There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.
—John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Prologue
APRIL WAS MORE than half gone, and spring in the city was cool and dry. Temperatures had reached seventy degrees just once all year and no rain had fallen since the first of the month. The sun rose earlier each morning to fight persistent fog as days grew longer and nights shorter, and onshore breezes carried squawks of seagulls and the churn of side-wheel steam ferries into downtown streets where noise was constant.
Iron-wheeled wagons rattled behind hooves clip-clopping on paving stones. Tall buildings echoed coughs of automobile engines and whistles of wheelmen and the jolts and lurches of passing cable cars. Bells played each hour from parish churches, synagogues, cathedrals, and a century-old mission. Newsboys in flat caps yelled “One nickel!” hawking dailies of the Examiner, Chronicle, or Call. Sidewalk merchants called out offers of fresh fruit, or fish, or knife sharpening, or shoe shining. And unhoused people sought “enough money to get a bed,” which could be found in many of the city’s thirteen hundred lodging houses for as little as two bits (25 cents) per night—more for a room with electric lights, and more still for one with a telephone.
Wind from the northeast brought sea air’s scent of salt and brine and the smell of the waterfront fish market. An acrid taste of sulfur floated from foundry smokestacks, and an earthy scent of coal or wood fires carried in smoke coiling from nearly every city chimney. Bakers on Polk Street propped doors open to lure in customers with aromas of baking bread or layer cakes or pies, a pleasant escape from the street smells of urine or horse manure or the foul stench of Clay Street’s wholesale butchers or trash burning at the Sanitary Reduction Works down South of Market Street. And in a time before antiperspirant and deodorant were widely sold, body odor carried in the drafts of passing crowds, disguised here and there by a whiff of cologne water or perfume.
San Francisco in 1906 was America’s largest city west of St. Louis. It was home to more than 400,000 souls, and rarely was a bare head seen. Men in bowlers and fedoras walked downtown streets where clothiers pushed the “snappiest hat of the season,” the Broadway high telescope, still on sale the week following Easter. Women topped with feathered three-story flowerpot hats beneath white linen parasols shopped Kearny Street’s storefronts of milliners selling velvet (not velveteen, underlined) toques trimmed with ornaments, plumes, or roses. Fishermen and longshoremen hauled and carried under tweed fiddlers and wool sailor caps. House cooks and maids hurried to butchers’ and grocers’ shops in bucket hats and scarves. Policemen patrolled in custodian helmets. Bellboys served in pillboxes.
Conversations were frequently colored with accents—Irish, German, Italian—and often in another tongue. More than three-fourths of San Francisco’s residents were immigrants or children of immigrants, and most others were from midwestern or eastern states. Messages to family and friends back east or overseas could be dispatched at any of four dozen offices for Postal Telegraph or Western Union throughout the city. And tastes of home could be found among the city’s hundreds of restaurants offering international fares—Japanese, Turkish, French, Chinese, Mexican—a choice of cuisines as reflective of the diverse populace as the city’s fifty banks, which included the French American Bank, Russo-Chinese Bank, German Savings and Loan, and Bank of Italy.
For “amusements,” sophisticates preferred musicals at the Tivoli or operas at the Grand Opera House. Tickets were cheaper for comedies at the Alcazar, burlesque at the California Theatre, or vaudeville at the Orpheum, and cheaper still for families to roller-skate afternoons and evenings at “The Big Place,” Mechanics’ Pavilion. Adults could watch newfangled motion pictures in the Lyceum Theatre for a dime, and children for a nickel. Coppersmiths and ironworkers finished shifts at any of the city’s sixty-six foundries and bet their day’s wages on weeknight boxing bouts at the athletic club in the Mission District or plunked down two bits for bleacher seats to watch baseball South of Market at Recreation Park, where the San Francisco Seals played home games three or four afternoons each week.
This “Queen City of the Pacific” was home to the West Coast’s busiest port and roughly twice the size of California’s second-largest city, Los Angeles. San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper, the Call Building, and the dome of City Hall both soared higher than any other building west of Chicago, and the “[f]ire and earthquake proof” Palace was still one of the largest hotels in the country. But just beneath the modern, cosmopolitan veneer was the unmistakable character of a frontier town still outgrowing dirt streets, and six years after stepping into the twentieth century, the city kept a foot firmly planted in the nineteenth. Storefronts for phonograph dealers and electricians flanked coal merchants and mining companies. Blacksmiths and horseshoers worked beside photographers and auto mechanics. Coal scuttles were sold on the same shelves as Pocket Kodak cameras in department stores where customers could also pay to see 3-D images on a stereoscopic viewer or moving pictures through a handheld animatoscope. Dray horses pulled horsecars along rails crossing those of electric streetcars while the city’s eighty-six carriage and wagon sellers faced fresh competition from twenty-six dealers of the new motor car. And every afternoon at dusk, the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company’s electric streetlights illuminated sidewalks paced nightly by lamplighters venturing to neighborhoods where they hoisted wick-tipped poles to ignite gas streetlamps.
