Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire

Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire

Photo: Roman SUZUKI, CC BY 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.

Nob Hill was too steep for horses until 1873, when Andrew Hallidie ran the first cable car up Clay Street. Suddenly the summit was easy to reach, and the railroad barons of the Central Pacific, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker and Collis Huntington, along with silver king James Flood, crowned it with mansions. The name came from nob, short for nabob, slang for a rich and powerful man.

At 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, an earthquake shook the city, and broken gas lines and overturned stoves started fires that burned for three days. With the water mains broken, the flames swept over Nob Hill and gutted every mansion; only the stone walls of the Flood house and the shell of the nearly finished Fairmont Hotel survived. Hotels, clubs and a cathedral rose in their place.

Ride the California Street cable car to the top. The mini tour ends on Russian Hill and takes about 90 minutes.

Getting here: From Ghirardelli Square, ride the Powell-Hyde cable car up to California Street, then walk two blocks east along California to Huntington Park.

Did you know?: Since 1964 the cable cars have been a National Historic Landmark, one of the few landmarks that move.

Photo op: Stand at California and Powell Streets and wait for a cable car to crest the hill with the Bay Bridge framed at the bottom of California Street.

More on Wikipedia: Nob Hill, San Francisco · San Francisco cable car system · 1906 San Francisco earthquake · Andrew Smith Hallidie

Stops on this tour

  1. Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
  2. Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
  3. Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
  4. North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
  5. Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
  6. Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
  7. The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
  8. Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
  9. Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
  10. Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
  11. The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
  12. The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
  13. Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
  14. South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom