San Francisco 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.

I continue to explore San Francisco

using one of the city's many transport systems.

These streetcars, not to be confused with the more famous cable cars,

represent a moving museum of vintage vehicles.

They've been acquired from far-off places, from Philadelphia,

Minneapolis, Hamburg, and Milan.

This one has signs written in Italian.

They all seem at home here now, in a city whose transport is as diverse

and exotic as its population.

My route has taken me over the Sierra Nevada Mountains,

via the wineries of the Napa Valley

to today's destination, San Francisco.

From here, I'll travel inland to the majestic natural beauty of Yosemite

National Park. I'll return to the Pacific coast, and head south,

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 begin in San Francisco's famous Chinatown.

I'll explore the city, before taking in the ocean view at Land's End,

returning to finish on the calmer waters in San Francisco Bay.

Along the way, I'm branded with misfortune by a fortune cookie...

Argh! My hands are burning! Ow! Ow!

..I learn of an extraordinary 19th century 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!

Appleton's tells me that there are about 30,000 Chinese

in San Francisco.

In the Chinese quarter, they hold undisputed possession of several

blocks, and the houses are crammed from sub-cellar to attic.

Today Chinatown is a major tourist attraction,

and a culinary hub,

but I get the impression that in Appleton's day,

even the Chinese who had built the Transcontinental Railroad

were not treated well.

Chinatown is located between the mansions of Nob Hill and the

financial district, and is the oldest Chinatown in North America,

dating back to the mid-19th century.

I've arranged to meet Sue Lee,

of the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Sue, here we are in the centre of Chinatown, and yet

this plaque tells us that the first American flag in San Francisco

was raised here. Tell me about that.

Well, in 1846, the US wanted California as a state,

so John Montgomery of the USS Portsmouth planted the American flag

here in July 1846 to assert US authority in this territory.

When were the Chinese first attracted to San Francisco

-in numbers?

-Large numbers of Chinese began to come to California when

they heard about the Gold Rush.

And so the Chinese population exploded in 1851.

So did they immediately settle in this area?

This was the part of San Francisco that was closest to where the ships

landed and so, as the Chinese came off the ships, they would

come up to Portsmouth Square and they would find lodging around

the square. So this is where Chinatown began.

Further waves of Chinese were attracted to build

the Transcontinental Railroad, is that right?

The Chinese were recruited to come to build the Central Pacific

Railroad, which is the western portion of the Transcontinental.

And 12,000-15,000 Chinese worked on that railroad.

And without the Chinese, it wouldn't have been completed in record time.

Chinese labourers did the dangerous work of blasting through

the treacherous terrain of the High Sierra Mountains.

Receiving lower wages than their white counterparts,

they also had to pay for food, accommodation and tools -

things the white workers were given free.

So once the Chinese have built the railroads,

-how they treated by the Americans?

-They were treated very poorly.

They were discriminated against.

-Why?

-You know, Chinese have always been seen as perpetual foreigners.

They dressed differently, they spoke a different language.

And then in 1882, the US Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act,

which specifically banned the immigration of Chinese labourers.

And how long was that on the statute book?

The Chinese Exclusion Act lasted 61 years,

and would not be repealed until 1943.

Which is quite shocking.

In the 19th century, white labour feared the Chinese,

partly because they worked so hard.

And here, in every nook and cranny, there is a business.

The Chinese community is so entrepreneurial.

Some making cookies. And some, I dare say, making fortunes.

In business since 1962, the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company

has foretold millions of fortunes.

I'm intrigued to learn mine.

-Hello, Kevin. I'm Michael.

-Hey, how are you?

Very nice to see you. So, you're making huge numbers

-of fortune cookies.

-Yeah, 15,000 per day.

-15,000!

-Hand-folded.

-Do they have to be hand-folded?

Hand-fold, we are the old school, original.

-Do you want to see your fortune of the day?

-Yes, I'd love to.

What does it say?

It says...

Your colourful character will take you far!

-Colourful!

-Yes, nice colour.

Where does the fortune cookie come from?

-San Francisco creation.

-Really? Not from China, then?

-No such thing.

-If you ask for a fortune cookie in China,

they will look at you, like... What are you talking about?

-Is it easy to fold them?

-Oh, yeah, for me it's easy.

-Do you want to try? Do you want to go on?

