Join me on a scenic drive around the Bay Area in California. A highlight of the trip is traveling over the San Mateo Bridge! — Area Information Below —
San Francisco Bay Area:
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The San Francisco Bay Area, popularly referred to as the Bay Area or simply the Bay, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. While the exact boundaries of the region are variously defined, the Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to include the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other boundaries may exclude parts of or even entire counties, or expand the definition to include neighboring counties that do not border the bay such as San Benito, San Joaquin, and Santa Cruz.
Home to approximately 7.75 million people, Northern California’s nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a complex multimodal transportation network. The larger combined statistical area of the region, which includes fourteen counties, is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 41st-largest urban area in the world with 9.67 million people.[7] The Bay Area’s population is ethnically diverse: for example, roughly half of the region’s residents are Hispanic, Asian, African American, or Pacific Islander, all of whom have a significant presence throughout the region.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlements in the Bay Area dates back to 8000–10,000 BC (from shell mounds in the Coyote Hills). In 1769, the Bay Area was inhabited by the Ohlone people when a Spanish exploration party led by Gaspar de Portolà entered the Bay – the first documented European visit to the Bay Area. After Mexico established independence from Spain in 1821, the region was briefly controlled by the Mexican government until the United States purchased the territory in 1846 during the Mexican–American War. Soon after, discovery of gold in California attracted a flood of treasure seekers, many using ports in the Bay Area as an entry point. During the early years of California’s statehood, state legislative business rotated between three locations in the Bay Area before a permanent state capital was established in Sacramento. A major earthquake leveled the city of San Francisco and environs in 1906, but the region quickly rebuilt in time to host the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. During World War II, the Bay Area played a major role in America’s war effort in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, with San Francisco’s Fort Mason acting as a primary embarkation point for American forces. In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations, and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers. Since then, the Bay Area has experienced numerous political, cultural and artistic movements, developing unique local genres in music and art and establishing itself as a hotbed of progressive politics. Economically, the post-war Bay Area saw huge growth in the financial and technology industries, creating a vibrant and diverse economy with a gross domestic product of over $700 billion, and home to the third highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States (as of 2018).[8][9]
San Mateo-Hayward Bridge
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The San Mateo–Hayward Bridge (commonly called the San Mateo Bridge) is a bridge crossing the American state of California’s San Francisco Bay, linking the San Francisco Peninsula with the East Bay. The bridge’s western end is in Foster City, a suburb on the eastern edge of San Mateo. The eastern end of the bridge is in Hayward. It is the longest bridge in California and the 25th longest in the world by length. The bridge is owned by the state of California, and is maintained by California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the state highway agency. Further oversight is provided by the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA).
The bridge is part of State Route 92 (SR 92), whose western terminus is at the city of Half Moon Bay on the Pacific coast. It links Interstate 880 (I-880) in the East Bay with U.S. Route 101 (US 101) on the peninsula. It is roughly parallel to, and lies between, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Dumbarton Bridge.