San Francisco the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. It then became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning
Transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area service, three international airports, and an extensive network of roads, tunnels, and bike paths. A 2011 Brookings Institution study ranked the San Francisco MSA and the San Jose MSA sixteenth and second, respectively, on transit coverage to job access. Another nationwide study, conducted by the University of Minnesota in 2014, ranked the San Francisco MSA second and San Jose MSA tenth. Despite this, the San Francisco Bay Area remains the second most traffic-congested region in the country with a declining per capita use of public transit. In 2013, the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan statistical area (San Francisco MSA) had the second