-Sure, I'd like to.

Thank you very much.

Now, how do I start? Take up the fortune.

The fortune and put it in the middle and fold it down.

OK, that doesn't look too difficult.

Wow, it's hot!

-Like that?

-OK, fold.

-Oh, you've got to do it quickly because it's...

Argh! My hands are burning!

Ow, ow!

Four second, if you can't get it done, it goes to the waste can.

Ah, ah, ah! Ouch!

This is absolutely impossible because they are just so hot.

You can't hold on to them for long enough to complete the job.

OK, just one more go.

Fold!

-What are you making, wonton?! Let me show you.

-All right.

-OK.

Kevin, you are incredibly fast, but you must have asbestos fingers.

-No more feelings. Numb.

-Your thumbs are numb, are they?

-No more.

-Yes, I can imagine.

And the reason why the lady wears the gloves, those are silk gloves.

Gloves of silk. You cannot use rubber because they will melt.

You didn't offer me any silk gloves, I notice!

Because I thought you were a tough man, so you've got it!

Well, now you know the truth! I'll let you get on with your work.

-Thank you very much. Colourful.

-Colourful, that's me.

As well as being an important area of commerce,

Chinatown is also a distinctive community,

where language, culture and traditions are preserved.

-Hello.

-Yes?

-Sorry to interrupt you.

Are you part of this school here?

Oh, yes. We are teaching the Chinese martial art.

The more they do it like that, so they get used.

Something comes up and they automatically move forward.

So, for instance, if I try to attack you, what's your...?

-Oh! Right!

-I just go ahead, just like that.

-OK.

-That's very effective.

You bring your hand up, OK, like this, OK?

Just don't think of anything.

If you stay there, lay there, you will feel heavier.

And when you feel heavier, your mind says, no, I've got to keep it up,

keep it up. That means your body is strong,

you get stronger, see? You get stronger, you see.

-That's it. Simple.

-First lesson, first lesson.

You're learning so fast!

-Thank you so much!

-Enjoy.

-Thank you.

Leaving Chinatown,

I'm guided by a reference in my Appleton's to the Olympic Club,

which is just a few blocks away.

Established in 1860,

it's one of the oldest private athletic clubs in America.

Early members include writer Mark Twain and Transcontinental Railroad

tycoons Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford.

There are facilities for many sports,

including one I've never played before.

Handball. I'm meeting one of the sport's top players, Emmett Peixot.

Nice shot.

-Emmett.

-Yeah.

-Hello.

-How's it going?

-I'm Michael.

Nice to see you, Michael.

I hadn't anticipated finding handball in San Francisco.

Who brought it to the city?

It was the Irish that actually brought handball to the city, around

1850 or so, and from there on out,

it started to become more and more popular.

How far back does the game go, do you know?

The earliest mention is in Greek poetry back BC.

So it's a very old sport. There's definitely a lot of public

mentions of the sport in the 1400s and 1500s in the UK.

In principle, each player is meant to hit the ball in turn, is that right?

That's correct, yeah. So one player hits, the next person hits,

very much like tennis, a similar strategy to tennis as well.

Right. I'm rather long in the tooth myself, I'm well into my 60s,

but I'm slightly encouraged cos I see some of your players here, well,

are probably even a little bit older than I am.

That's right. We have a list of players that are well over 80.

Absolutely amazing.

The secret to eternal youth! I need to investigate.

Hi, guys.

-May I interrupt a moment?

-Sure.

So how long have you been playing handball?

Erm, 70 years.

-Seven zero years I've played in..

-70 years!

I played in boarding school in Sydney, the Christian Brothers,

-they had a court there from Ireland.

-I've just been doing the arithmetic.

You've been playing 70 years, you started when you were a teenager,

you are in your mid-80s?

-84!

-What's the great attraction of this sport?

-Why do you go on and on with this?

-Number one is conditioning,

it keeps you going and keeps your mind going, as well as your body.

And the number two is camaraderie. Because no matter what you do,

they'll never let you be proud of it. They'll just insult you every time!

And that mentally is very refreshing.

Inspired by these guys, I'm going to take on Emmett.

Emmett has been singles champion one, two, three,

four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12...

12 times. I don't think the result of this match is in doubt.

-So here I am, Emmett.

-How's it going?

Now, do you have any general words of advice for me?

