The “Painted Ladies” of San Francisco are famous around the world. They are also one of the main reasons I choose to locate my woodwork business in the Bay Area.
Northern California is also famous for its coastal forests. Few people realize that California is mostly a desert. Yet along the northern coast the fog off the ocean added greatly to the available water. The result was forests of giant redwoods sometimes thousands of years old and also giant fir trees.
Here is the math: the average annual rainfall in northern California is just over 20 inches, not enough to produce nor sustain a forest. Yet right along the coast the needles of the redwood and fir trees captured the ocean fog and condensed it into water. This “rain” water then dripped off the trees to the extent that the measurable water hitting the ground from both the rain and the fog was over 60 inches a year! Giant trees use giant amounts of water.
The timber necessary to build a state of the art city was available here. But spectacular cities also need money and that was provided by the Gold Rush.