San Francisco and Thereabout
 by Charles Keeler
The California Promotion Committee of San Francisco, Publisher, 1902

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Preface

         There is a real need at the present day of a book on San Francisco which shall be simple and direct, giving a brief history of the city's romantic past and a just description of its present life, with the picturesque setting of bay and hills.  It is needed not merely to introduce people at a distance to the American metropolis of the Pacific, but also that the younger generation of native sons and daughters may not forget the exciting scenes which have been enacted here, and that they may be reminded of the enlarged life in which they are called to participate.  In undertaking these frief essays I have tried to give a true picture of the city so far as the limited scope of the book permitted.

        In writing the histoical chapters, condensed to a few telling episodes of the stirring life of a century and a quarter, I have consulted the voluminous Annals of San Francisco by Soule, Gihon and Nisbet, Theodore H. Hittel's History of California, John S. Hittell's History of San Francisco, Lights and Shades in San Francisco by B.E. Lloyd, Bayard Taylor's El Dorado, Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and many other books and pamphlets.  The descriptive chapters are chiefly the result of personal observation during the past fifteen years, supplemented by such pamphlets as the Reports of the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco and other papers and articles bearing on the subjects discussed.  If this little book succeeds in stimulating a few residents to real more deeply of the city's past, and to continue with increasing zeal the work of its future upbuilding, or if it awakens in some of our Eastern Friends the migratory impulse which impels them to follow Horace Greeley's advice to go West, it will have accomplished its mission.

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