As nighttime came, the waning crescent moon of mid-April cast a faint silvery light on concrete curbs and brick sidewalks of dark alleys where saloons, billiard taverns, and gambling houses filled with the smoke of 5-cent cigars and penny cigarettes. The clamor of vice spilled out the swinging doors of grog shops and singsong houses lining the waterfront’s Barbary Coast, where beer-moistened air carried tawdry tunes from steam pianos, gramophones, and banjo players. Oil lamps cast an orange glow over greasy tables where sailors and deckhands paid two dimes, one for the beer and one for the girl—before staggering behind darkened doorways of brothel parlors and “cribs.” And in the waning hours each evening, policemen walked the night’s unluckiest in handcuffs to the Hall of Justice’s city prison, where a booking desk register listed drunks, vagrants, and pickpockets.
And thus the day that would bring catastrophe before dawn began like any other. While most of the city slept in the small hours of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, even before ice wagons and milk trucks began their routes, the busiest waterfront on the Pacific Coast teemed with life. Patrons staying past the last calls of dance halls and gambling saloons stumbled home as first light brought the whistles of steam tugs and the rattle of coal carts, and dray horses clopped across wharves hauling wagons filled with the morning catch to the fish market. The pearly light of a warm, clear morning shimmered on the waves of the bay and washed the gray Colusa sandstone of the Ferry Building, and a steady easterly breeze sent waves slapping against the wood pilings of its seven ferry slips while periodic gusts lifted the flag into snaps atop its 245-foot tower.
In a time before bridges spanned the bay and many railroad lines terminated in Oakland, the Ferry Building was the nerve center for up to fifty thousand daily commuters and visitors to San Francisco. Double-decker steam ferries arrived and departed its slips on average every fifteen minutes between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. connecting with piers in Oakland, Sausalito, Tiburon, San Rafael, and Alameda. Its tower, modeled after the twelfth-century Giralda bell tower of Seville, Spain, heralded the time of day with twenty-two-foot-wide clockfaces on each of its four sides—then the largest in the United States and readable from a considerable distance up Market Street or out on the bay. Inside, a nine-hundred-pound swinging weight kept time for the pendulum clock, built by E. Howard & Company in Boston, which was installed with a double three-legged gravity escapement to avoid being thrown off excessively by the steady pushes and tugs of strong winds on its eleven-foot-long minute hands and seven-and-a-half-foot-long hour hands. Each week, a worker climbed ten flights of stairs and a series of steep ladders to wind the mechanism and correct the time, which as regulated ran fast—on average two and a half minutes fast each day. That Wednesday morning, its hands struck five o’clock roughly three minutes early.
* * *
On a street corner three blocks from the waterfront, police sergeant Jesse Cook walked patrol, on duty in the downtown’s harbor district since midnight. As church bells through the city chimed the five o’clock hour—on time and a half hour from sunrise—Cook unlocked a blue police box, phoned the central switchboard for his hourly check-in, and continued patrol. He walked a sidewalk with well-worn curbs along a brick-paved street lined with wood-frame and brick storefronts. In the predawn light, fruit vendors and produce merchants raised canvas awnings and walked horses from alley stables to hitch to delivery wagons loaded with the daily stock.
Jesse Cook was forty-six and a California native. Married with two daughters, sixteen and nine, he was slim and of above-average height, with a thin face of light wrinkles and a full mustache salted gray from seventeen years patrolling San Francisco’s streets. Most recently he’d served as sergeant of the Chinatown squad, and in the months since his reassignment to the Harbor District Police Station, Sergeant Cook worked to know his beat completely. He learned which Barbary Coast saloons closed last and which commission produce houses opened first. He stayed current on which businesses did not employ night watchmen so his officers could safeguard their buildings during off-hours. And he aimed to personally know every sailor and teamster and dock worker and warehouseman.
