Exhibition Tour of "San Francisco: City of the World"

Join us for a tour of "San Francisco: City of the World." As the exhibition is located post-security in Terminal 2, this is an opportunity to see the exhibition without a flight ticket. Visitors will be required to fill out a form and abide by TSA rules.

San Francisco, the ancestral, current, and future homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, was founded in 1776 as a presidio and mission during Spanish occupation. In 1848, gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada foothills; the following year, more than seven hundred ships arrived in San Francisco. The Gold Rush transformed the region into a bustling city of approximately twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Thousands of Chinese immigrants came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush, soon establishing the oldest and largest Chinatown in California. San Francisco flourished in the late nineteenth century. Andrew Smith Hallidie (1836–1900) tested the first cable car in 1873 on Clay Street and public service began in September that same year. By the turn of the twentieth century, San Francisco was known as the “Paris of the West,” until the 1906 earthquake and resulting fires leveled the city. The resilient metropolis quickly rebuilt, and during the early 1900s numerous San Francisco landmarks, such as Coit Tower (1933) and the Golden Gate Bridge (1937)—the most photographed bridge in the world—were built. In addition to its natural beauty and historical sites, San Francisco has long served as a meeting ground for diverse groups of people and countercultures, which are also explored throughout the exhibition.

SFO Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone—the original, present, and future inhabitants and stewards of the San Francisco Peninsula. Please join us in recognizing and honoring Ramaytush Ohlone ancestors, descendants, and all Indigenous communities who have inhabited the Bay Area for hundreds of generations.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

SFO Museum, Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum and Library, San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, United States