An American naval captain occupies the small settlement of
Yerba Buena, a site that will later be renamed San Francisco.
Europeans did not encounter the spectacular San Francisco
Bay until 1769, although several explorers had sailed by it in
earlier centuries.
When Spanish explorers finally found the bay in that year,
they immediately recognized its strategic value.
In 1776, the Spanish built a military post on the tip of the San
Francisco peninsula and founded the mission of San Francisco
de Asis (the Spanish name for Saint Francis of Assisi) nearby.
The most northern outpost of the Spanish, and later Mexican,
empire in America, the tiny settlement remained relatively
insignificant for several decades.
However, the potential of the magnificent harbor did not
escape the attention of other nations. In 1835, the British
Captain William Richardson established a private settlement
on the shore of Yerba Buena Cove, several miles to the east
of the Mexican mission.
That same year the U.S. government offered to purchase the
bay, but the Mexicans declined to sell.
A little more than a decade later, a dispute between the U.S.
and Mexico over western Texas led to war. Shortly after the
Mexican War began, U.S. Captain John Montgomery sailed
his warship into San Francisco Bay, anchoring just off the
settlement of Yerba Buena.
On this day in 1846, Montgomery led a party of marines and
sailors ashore. They met no resistance and claimed the
settlement for the United States, raising the American flag
in the central plaza.
