San Francisco to Sausalito, California Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of North America

with my faithful Appleton's guide.

Published in the late 19th century,

it will direct me to everything that's novel, beautiful,

memorable and curious

-in the United States. ALL:

-Yee-ha!

As I travel through this vast continent, I'll discover gold

and silver, movies and microchips, oil and oranges,

and learn how America's most famous railroad

conquered the wild landscapes of the West.

My rail journey through California brings me to the Pacific coast.

Before the railroads conquered the Sierra Nevada to join the Atlantic

and Pacific Oceans overland, the Pacific ports were the link

between the American far west and the rest of the world.

The Gold Rush overnight converted the old Spanish mission

at San Francisco into a major city, wide open to immigration,

with a diversity of population that continues to this day.

My route has taken me over the Sierra Nevada Mountains,

via the vineyards

of the Napa Valley to today's destination, San Francisco.

From here, I'll travel inland to the majestic natural surrounds

of Yosemite National Park.

I'll then make my way along the Pacific coast, visiting Monterey

and San Luis Obispo en route to the City of Angels,

Los Angeles. My final destination, just north of the Mexican border,

will be San Diego.

Today, I'm in the city of San Francisco, taking in

the neighbourhoods of Nob Hill, Presidio, and Fisherman's Wharf.

I'll ride a Love Bus from Haight Ashbury to the Castro,

sailing to a close in San Francisco Bay.

Along the way, I enjoy the 19th-century transport still in use

today. Top ten things for the tourist to do in San Francisco -

number one, ride the cable car.

I learn of a 19th-century ship-builder whose innovations

-made waves...

-He built 228 ships in a 40-year period.

Yeah, he built more ships in that period than anybody in the United States.

..and discover some unexpected early legislation.

You had the anti-crossdressing law passed in San Francisco in 1863.

Anti-crossdressing legislation in 1863, I had no idea!

San Francisco sits on a peninsular,

with the Pacific Ocean to its west and a huge,

deep bay to its north and east,

which is spanned by both the Oakland Bay Bridge

and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

I've been making rail journeys in North America now for three years

and this is a special moment,

my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean.

Imagine those people arriving from the east,

descending from the first trains of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Here was the achievement of the United States' manifest destiny

to control the continent from ocean to ocean.

It had taken a Mexican war, Indian wars, Indian massacres.

With all its rights and wrongs, the American epic was complete.

San Francisco was established almost overnight as a result

of the Californian Gold Rush, which began in 1848.

Today, it's a thriving, modern city.

A hub for global tech companies, and an important financial centre.

San Francisco, says Appleton's,

is the chief city of California and the commercial metropolis

of the Pacific. Its history is interesting, on account of the rapid

growth of the place. In 1848, the population reached 1,000.

In 1890, the census showed a population of 299,000.

I find the city beautiful, exhilarating, zany, and outrageous.

It's also exceptionally hilly, with over 40 peaks,

some reaching heights of nearly 1,000 feet.

They are the city's defining feature.

And one of its challenges.

And in the late 19th century,

a form of transport was invented to conquer them.

"Cable cars," says Appleton's,

"have been widely extended during the last few years.

"They afford the best means of seeing the city,

"as one may ride in the open air and obtain as good a view

"as from an open carriage."

And the cables actually run here, under the street.

And that cable, you can hear it whirring, is in continuous movement.

And the cable cars grip it when they want to move.

The cable car is an icon of the city.

And San Francisco has the last

manually-operated street cable car system in the world.

I'm catching a ride to my first stop, Nob Hill.

Top ten things for the tourist to do in San Francisco -

number one, ride the cable car.

OK, guys, if you look on my right side, that's the Freeman Hotel.

Cable Car Museum, two blocks down. This is called Nob Hill.

Thank you very much.

All right, guys, have a good day, enjoy yourself.

-Bye-bye, now.

-Yes, sir.

Of the 23 lines established between 1873 and 1890, three remain.

And their cables are controlled from a single powerhouse.

It's an astonishing feat of engineering,

that's managed by Ed Cobean.

-Hello, Ed.

-Michael, how are you?

We meet in an impressive place.

We've got about 4.5 to six miles of cable traversing on three different

routes, but on four different cable lines.

And how old is the system? Which year did it open?

The system is 144 years old this week, built in 1873.

Why was it thought necessary to have this very distinctive San Francisco

-system?

