The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

The Golden Gate forms the largest break in the hills of the California Coast Range, allowing a persistent, dense stream of fog to enter the bay there.

[5] Although there is no weather station on Golden Gate proper, the area has a mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb) with very narrow temperature fluctuations, cool summers and mild winters.

Before Europeans arrived in the 18th century, the area around the strait and the bay was inhabited by Native Americans – the Ohlone people to the south and Coast Miwok to the north.

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] The strait is also unrecorded in observations by Spanish galleons on the Manila-Acapulco run from the Philippines that laid up in nearby Drakes Bay to the north.

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.

[10] The U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp on May 1, 1923, celebrating The Golden Gate, portraying the schooner USS Babcock passing through an empty strait.

The Golden Gate strait serves as the primary access channel for navigation to and from the San Francisco Bay, one of the largest cargo ports in the United States.