The View from Here
Looking across the Bay you can see the expanse of estuarine water and distant hills of South San Francisco and San Mateo. There, Spanish explorers first viewed San Francisco Bay less than 250 years ago. Gaspar de Portola led an overland Spanish expedition in 1769 that was looking for Monterey Bay, bypassed it, and ended up climbing the ridge across the Bay from you, noting in his journal "a large arm of the sea...some sort of harbor there within the mountains." From that first view to present day, millions of people from around the world have been drawn to these shores on both sides of the Bay. See if you can locate these landmarks shown on the photo below.