-There needed to be a way of public transportation up the hills.

Back in the late 1800s, what you had was horse-drawn

carriages that couldn't traverse the cobble stone streets

when it was raining without them sliding back.

So you've had cable cars in San Francisco

for about a century and a half.

How would you describe their contribution to the city?

I think it is what makes San Francisco.

It's the only moving national historic monument in the world.

Everything that we have here exists nowhere else.

So everybody comes to San Francisco

and wants to see and ride the cable cars.

I'm making my way down to an area known as Fisherman's Wharf,

which, in the 19th century, was a hub for immigrant fishermen,

who came to service the Gold Rush population.

Some went on to set up eateries.

And I'm taking my lunch at a family-run restaurant

that claims to be the oldest in San Francisco.

-Marella.

-Michael.

-Lovely to see you.

-Thanks for joining us.

Alioto's must be quite a long-established restaurant, is it?

-It is.

-A family concern?

-It is family-owned.

My great-grandmother started it with her family,

it's kind of been passed on through the generations,

-and I'm the fourth generation.

-And since you are the

great-granddaughter of the person who founded it,

you're the right person to ask - what should I eat today?

Cioppino, of course. It is our tradition.

It is a Dungeness crab stew, and there's a little bit

of tomato sauce, mussels, clams, shrimp, whitefish...

I'm sold! I'll have that please, Marella.

-You got it.

-Thank you.

All right, Michael.

Oh, that's amazing, Marella. So, this will be the Dungeness crab.

It's amazing. The sweetest meat you will taste.

-Oh, what's this?

-A little bit of a bib to protect your shirt.

-Let me do that for you.

-This could get messy!

It will! And worth it.

Thank you very much. A great recommendation, Marella.

-Enjoy, Michael.

-I will.

As restaurants and businesses sprang up to serve the needs

of the Gold Rush population, industries new to the West boomed.

And printing was one of them.

Today, San Francisco is the main centre for fine printing

and bookmaking in the United States.

I've come to the Presidio neighbourhood to visit a leading publisher, Arion Press,

where I'm meeting Gary Kurtz of the California State Library.

Gary, at the time of the Gold Rush, when newspapers and so on would have

to come from the East around Cape Horn to California,

how did San Francisco respond to the lack of printing material here?

Well, there were many,

many people who came to California who were printers.

They quickly found out that going up and digging for gold was not easy

work, and they found that they could make a living as a printer.

What is it that you have here?

OK, what we have here is a unique form of communication developed

in California called the pictorial letter sheet.

And all of these miners were thousands of miles from home,

and they wanted to tell their mothers and daughters and their

wives how they were doing, and some people have speculated that this

was a precursor of the picture postcard.

Printing became a major industry, as new San Franciscans demanded

newspapers, books, posters and menus.

Still using processes from that period,

Arion is one of the last remaining printers still to cast

its own typeface characters.

This is the most fascinating corridor.

These brown paper parcels are packages of fonts, which have been

manufactured here for sale.

Capital letters, lower-case letters, italics.

And here, drawers - rows and rows of drawers.

Inside, all those letters that the compositors can put together.

I'm meeting publisher Andrew Hoyem,

who sets complete works of literature one letter at a time.

Hello, Andrew. I'm Michael.

-Greetings, Michael.

-Good to see you, sir.

-What is it you're setting here?

-It's called The Bridge.

It's a great modernist poem by Hart Crane.

So, the line I've just been setting says,

"The Bridge is the 110th publication of the Arion Press."

-And you've just read that to me...

-Upside down and mirror image.

So, I know The Bridge pretty well by now!

But may I ask you, why would you want to use the printing technology

of a previous century today?

You get results you can't obtain any other way.

Are those results that a layman could spot,

-or is this a matter for experts?

-Even you!

You could. You will see not only the inked image,

but also something of the ever so slight indentation.

OK, I'm beginning to get the idea.

Once the type is set, a test copy is made, known as a proof press.

I think you've got a tiny...

-We do, good eye.

-..a tiny imperfection here.

We can clean that up and take another proof.

It looks like probably it's just some...rag.

Well, now, at least to my untrained eye, it does appear to be perfect.

And, as Andrew implied, it makes a little indentation on the paper.

I must say, I love this.

I love this. What superb craftsmanship.

As my entire journey has been inspired by my own 19th-century

book, I'm keen to get an expert opinion of my beloved Appleton's.

