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Golden Gate
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== History == [[File:The Golden Gate, from Telegraph Hill, San Francisco LACMA M.91.359.75.jpg|thumb|The Golden Gate photographed from [[Telegraph Hill, San Francisco|Telegraph Hill]] by [[Carleton Watkins]] {{circa}} 1868]] Before Europeans arrived in the 18th century, the area around the strait and the bay was inhabited by [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]{{snd}} the [[Ohlone]] people to the south and [[Coast Miwok]] to the north. Descendants of both tribes remain in the area.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Ohlone are building a new homeland in the East Bay, 1 half-acre at a time |url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/The-Ohlone-are-building-a-new-homeland-in-the-15866001.php |publisher=San Francisco Chronicle |access-date=15 November 2022 |language=en-us}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Another Perspective: Coast Miwok elder wants his Petaluma heritage to be respected |date=August 17, 2022 |url=https://www.petaluma360.com/article/entertainment/another-perspective-coast-miwok-elder-wants-his-petaluma-heritage-to-be-re |publisher=Argus-Courier |access-date=15 November 2022 |language=en-us}}</ref> The opening to the strait was surprisingly elusive for early European explorers, presumably due to persistent summer fog. The strait is not recorded in the voyages of [[Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo]] nor [[Francis Drake]], both of whom may have explored the nearby coast in the 16th century in search of the fabled [[Northwest Passage]].{{citation needed|date = September 2019}} The strait is also unrecorded in observations by [[Spanish Empire|Spanish]] [[galleon]]s on the [[Manila-Acapulco Galleon|Manila-Acapulco run]] from the [[Philippines]] that laid up in nearby [[Drakes Bay]] to the north. These rarely passed east of the [[Farallon Islands]] ({{convert|27|mi}} west of the Golden Gate), for fear of the possibility of rocks between the islands and the mainland.{{citation needed|date = September 2019}} The first recorded observation of the strait occurred nearly two hundred years later than the earliest European explorations of the coast. In 1769, Sgt [[José Francisco Ortega]], the leader of a scouting party sent north along the [[San Francisco Peninsula]] by Don [[Gaspar de Portolá]] from their expedition encampment in San Pedro Valley to locate the [[Point Reyes]] headlands, reported back to Portolá that he could not reach the location because of the existence of the strait.<ref>Eldredge, Zoeth S. ''The beginnings of San Francisco''. San Francisco: Zoeth S. Eldredge, 1912, 31–32.</ref> On August 5, 1775 [[Juan de Ayala]] and the crew of his ship ''San Carlos'' became the first Europeans known to have passed through the strait, anchoring in a cove behind [[Angel Island, California|Angel Island]], the cove now named in Ayala's honor. Until the 1840s, the strait was called the "Boca del Puerto de San Francisco" ("Mouth of the Port of San Francisco"). On July 1, 1846, before the discovery of [[gold]] in [[California]], the entrance acquired a new name. In his memoirs, [[John C. Frémont]] wrote: "To this Gate I gave the name of 'Chrysopylae', or 'Golden Gate'; for the same reasons that the harbor of [[Byzantium]] was called Chrysoceras, or [[Golden Horn]]."<ref>Gudde, Erwin G. ''California Place Names'' (2004) University of California Press, London, England. {{ISBN|0-520-24217-3}}.</ref> He went on to comment that the strait was "a golden gate to trade with the Orient".<ref name="GGB name">{{cite web |title=What is a Name — The Golden Gate? |url=http://goldengatebridge.org/research/Name.php |website=Golden Gate Bridge |publisher=Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District |access-date=29 November 2017 |language=en}}</ref>
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