Yes, the most important thing to remember is never take your eye off the ball.

Even when I'm hitting the ball, never take your eye off the ball.

-The second most important thing to remember is move your feet as much as you can.

-Good to go!

-OK, so how do we start this?

-You're going to swing low to high.

So you're going to get a little lower with your knees, just like that. Now, watch that ball.

Your goal is to try and hit it right there in your hand, OK?

Drop, step, swing.

Wow! Nice shot.

There you go.

Yeah! And that's actually...

You won the point on that one. Here you go.

A serve must hit the front wall first,

after which players hit the ball in turn, without letting it bounce

more than once.

The first to score 21 points wins the game.

Good, move those feet. That's perfect. Nice shot.

You!

Nice.

Excellent, that's a perfect pass.

-Nice shot.

-Phew, I'm going to have a cardiac arrest.

I'll leave my heart in San Francisco!

I'm ending my day in Nob Hill,

a neighbourhood that in the 19th century became a favoured spot

for rich tycoons, such as Mark Hopkins,

a financier of the Central Pacific Railroad.

I'm getting a sundowner at the panoramic top floor bar

of his eponymous hotel.

Mark Hopkins built an extraordinary Gothic mansion,

here at the top of Nob Hill. It was made entirely of redwood,

and not surprisingly, it perished in the earthquake and fire of 1906.

But this hotel was built in its place,

and it bears the name of Mark Hopkins.

And this bar is one of the great destinations in San Francisco.

And it's called Top Of The Mark. And top of the evening to you.

This morning I'm making my way out of town to an area

known in the 19th century as the Outside Lands.

Appleton's urges me to visit the beautiful park surrounding

the residence of Adolph Sutro, called Sutro Heights.

To the right of the Cliff House are public baths, established by

Adolph Sutro and water is drawn direct from the ocean.

But in this beautiful place, an ugly incident occurred.

And as so often in American history, it had to do with race.

I'm travelling to the western side of the peninsular on which

San Francisco sits, to a place known as Land's End.

Overlooking the Pacific Ocean,

it's the sight referred to in my Appleton's,

but what he described is no longer there.

I'm meeting National Parks Ranger Rick Penn.

What an amazingly beautiful spot.

Rick, we're looking down on what I suppose are the ruins

of the great Sutro Baths. What sort of facilities were there here?

Sutro was a hydraulic engineer,

and he could manipulate water like no-one.

That's how he made his millions of dollars, not so much as a gold

miner, but someone who provided the equipment for other people to get

gold or silver out of the ground.

He built four different pools, which were flooded by the ocean.

And one of the quotes in the San Francisco Examiner from 1897 said,

"Not since the glory days of Rome have there been baths like these."

As well as the swimming pools, the vast complex housed restaurants,

a museum, and viewing platforms to accommodate thousands of people.

The baths were open to the public,

but what was meant by "the public" in the 1890s?

Even though the newspaper article said that this was a gift to all

of San Francisco, I don't think the Chinese-Americans got the memo

on that, or the African-Americans, or the Mexicans,

because people of colour could come to the baths and they could go

and have a drink or a Sarsaparilla and view the sights,

but when it came to getting a swimsuit and going to swim,

they were denied that. And because of that denial,

a small fledgling group in San Francisco of African-Americans sued

-Adolph Sutro.

-Tell me about this discrimination case, then.

Oh, the John Harris versus Adolph Sutro case was a big deal in 1897.

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 at the Sutro Baths.

Across the United States,

segregation had become the law of the land.

But in 1897,

the relatively freethinking state of California passed

the Dibble Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination

in restaurants, bathhouses, public transport and movie theatres.

It was this legislation that formed the basis of the John Harris' case.

What was the incident that led to the case?

John Harris had come to Sutro Baths with a couple of friends.

They were white Americans. And they wanted to go and swim in the baths.

So they paid for their ticket, and when they went to get their bathing suit,

the attendant would give the bathing suit to the two Irish-Americans,

but not to John Harris. And they refused him.

Harris was embarrassed and he left and went back to his organisation,

and they asked him to go back again on July 4th,

a very patriotic day in American history.

He did go, he got rebuffed again, and then they decided they were

going to sue the Adolph Sutro organisation

-and Sutro Baths for 10,000.

-What was the result of the trial?

The jury heard the evidence, but the jury even asked the judge,

"Do we have to follow the law?"