This book was almost certainly set entirely by hand.

Are you impressed by my Appleton's guide?

I'm impressed at the amount of work that went into it.

I would not say it was one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen

in my life!

-But it's practical.

-And it's served me very well, let me tell you.

-Yes, I'll bet.

San Francisco has a long history of displaying liberal attitudes

and setting its own rules.

And this morning, I'm making my way to the neighbourhood at the heart

of this alternative spirit - Haight Ashbury.

-Sir, hello. What are you selling here?

-All sorts of stuff.

I've got Mexican fire opal, these emeralds are from Muzo, Colombia.

Chinese jade. A bunch of different things.

You certainly know your stuff. What do your fingers say?

Slow down! It's the best words of advice I never live by!

-All right.

-Really nice to talk to you.

-Take it easy.

-Bye-bye.

This is a fantastically weird place.

It was in San Francisco

where the hippie movement of the 1960s took off.

And I'm meeting guide Alan Graves and taking a ride in his vintage

-Love Bus.

-Michael, come right in. Good to see you. Welcome aboard.

-Thank you so much. What a wagon!

-Yes!

All right, here we go, lean forward and we might make it up the hill!

-Is this male or female, this van?

-American Pie's female.

-Female... Come on, girl! Come on, girl!

-Here we go!

-You can make it!

-We're full steam ahead going out here.

-You certainly are.

-Woo-hoo!

-We made it!

-Well done, American Pie.

I'm led to believe that San Francisco's liberal roots

began long before the 1960s.

In 1849, this region was inundated with prospectors arriving in pursuit

of gold, known as the '49ers.

Those days when the '49ers were coming here,

they were coming from all over the world.

And it created what San Francisco is today, a melting pot of people.

What kind of stuff goes down?

-What's tolerated?

-Well, that's a very interesting question.

I mean, about 90% of them were males that came here to San Francisco.

There was too many males, not enough women,

and it was a place where people were a little bit more free-spirited,

if you will. There was tolerance about everything.

That broad-minded culture has remained a feature of San Franciscan

society, and over 100 years later, it provided fertile ground

for the free love phenomenon of the 1960s.

1967, the Summer of Love.

Why is it that the bra-burning women and the guys in their hippie wagons

-descended on San Francisco?

-You know, by that time, San Francisco

was a very well-established place, as a Bohemian place.

Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia,

Jimi Hendrix would come out here from time to time.

They got together here in the park and they started playing music and

they sort of said, "Hey, guys, maybe we should have a concert."

And that they did in 1967. They started out the Summer of Love

concert, and the word got spread wide throughout the United States.

Over 100,000 people showed up to the Haight Ashbury district to be part

of that movement that created, as we know it today, the hippie movement

that kind of changed, not just San Francisco,

but it actually changed the mentalities worldwide.

And here we are in the Castro district, our gayborhood.

When I was Defence Secretary, I did not foresee that, 20 years

later, I would be travelling in a hippie Love Bus

through the Castro gayborhood!

We'll stop right over here.

-Peace.

-Peace, mate, we'll see you around.

Bye-bye, now.

The Free Love movement spilled over from Haight Ashbury to the

neighbouring Castro district,

which, from the late 1960s, established itself as a proud,

gay-friendly area. In the Castro, rainbow flags everywhere,

even a rainbow pedestrian crossing.

The roots of this liberal,

sexually-diverse community can also be traced back to the 19th century.

I'm meeting Don Romesburg of the GLBT History Museum.

-Hello, Don. Hi. I'm Michael.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

So, here we are in the Castro. Tell me about the gay scene.

-How did it get going?

-That goes all the way back to,

like, the Gold Rush era.

You had miners in mostly same-sex communities who would have dances

together, and someone would take on the female role.

And they even had, like, these wooden skirts sometimes that the men

would wear. So, from the very beginning of the Gold Rush days,

there was some kind of what we would call a queer community here.

We also had very flamboyant drag and female impersonation in 19th-century

San Francisco. But then you also had the anti-crossdressing law passed in

San Francisco in 1863.

It wasn't repealed until 1974, I believe it was.

Anti-crossdressing legislation in 1863, I had no idea!

We're sitting here in Twin Peaks Tavern.

And this became a gay bar in the early 1970s.

It is thought to be the first gay bar in the world that had these big,

open glass windows.

And it's significant because it expresses the openness of the '70s

in San Francisco and in the Castro.

