San Francisco: More Stories
Emperor Norton’s corner, Oliver Sipple, the great diamond hoax and the crew of USS Pampanito.
18 places
Bank of California and the Diamond Hoax
California's big money paid to dig for gems that had been pushed into anthills.
Crocker's Spite Fence
A railroad baron and an undertaker's family fought for more than twenty-five years over one small lot.
Fatty Arbuckle at the St. Francis
A jury cleared him and apologized, and six days later he was banned from film.
Hotaling Whiskey Warehouse
The fire took the great churches and left the whiskey, and the city wrote a rhyme about it.
International Hotel
Nine years of holding on, and it ended in six hours in the middle of the night.
Lotta's Fountain
A contract dispute put a famous soprano in the open air on Christmas Eve.
Old Mint
A refinery worker wrote down the moment they were told to give the building up.
Oliver Sipple at the St. Francis
A veteran lunged for a gun, and within days his private life was in the papers.
Palace Hotel and Sarah Althea Hill
A dispute over one sheet of paper ended with a former chief justice shot dead beside a Supreme Court justice.
Preparedness Day Bomb
The evidence against a condemned man fell apart, and he stayed in prison for twenty more years.
Rincon Annex Murals
A post office lobby went to Congress, over a red book, muscular Indians and a pair of mule ears.
Sentinel Building
A boss put his party's headquarters on the top floor, and the man who brought him down came to ask his pardon.
Sing Chong Building
A boy the government tried to keep out grew up to rebuild Chinatown with a pagoda on the roof.
Telegraph Hill Quarry Cliff
Two brothers took a hill apart under people's houses and went on after a judge told them to stop.
The March of 300 Women
The women a preacher was about to put out of work came to his church and asked him what he had in mind.
USS Pampanito
Three days after an attack, the crew came back and found prisoners from their own side in the water.
Where Emperor Norton Fell
A bankrupt declared himself ruler of the country, and for twenty years San Francisco did not argue.
Wong Kim Ark's Birthplace
One cook's five months on ships in the bay came up at the Supreme Court again in 2026.