Does anyone know San Franciscos first city name?
San Francisco was originally (1835) called Yerba Buena, Spanish for “Good Herb”, a fragrant mint plant that grew along the shorline of the bay. The name was given by William Richardson, who set up the first trading post at Montgomery and Clay (that was the original shoreline of Yerba Buena Cove) and the first private home on Grant near Washington. In 1846, rumor had it that a town at the convergence of the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay would name itself San Francisco. Lt. Washington Bartlett, who had been second in command on the U.S.S. Montgomery when it landed in San Francisco to claim it for the U.S. in 1846, was mayor of Yerba Buena. He realized that sailors and merchant ships were associating Yerba Buena with the name San Francisco Bay, and that if another town claimed that name, the shipping might go there. To ensure that the ships would still come into our harbor, he quickly engineered the name change from Yerba Buena to San Francisco, which became official on January 3
