Yerba Buena, California

Yerba Buena was the original name of the Spanish settlement that later became San Francisco, California. Located near the northeastern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, between the Presidio of San Francisco and the Mission San Francisco de Asís, it was originally intended as a trading post for ships visiting San Francisco Bay. The settlement was arranged in the Spanish style around a plaza that remains as the present day Portsmouth Square.

The name of the town was taken from the yerba buena (Micromeria douglasii) plant, native to the pueblo site. Franciscan missionary Pedro Font, accompanying the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition of 1775-76, applied the Spanish name to the common native herb he found abundant in the landscape. The plant's common name, yerba buena, the same in English and Spanish, is an alternate form of the Spanish hierba buena (meaning "good herb").

The earliest report of the use of Yerba Buena as a place name comes from the log of George Vancouver, who in 1792 sailed his ship HMS Discovery into San Francisco Bay and anchored "about a league below the Presidio in a place they called Yerba Buena".

The Spanish Portolá expedition, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá arrived overland from Mexico on November 2, 1769. It was the first documented European visit by land to the San Francisco Bay Area, claiming it for Spain as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

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