Seasoned locals remembered a time just a generation earlier when the city’s shoreline was six blocks further inland and most of what became these streets sat beneath the shallow waters of Yerba Buena Cove, backfilled during the manic growth of the gold rush. Prospectors and new residents had extended the city’s crowded shores by heaping sand and dirt and garbage in with the wooden remains of grounded ships and abandoned transport boats. This “fill-land” was then leveled, and roads and buildings were stacked on top.
Just as Sergeant Cook knew the world above, he also knew what lay beneath. He understood the concrete sidewalks and brick buildings and alleys of tightly wedged basalt paving stones that he patrolled—and on which one-sixth of the city’s more than 400,000 residents lived—formed a brittle shell above soft sand and mud encasing trash and rotten boat carcasses atop a sedimentary layer of old bay clay. In his words, this part of the city “was all filled in land, filled in on mud.”
* * *
Sergeant Cook carried a cigar to share with his friend, fruit merchant Tom Burns, for a pre-workday smoke, something of a morning custom. As Cook walked the sidewalk looking for Tom, he paused in front of the wholesale produce store Levy & Levy, where he saw the owner’s twenty-two-year-old son, Sidney Levy, trying to calm a delivery horse.
“What’s the matter with your horse?” Cook asked.
Sidney answered, “I never saw him act like that before.”
The horse was “pawing at the street,” neighing loudly and acting “very nervous.”
Cook heard a noise that did not belong. Then a steady rumble. Then the ground moved. He knew it was an earthquake.
The ground started shaking and the sounds swelled to a roar and Cook knew worse was coming. He looked back to the west up the Washington Street incline and saw a shockwave speeding toward him through the ground “like the waves of an ocean coming down the hill and the buildings seemed to be rocking in and out.”
Mindful he was standing beside a two-story-tall brick building, Sergeant Cook jumped from the sidewalk into the open street just as the waves hit. Adrenaline carried his legs out further from the buildings. “The whole street was undulating,” and convulsions ripped through the ground, popping the paving stones up in swells faster than he could run. His feet landed everywhere but where he aimed, and he struggled to stay upright. A steady, earsplitting roar filled the air and drowned out all other sound except church bells clanging off-key with each jolt. The ground jumped up and dipped down, then pulled sideways, jarring him further off-balance with every step.
As he neared the street’s center, it “split right open” in front of him in a burst of sand and brick. The ground liquefied, and an eight-inch iron water main shattered and water gushed up onto the street.
Cook’s momentum carried him toward the “gaping trench.” He long-jumped across it, landed on a sidewalk, then halted and backstepped as the building before him leaned in and collapsed. Keeping his feet under him, Cook scrambled to the refuge of a large doorway as the shocks grew “fiercer and sharper.” In the distorted space around him were others huddled shoulder to shoulder in the same shelter. And above and beneath the deafening rumble were screams and crashes and horse whinnies and church bells clanging. And there was trembling and dust and gushing water.
Through a shaking blur Cook saw the brick front of the building across the street begin to peel away and collapse. On the sidewalk below it he saw Tom Burns, the friend he’d been looking for. And he saw a fruit seller and a clerk run out the front of the store and reach the sidewalk just as two floors of bricks slammed the scene flat in an explosion of dust.
Cook turned his face away and pressed his eyes shut as the debris cloud enveloped him. He clung white-knuckled to the frame of the doorway, holding himself upright. The ground twisted under him “like a top, while it jerked this way and that and up and down and every way” and the sidewalk “felt like it was slipping into the Bay.”
Breeze blew the debris cloud clear to expose a six-foot-tall pile of bricks and chunks of masonry on the street. Buried beneath were the fruit seller and the clerk and, for all Cook knew, his friend Tom Burns.
* * *
It was a few seconds past 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. Jesse Cook, the veteran police sergeant who prided himself on knowing how things on his beat and in his city were going, found himself huddled in a doorway with strangers wondering when the shaking would finally end. Cook knew only that in the slow passing of those few crowded seconds, he had seen the ground open, buildings fall, and men die. Unable to see beyond the street corner or the moment, he had no grasp on the scope of disaster then unfolding.
By the time the shaking stopped, hundreds across the city were already dead, most killed while sleeping in their beds. Flimsy lodging houses of three, four, and five stories collapsed and sank into landfills. Beneath broken streets, iron water mains—like the one Sergeant Cook had hurdled—had cracked and shattered. Power and telephone lines were twisted and torn, cutting off communications and disabling alarms. It was the strongest earthquake even the oldest residents of the city had ever endured—still today one of the strongest in the recorded history of California—and for those who survived its long moments of violent jolting, the worst was yet to come.
