (1911–1988) was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century."

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never observed. He produced 3
H
using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron. (more...)

Selected city

A view of Mission Peak from Fremont Central Park
A view of Mission Peak from Fremont Central Park
Fremont /ˈfrmɒnt/ is a city in Alameda County, California. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the merger of five smaller communities: Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose, and Warm Springs. The city is named after American explorer John Charles Frémont, "the Great Pathfinder."

Located in the southeast section of the San Francisco Bay Area in the East Bay region primarily, Fremont had a population of around 220,000. It is the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the largest suburb in the metropolis. It is the closest East Bay city to Silicon Valley, and is thus sometimes associated with it.

The area consisting of Fremont, Newark (an enclave of Fremont), and Union City (formed from the communities of Alvarado and DeCoto), is now known as the Tri-City Area. (more...)

Selected image


The Bay Area by year

1848
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Ad for sea transport to the Gold Rush
Ad for sea transport to the Gold Rush

 • James W. Marshall finds several flakes of gold at a lumber mill he owned in partnership John Sutter, at the bank of the South Fork of the American River, news of which quickly travels around the world (advertisement for transportation to the Gold Rush pictured, right)
 • The California Star and the Californian both cease publication in San Francisco due to losing all their staff to the California Gold Rush
 • The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (pictured, left) ends the Mexican–American War, and cedes the territory of California (including the San Francisco Bay Area) to the United States from Mexico Mexico
 • San Francisco's population is 1,000

Selected historical image

"Great Depression: unemployed, destitute man leaning against vacant store", San Francisco (1935)
image credit: Dorothea Lange

Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

The Usermontu mummy
The Usermontu mummy
Tony Gemignani
Tony Gemignani
Panama-Pacific commemorative coin
Panama-Pacific commemorative coin

 • ... that the Usermontu mummy (pictured, left), at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, had an iron orthopedic screw placed inside his left knee at the time of his death?
 • ... that pizza chef Tony Gemignani (pictured, right) opened Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco's Little Italy in 2009, which was named "The Best Pizzeria in America" by Forbes magazine?
 • ... that the octagonal $50 piece of the Panama-Pacific commemorative coin issue (pictured, right) is the only U.S. coin that is not round?

June 2015

Selected periodic event

Zack & Aeris cosplayers
Zack & Aeris cosplayers

FanimeCon is an annual anime convention. It is the largest anime convention in Northern California and the 5th largest North American anime convention as of 2013. It has been held at the San Jose Convention Center since 2004. (Zack Fair and Aerith Gainsborough cosplayers pictured)

Quote

~ William Henry Irwin, on the 1906 earthquake
*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

Selected multimedia file

Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

Related Portals

WikiProject

You are invited to participate in the San Francisco Bay Area task force, a task force dedicated to developing and improving articles about the San Francisco Bay Area.

Things you can do

Selected panorama

San Francisco Bay Area categories


Full category tree
Select [►] to view the full category tree.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals

Purge server cache