Editing Golden Gate (section)

== History ==
[[File:The Golden Gate, from Telegraph Hill, San Francisco LACMA M.91.359.75.jpg|thumb|The Golden Gate photographed from [[Telegraph Hill, San Francisco|Telegraph Hill]] by [[Carleton Watkins]] {{circa}}&nbsp;1868]]

Before Europeans arrived in the 18th century, the area around the strait and the bay was inhabited by [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]{{snd}} the [[Ohlone]] people to the south and [[Coast Miwok]] to the north. Descendants of both tribes remain in the area.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Ohlone are building a new homeland in the East Bay, 1 half-acre at a time |url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/The-Ohlone-are-building-a-new-homeland-in-the-15866001.php |publisher=San Francisco Chronicle |access-date=15 November 2022 |language=en-us}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Another Perspective: Coast Miwok elder wants his Petaluma heritage to be respected |date=August 17, 2022 |url=https://www.petaluma360.com/article/entertainment/another-perspective-coast-miwok-elder-wants-his-petaluma-heritage-to-be-re |publisher=Argus-Courier |access-date=15 November 2022 |language=en-us}}</ref>

The opening to the strait was surprisingly elusive for early European explorers, presumably due to persistent summer fog. The strait is not recorded in the voyages of [[Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo]] nor [[Francis Drake]], both of whom may have explored the nearby coast in the 16th century in search of the fabled [[Northwest Passage]].{{citation needed|date = September 2019}} The strait is also unrecorded in observations by [[Spanish Empire|Spanish]] [[galleon]]s on the [[Manila-Acapulco Galleon|Manila-Acapulco run]] from the [[Philippines]] that laid up in nearby [[Drakes Bay]] to the north. These rarely passed east of the [[Farallon Islands]] ({{convert|27|mi}} west of the Golden Gate), for fear of the possibility of rocks between the islands and the mainland.{{citation needed|date = September 2019}}

The first recorded observation of the strait occurred nearly two hundred years later than the earliest European explorations of the coast. In 1769, Sgt [[José Francisco Ortega]], the leader of a scouting party sent north along the [[San Francisco Peninsula]] by Don [[Gaspar de Portolá]] from their expedition encampment in San Pedro Valley to locate the [[Point Reyes]] headlands, reported back to Portolá that he could not reach the location because of the existence of the strait.<ref>Eldredge, Zoeth S. ''The beginnings of San Francisco''. San Francisco: Zoeth S. Eldredge, 1912, 31–32.</ref> On August&nbsp;5, 1775 [[Juan de Ayala]] and the crew of his ship ''San Carlos'' became the first Europeans known to have passed through the strait, anchoring in a cove behind [[Angel Island, California|Angel Island]], the cove now named in Ayala's honor. Until the 1840s, the strait was called the "Boca del Puerto de San Francisco" ("Mouth of the Port of San Francisco"). On July&nbsp;1, 1846, before the discovery of [[gold]] in [[California]], the entrance acquired a new name. In his memoirs, [[John C.&nbsp;Frémont]] wrote: "To this Gate I gave the name of 'Chrysopylae', or 'Golden Gate'; for the same reasons that the harbor of [[Byzantium]] was called Chrysoceras, or [[Golden Horn]]."<ref>Gudde, Erwin G. ''California Place Names'' (2004) University of California Press, London, England. {{ISBN|0-520-24217-3}}.</ref> He went on to comment that the strait was "a golden gate to trade with the Orient".<ref name="GGB name">{{cite web |title=What is a Name — The Golden Gate? |url=http://goldengatebridge.org/research/Name.php |website=Golden Gate Bridge |publisher=Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District |access-date=29 November 2017 |language=en}}</ref>