Ross Alley

Ross Alley runs for one city block between Washington and Jackson Streets, distinguished as the oldest alley in San Francisco. Established in eighteen forty-nine, the passage takes its name from Charles L. Ross, a pioneer merchant who built a house on the site before the Gold Rush brought the city’s population surge. Initially known as Stout’s Alley after Dr. Arthur Breese Stout, who later turned the residence into a hospital, the path was once a Latino enclave before the Chinese population began moving into the area in the eighteen seventies.