History of Excelsior, San Francisco
A brief history of Excelsior SF
Excelsior District is one of San Francisco’s neighborhoods. The neighborhood is located west of John McLaren Park, north of Geneva Avenue, along mission street, east of San Jose Avenue, and south of the interstate. The neighboring neighborhoods are Outer Mission, Crocker-Amazon, and Mission Terrace. If you need a towing service in Excelsior neighborhood, give us a call.
Demographics
During the early days, the District had people from Italy, Switzerland, and Ireland. But later on, in the 1970s to 1990s, the residents changed, and the majority of Latinos dominated the neighborhood. The same time refugees were arriving from Mexico. The Excelsior district had another community which lived there, the Filipino. However, for the past few decades, the residential has changed, and the Asians are taking over the neighborhood. As of today, the neighborhood is most ethnically known in San Francisco.
History
According to the books of city maps, Excelsior is believed to be part of the Rancho Rincon de las Sainas y Potrero Viejo. Later on, the former became southern San Francisco. The Southern SF pertained everything south, central, and eastern of mission district and street. For some couple of years, the Southern end of SF has seen some major developments, and some of the neighborhoods were named during this time. The neighborhoods were: Visitacion Valley, The Bay View District, Bernal Heights, Ingleside, and the Excelsior District.
As the development took a step further, the Excelsior District was subdivided into sub-neighborhoods which were later developed into real estate. The districts have streets named after countries capitals, and this was done by a man called Emmanuel Lewis with the help of his daughter, Jeannette. On the west part of the District, which is also known as Mission Terrace, the streets were mainly named after the Indians tribes. However, some names in the streets have changed due to the political influence, but some have retained their original names.
Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in John McLaren park in San Francisco CA
Events at Excelsior
The Jerry day Festival
This is an event held annually to celebrate one of the San Francisco’s all-time guitarists. Jerry Garcia was a San Francisco native and the greatest guitarist in San Francisco. The guitarist died on August 5th 1995. Tom Murphy, with the help of Jerry Garcia family, set up a date to celebrate the guitarist hero and this is how Jerry Day festival was born in 2002. The events take place every August each year at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater.
Motor show festival
Jim Espinoza is the man behind the idea of a car show in Excelsior District. The idea originated when Jim Espinoza was working with neighborhood youth. He created a group called Excelsior youth club. The event brings together the youths of Excelsior, where they have a chance to showcase their talents and culture. There are also some muscle car riders on the streets, live performances, and food is also sold during the event.
Recent events
A newly formed activity is the Heritage in the neighborhoods. The main focus of this event is to help identify all the heritages found in Excelsior. These include public artwork and historic buildings. The San Francisco heritage foundation aims at raising the profile of such artwork and structures and make them known to avoid losing them.