Only having been as far north as San Francisco on the Pacific coast, I ask…Why no big cities on the coast north of San Francisco.
You have Portland, and Seattle and Vancouver but they are all in a ways. Sheltered by islands or on a river. What is it about the coast that kept, say Portland from developing directly on the coast instead of upriver?
A guess: in general, it’s more common to have cities up large rivers than directly on the coast when there’s a suitable river: the river potentially offers fresh water, and being off the coast offers shelter from coastal winds and storms. Traditionally many cities have been built at the furthest crossing place down a river, or at the highest navigable point up a river. And it’s better to be surrounded by fertile land than by the sea. California doesn’t have much in the way of major rivers, though, so the cities lie on the coast (which is also handy for the beach).
I’m better on European than N American geography, but for example, London, Rome, Glasgow, Bordeaux, Houston, Washington DC (and maybe Lisbon) are a little inland; New York is sheltered by various islands, as is Stockholm.
I promise you, Vancouver is right on the coast. It is spreading inland at an alarming rate, mark you; but it began right on the coast with a stinkin’ little sawmill.
On re-reading (it’s early here), the real reason Vancouver boomed instead of say, Victoria, which was and is the capital of the province (and is on the big island in front of Vancover), is that Vancouver and it’s little stinkin’ sawmill had the good fortune (or good vision) to be right at the mouth of one of North America’s most imortant rivers (the Fraser), and at the end of the trans-Canada railway. Result=boom city, baby.
Can’t speak for Seattle or Portland, but I suspect similar factors at work, i.e. historical movement/trade based on geography.
But Vancouver is still sheltered by Vancouver Island - it’s not directly on open ocean. And remember that a sheltered port is what you really want. I agree with the point that if there’s a river nearby, all the better. For example, I’m orignally from Seattle, which was settled on Alki Point in West Seattle at first - but quickly the main settlement moved across Elliott Bay to just above the Duwamish, around what’s now known as Pioneer Square. Granted, Alki Point wasn’t on open water, either, but it’s right on the Sound, whereas Pioneer Square is more protected.
So what’s surprising to me is that the major settlement in the SF Bay would be at a headland, SF proper, rather than where San Jose is, or in Oakland. I don’t know why that was. WAG is that the geography of SF Bay let them build a very protected settlement just inside the Golden Gate with very quick access for ocean-going ships - which might’ve been a consideration during the Gold Rush, when large ships might not have wanted to waste time going down to San Jose when they could be headed back down Pacific coast instead. But this is just a WAG.
Thinking about the East Coast, many of the major ports are in fact somewhat inland: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond and Savannah most prominently, all of which sit on rivers.
You also have to take into account the early California missions. These served as “seed-crystals” for cities to form around when the population boomed in the 1800s.
San Diego and San Francisco are situated on the best natural harbors on the planet. Protected anchorages are rare north of San Francisco, hence, the inland positioning of the cities.
Have you ever seen the coast from San Francisco to Seattle? It’s the most beautiful place in the world (as far as I have seen). But most of it is very rocky with steep cliffs near the shore, not very likely for a thieving port to develop there.
I think that San Francisco’s prominence in the Northern US Pacific Coast is due less to the Gold Rush than to the influx of immigrants working on the trans-continental railroad in the later 1800’s. This caused the city’s population to boom, and no other city in the region could match that.
The oldest parts of San Francisco aren’t built directly on the ocean; they’re on the Bay side of the peninsula. That’s where the main commercial ports were. The city didn’t spread to the coast for a few decades. So SF wasn’t originally “on the coast,” but it expanded to the coast later.
Likewise, Los Angeles wasn’t originally a coastal city either. It grew from an area 10 miles or so inland.
A *thieving[/] port, eh? Let me guess, instead of leaving your heart, you left your wallet in San Francisco?
As for Stockholm it is situated where it is because that was the ideal place to control the traffic between the Baltic and lake Mälaren.
[ul]I believe that was a fraudian slip*. :p[/ul]
Just as an FYI, the Central Pacific railroad’s transcontinental line was built mostly by Chinese laborers. The railroad employed as many as 10,000 Chinese, as well as many Irish immigrants. The treatment of the Chinese is a notorious part of California history, as in many cases, they were valued only slightly better than draft animals.
Until the railroads, the main routes to the west coast were by sailing up the coast or by northern or southern overland routes such as the Oregon trail. There were other trails leading over the Rockies, through the desert and then over the Sierras directly to California, but they were treacherous(look up the ‘Donner’ party).
