The History of San Francisco: From First Peoples to Future Dreams

Beneath the fog and tech money lies a city forged in chaos. San Francisco was built on bulldozed Ohlone shellmounds, shaped by vigilante justice and a gold rush so brutal that snowbound miners resorted to eating the dead in Sierra camps. This book is the unfiltered history of a metropolis that burned to the ground and rebuilt itself six times, and what got buried each time it rose again.

From the forced labor at Mission Dolores and the systematic destruction of Ohlone sacred sites to the 1906 earthquake cover-up, where city leaders secretly burned corpses to hide the true death toll and keep investors interested, this book traces the violence and corruption running beneath every era of San Francisco's growth. It covers the Vigilance Committee's summary hangings, the Chinese laborers buried alive during railroad construction, the Japanese families deported from Pier 35 whose shops mysteriously burned days later, and the city's long habit of looking the other way when profit was at stake.

What's inside:

• Ohlone genocide: sacred shellmounds paved over for development while missionary records dismissed the deaths
• Gold Rush brutality: the starvation, violence, and cannibalism in Sierra camps that funded San Francisco's gilded mansions
• The 1906 cover-up: how city officials hid thousands of deaths and destroyed evidence to protect the city's image
• Railroad exploitation: Chinese laborers who built the Transcontinental Railroad and died in its tunnels while the Big Four got rich
• Alcatraz before the prison, Japanese internment from Pier 35, vigilante lynchings, and the patterns of displacement that continue into the tech era

Reader review:
"My great-grandmother survived the 1906 quake and used to whisper about body pits in Golden Gate Park. This book confirmed her darkest stories. The chapters on the Vigilance Committee and the opium tunnels under Chinatown were jaw-dropping. If you think you know San Francisco history, this will set you straight." Luis R.

This is San Francisco history with nothing smoothed over. Written for locals tired of the polished narrative, travelers who want the real story, and anyone interested in how the forces that built this city are still shaping it today.

Order your copy today.