And the judge said, "Of course you have to follow the law!"

And so they said, we hold for the plaintiff, he was discriminated against.

Now, when it came to the actual money,

the jury went back to the judge and said, "How little can we give him?"

And the judge says, "Well, according to the law,

"no less than 50 per incident."

So they gave him 100, not the 10,000.

But a precedent had been set, and this story, I think,

is more than just a legacy of beautiful ruins,

but something that came out of the ruins that is alive today

and with us today.

California's somewhat progressive civil rights laws would,

almost 70 years later, inform the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act,

which is still on the statute books today.

When San Francisco exploded as a city

on the back of the 1849 Gold Rush,

it had to establish civil institutions rapidly.

The San Francisco Police Department was founded in the same year.

And in 1864, a Marine Division was added.

150 years later, policing has continued to adapt.

I've arranged a rendezvous with Sergeant Daniel Laval.

Dan, what is your police boat doing along there by the walls?

So right now they're running along the pier face and they're conducting

a sonar sweep. And this particular sonar is a three-dimensional sonar.

-Well, they're coming ashore now. Shall we look at what they've captured?

-Absolutely.

-Hello, guys.

-Hello.

-How you doing?

This is Officer Mopar, Officer Mathe.

-Nice to meet you.

-Good to see you both.

-What are you looking for?

-If we have any of our Navy ships coming into

town, like we'll be having Fleet Week coming up soon,

what we'll do is we'll do a sweep of the pier, and we

keep records of what they looked like last year to what they look

like this year. And if we see any thing that's different or looks out

of place, then we can forward that over to our bomb techs, and then they'll take a look at it.

And if they determine they need to go underwater to take a look at it,

they will. It just gives you an amazing,

it's almost a picture-quality image of what's going on down there.

I'm astonished by how good these images are.

Oh, it's an unbelievable tool that can help keep the port safe.

Good work.

It's not just the harbour that they inspect.

They're charged with protecting the whole bay,

which they've been patrolling since the 1860s.

I'm taking to the water with Officer Stephen Hogan to see how this

strategically important port has been defended over the years.

Steve, when you get out on the water like this and you see the bay,

you begin to realise why the San Francisco Police has a Marine Division.

It must be a pretty important part of what you do.

Well, we have certain things, whether it's drug interdiction,

and just generally regulating commerce in the area.

One of our main missions is search and rescue, of course.

This must have been an area heavily fortified over the centuries.

From the beginning of the settlement,

this has always been a focal point for any kind of coastal defence or

defence of San Francisco Bay. Especially in the 1850s.

That's when most of the major fortifications were built in this area.

And the fort that we see here under the Golden Gate Bridge, what's that?

-That's Fort Point, and that was built and finished in the early 1860s.

-During the Civil War,

I suppose there was some perceived threat to San Francisco?

Definitely. The Confederacy could potentially raid any gold

-deposits here.

-The gold, of course, was valuable to San Francisco,

but also essential to the Union victory.

Definitely. This is kind of a bank or reserve for the Union Army.

Yes, so there's quite a lot to defend.

Definitely. It's always been a very wealthy port here.

All these batteries, all these gun emplacements.

But I suppose they were never fired in anger, were they?

No, nobody ever fired a shot here in anger, thankfully.

-But the motto was, be prepared.

-It's always be prepared.

It still is be prepared today.

And now we pass under this amazingly iconic bridge,

with its familiar rust red colour, built, what, in the 1930s, was it?

Yes, it was completed actually in 1937.

And that colour is known as International Orange.

I'm dressed for the occasion!

San Francisco began as a cosmopolitan melting pot,

and is today famously respectful of diversity.

But it's been a hilly journey. California joined the USA

as an anti-slavery state, not so much because it was liberal,

but because white workers feared being undercut by free labour.

The John Harris case was about segregation in this city,

and the law expressly discriminated against Chinese people.

Even San Francisco, the City of Love,

has been unable to avoid the racism which has poisoned the United States

since their foundation.

Next time, foundations are rocked...

The earthquake has begun.

Wow!

An incredibly sharp jolt that time.

..I try not to lose my footing...

-You scared of heights?

-Yes!

Does the rope make it all the way to the ground?

I don't know that!

..and end up in a flat spin.

Turning this two-tonne beast is hard work!