Follow-up to Robbbbb’s post on San Francisco -
Actually, not only did SF start on the bay side, it was more than “a few decades” before SF moved west; the coast side was wind-swept sand dunes until the building of Golden Gate Park in the early part of this century, and housing out there was rare until the post-war years (that’s why all the houses look the same out there). There were tourist areas on the coast (Sutro Baths, Cliff House, and an amusement park on Ocean Beach), but no one lived out there for quite some time. Granted, part of it was the fact that the entire coast is silty, and not the best kind of building soil, for at least a half-mile inland, but having lived on the beach (actually, only one berm away from it, the only thing keeping the ocean at bay most times) for five years, I can confirm that living on the side of the peninsula protected from the ocean is preferable.
Which brings me to my own speculation. The Pacific Ocean, especially along the West Coast from about Monterey north, is inhospitable to long-term living. We don’t get hurricanes, but it’s generally cold (rarely gets above 65 degrees), windy, foggy, gray, and wet. The kind of wet that sinks into a person’s skin. Add to that that the coastline is rocky, unlike the East Coast, and exposed (thus not granting a lot of shelter from said nasty weather), and you wind up with very few areas on the coast that people would want to live in on a long-term basis.
Finally, as pointed out, coastal cities are relatively rare, and mostly come about from growth around an inlet or bay. In the U.S., most “coastal” cities are that way - New York, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Yorktown, Jamestown, Jacksonville. The only one I can think of running down the coast is Miami, which is one of the calmest oceans on record (not counting the occasional hurricane). Internationally, only a few cities are true “beach towns.” Lisbon, perhaps, but I’m drawing a blank on any others.
FWIW.
cc and Redhawke have pointed out the crummy conditions of the coast North of San Fran.
Refusal has pointed out the founding of cities up a large river.
Since nobody else has thrown this word out I will…
The Fall Line.
The Fall Line might not seem very important today, but when land transportation ranged from dead slow to stop (to quote James Burke) the Fall Line was a place that determined civilization.
The Fall Line is the first point in a major river that breaks into rapids. Often enough this was the point a trading post or water powered mill might be built and this could be the beginning of a Fall Line City.
Fall Line cities in North America include Lowell, Mass; Troy, NY; Trenton, NJ; Richmond, VA; Raleigh, NC and Columbia, SC.
Fall Line River cities include Louisville, KY and Minneapolis, MN.
I have always thought the question should be, why Los Angeles?
San Francisco and San Diego are tremendous natural harbors, as pointed out by silenus. Not that I’m bitching. I grew up in San Diego and can’t imagine the city being the size of the LA metro area. Ecch.
San Pedro Bay is a decent inlet but hardly on the scale of the natural protection to the north and south of it. Not to hijack too much but can anyone explain why LA got the big jump on its state’s neighbors?
HA! I guess I need to re-read AFTER the spell-check. 
MonkeyMensch asked:
While I have no cites, I think there were a couple of reasons for LA’s prominence. One was water. LA wasn’t that big of a city until the Los Angeles Aquaduct brought “unlimited” water to the area. I think it was a while longer before San Diego and San Francisco got their remote water sources.
Also, I’m not sure, but perhaps the railroads had something to do with it? (i.e. Los Angeles being a major terminus or something?)
And San Francisco isn’t a bigger city simply because there’s no place for it to grow. It had expanded out to its geographic limits by World War II, while Los Angeles still had hundreds of square miles of relatively flat land to expand to.
Oil.
Development of most US cities in the 1800s was almost always about transportation. San Francisco is not just a harbor, it connects well to the Central Valley, the gold fields, and later with the RR.
Portland feeds into the Willamette Valley, the Columbia further upstream thru the gorge (the best way of shipping by water from E. Wash., E. Ore. and Idaho), Seattle is centrally located in the Puget Sound Valley area. Vancouver and the Frasier River (and RR!) has been mentioned.
On the Oregon coast, e.g., Newport is a nice harbor, Depoe Bay is quite picturesque but very small. Neither is a good size city. Because there is no big area to serve nearby. The only resources being used nearby (besides the ocean) are the forests and logging didn’t generate 100k+ cities. (Esp. if restricted to the nearby west slope of the Coast Range.)
Where do you connect to from Seaside, Ocean Park, etc.???