Port of San Francisco
semi-independent organization
The Port of San Francisco is a semi-independent organization that oversees the port facilities at San Francisco, California, United States. It is run by a five-member commission, appointed by the mayor subject to confirmation by a majority of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Port is responsible for managing the larger waterfront area that extends from the anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge, along the Marina district, all the way around the north and east shores of the city of San Francisco including Fisherman's Wharf and the Embarcadero, and southward to the city line just beyond Candlestick Point. In 1969, the State of California, via the California State Lands Commission for the state-operated San Francisco Port Authority (est. 1957), transferred its responsibilities for the Harbor of San Francisco waterfront to the City and County of San Francisco/San Francisco Harbor Commission through the 1968 Burton Act AB2649. All eligible state port authority employees had the option to become employees of the City and County of San Francisco to maintain consistent operation of the port of San Francisco.
The port of San Francisco lies on the western edge of the San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate. It has been called one of the three great natural harbors in the world, but it took two long centuries for navigators from Spain and England to find the anchorage originally called Yerba Buena: a port, as was said in its early days, in which all the fleets of the world could find anchorage.
The port area under the commission's control comprises nearly eight miles of waterfront lands, commercial real estate and maritime piers from Hyde Street on the north to India Basin in the southeast. The list of landmarks under port control include Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, the Ferry Building, Oracle Park (formerly AT&T Park, SBC Park and Pacific Bell Park), located next to China Basin and Pier 70 at Potrero Point.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Port of San Francisco” as semi-independent organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as semi-independent organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3398575. VIAF identifies the subject as 126869560. The Library of Congress control number is n2003122526. Authority coordinates are 37.797, -122.395. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1957 and 1968.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Port of San Francisco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.