Before I leave the Castro, I've been invited to a, wait for it...

..Drag brunch, by Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,

a fundraising community group founded in 1979.

Hello there, Michael, it's so nice to meet you.

-May I ask you, is this your habit?

-Well, this is a bad habit!

But, yes, this is mine. I'm just a glamour girl,

I've got a lot of Vegas in me.

So, the Sisters, how do you raise money and what are you trying to do?

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence started here in San Francisco

in 1979, and it basically began as a sort of guerrilla theatre.

People just wanted to go out and shock some people.

The early Sisters were just doing it to have fun here in the Castro.

Shortly after that, HIV and AIDS started to ravage the community,

and the Sisters really found their purpose.

We developed a safer sex pamphlet called Playfair,

which we still use today,

and did the first fundraiser ever to raise money for people who were sick

-and dying with HIV and AIDS.

-Congratulations on your good work.

-Thank you very much.

-May the Sisters prosper.

-Thank you.

Welcome to Lips and Lashes, I am your hostess.

Are you guys ready for something a little drag, or what?

From the Castro, I made my way to the waterfront

to take a ferry across the bay to the city of Sausalito.

Appleton's tells me that steamers of the North Pacific Coast Railroad

Company carry their passengers towards Alcatraz and to Sausalito,

a popular bay-side resort famous for boating, bathing and fishing.

I'm going there in search of a face,

whose prowess launched several hundreds ships.

During the Gold Rush years of the 1800s, ships were in huge demand,

to transport large volumes of goods

and people in and out of the busy port.

I'm boarding an 82-foot schooner with veteran skipper Alan Olson

to find out about the most prolific shipbuilder of the time,

Matthew Turner.

And it's all hands on deck.

Hello, Kate. Are you ready to bobble the sail?

-I'm ready.

-All right.

-All the way.

-OK.

We're getting some rhythm here, Kate.

We can start pulling together.

-All right, one more good one.

-OK.

Are we done?

We're done. Tug's up.

Alan, tell me about this historic figure Matthew Turner.

Matthew Turner was a very important figure.

He came from Ohio during the Gold Rush.

And he was quite successful,

but he decided to take the money and invest in a ship.

And he went off into Alaska and he discovered the cod trade.

He wanted another ship,

but decided he'd have it designed and built the way he wanted it.

And from that, he just kept going.

He built 228 ships in a 40-year period.

Yeah, he built more ships in that period than anybody in the United

-States.

-These ships that Matthew Turner was building, what were the trades that they were involved in?

Almost everything, the lumber trade was huge because all the lumber up and down the coast,

that was the only way to get anything around. They were also doing the sugar trade in Hawaii.

They were going sometimes as quickly as nine days, 13 days,

they would turn around and go back and forth in less than a month.

Taking ideas from racing schooners,

Turner's designs narrowed the bow of the boat,

making it faster and more stable than other ships of the time,

and thus hugely popular.

For the last four years,

Alan has headed a project to build a boat

based on Turner's record-breaking ship, the Galilee.

Named the Matthew Turner, and almost complete,

it will be used as an educational sailing programme for children.

When you get out on a sailing ship, every move you make,

when you grab a line like that, if you don't do it right,

your shipmates and your ship is at stake.

So I think giving them that kind of responsibility is a very empowering

-thing.

-When do you think it will take to the seas?

Early summer. Our plan is to take the ship on the Pacific Cup

-from here to Hawaii.

-Wow!

-You'll look forward to that day.

-Oh, I'm looking forward to it,

a lot of us are. It's going to be a big day.

The United States, between the East Coast and the Mississippi,

was already a mature economy

and culture when San Francisco was still a village.

But this city's exponential population growth from 1848

was already well under way

before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed.

So, unlike the East, that was built on waves of European migration,

many of those coming into San Francisco were from Latin America

and from China, and whereas in the East, the settlement was supervised

by severe Protestant sects,

those arriving into lawless northern California made their own rules.

East is East, and West is West, and the twain have never fully met.

Next time, I'm branded with misfortune by a fortune cookie...

Argh! My hands are burning! Ow, ow!

I learn of an extraordinary civil rights case...

It was in all the newspapers,

that an African-American would have the audacity to sue one of the most

politically-connected, richest families in Northern California

-for discrimination.

-..and turn my hand to handball.

I'm going to have a cardiac arrest.

I'll leave my heart in San Francisco!