• San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
• Ghirardelli Square
• Pier 39
• Hyde Street Pier
• Meiggs Wharf Site

Fisherman's Wharf takes its name from the Italian immigrant fishing community that established itself along the northern waterfront beginning in the late 1860s, when successive waves of fishermen from the coastal villages near Genoa brought their lateen-rigged sailing vessels — called feluccas or "silenas" by the fishermen, known more widely as San Francisco feluccas — to the waters of San Francisco Bay. The site's origins as a working waterfront trace to Henry Meiggs, a New York timber merchant who completed Meiggs Wharf in 1853 as a 1,600-foot lumber pier extending from North Beach into the bay at what is now the Embarcadero. The Italian fishing families — names such as Castagnola, Alioto, Tarantino, and DiMaggio — transformed the wharf from a lumber terminal into the city's primary seafood market, developing the crab cocktail, clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls, and the pier-to-plate dining model that defines the waterfront to this day. By the late 1860s, the annual blessing of the fleet — a procession from Sts. Peter and Paul Church — established a community tradition maintained for over a century.

The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, established at Hyde Street Pier, preserves the wharf's maritime heritage through a fleet of historic vessels including the three-masted schooner C.A. Thayer and the steam-powered ferryboat Eureka. Ghirardelli Square, the converted 19th-century chocolate factory on the western edge of the district, was among the first successful adaptive reuse projects in the United States when Leonard Martin transformed it into a shopping center in 1964.

The Italian fishing families who built Fisherman's Wharf into San Francisco's most recognized waterfront are the neighborhood story MY-NHD apparel was made to honor.