Flames ignited in dozens of businesses and dwellings and spread like a brushfire through city block after city block of clustered, dry wooden structures. Survivors in the path of the spreading blazes fled their homes with what could fit into wagons or trunks or be carried to the open ground of parks or onto ferries to evacuate as individual fires grew into a firestorm. People pinned in ruins and rubble were doomed to asphyxiate from toxic smoke or incinerate in the flames. Firefighters responded everywhere they could, fighting against time as much as fire, digging to rescue at least a few trapped souls before flames overtook them. But in most places, with little to no pressure at hydrants, firemen could only pull last reserves of water from emergency cisterns or precious trickles from hydrants. With little water to stop it, and fed in places by onshore winds or by new blazes started with black powder or dynamite in the hands of amateur demolition crews, the firestorm devoured the city—block by block, business by business, home by home—without pause for three days and three nights.
News of the earthquake and fire traveled faster than news had ever traveled before—over telephone lines and telegraph wires and even through wireless signals. The nation and world read details of the earthquake within hours of it striking, and over the coming days, AP wires carried the latest on the slow destruction of San Francisco by fire. Newspapers in towns and cities nationwide issued “Extra!” editions and evening issues with news of the spreading inferno, all bought by readers eager for updates. It was the first such event to be followed nationally in almost real time, giving it unprecedented attention and immediacy. And having struck in a city filled with professional photographers and in a time when cameras were cheaper and more widely available than ever before, it became the most-photographed disaster of its time. Vivid images of skyscrapers engulfed in flames and an entire city leveled to an apocalyptic ash heap of ruins—even motion pictures of the aftermath captured on hand-cranked cameras—were seen far and wide, adding life to sterile newsprint and closeness to a distant tragedy, capturing the attention and imagination of people coast-to-coast and making it America’s first truly national disaster.
When the last fire was extinguished, the smoke cleared to reveal a dystopian wasteland and laid bare the breadth of destruction and depth of loss. In many of San Francisco’s largest districts and neighborhoods, nearly every resident had lost their home, church, library, theater, grocery store, butcher shop, bakery, dry goods store, drugstore, and favorite restaurant and coffee shop. Most downtown employees lost their workplaces, and every South of Market child lost their school. Every inhabitant of Chinatown lost their home, and every merchant, their store. The city’s downtown banking and harbor districts (the current-day Financial District) were reduced to stripped skeletons and rubble, including all fifty of its banks. City Hall was shaken to a crumbled shell and had many of its vital records incinerated by the firestorm that had destroyed the city’s landmarks and largest homes and gutted its tallest buildings and grandest hotels. Seventy-five church sanctuaries were destroyed, including all three cathedrals and five of the seven synagogues. On one end of a city block, four lodging houses packed with tenants occupying more than one hundred rooms had collapsed and burned so quickly that only a handful of people escaped, and the ash of incinerated residents mixed with the ash of their flattened rooms, along with the dust of other wooden flats jammed into the same block—just one of more than five hundred blocks stripped, leveled, or vaporized.
Never had a major American city been so totally destroyed. But within days, newspaper coverage of the disaster shifted to optimistic stories of rebirth and rebuilding, part of a concerted effort by city leaders and business owners to persuade displaced residents to return and reassure potential developers that San Francisco was a safe bet for investment and growth. “GREAT BUILDINGS ARE TO RISE FROM ASHES” ran the headline of the Chronicle one week after the earthquake. Front-page stories highlighted “a spirit of unity” that had “arisen out of the fire” and would lead to “the making of a grander city.” Reporters insisted “the calamity should be spoken of as ‘the great fire’ and not ‘the great earthquake,’” and they began to refer to the disaster as “the great fire” to avoid a perception of San Francisco as earthquake-prone. And the Board of Supervisors fixed the total dead at the misleadingly low number of 478, while thousands were still unaccounted for and remains were still being found.
Rubble was cleared and homes were rebuilt and businesses reopened, and in the first few years that followed, the anniversary of the disaster served mostly as a benchmark for the progress of the city’s rebirth. “SAN FRANCISCO WILL CELEBRATE TODAY THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ONE YEAR OF RECONSTRUCTION” read the April 18, 1907, headline of the Chronicle. “SAN FRANCISCO’S REBUILDING IS WONDER OF WORLD” declared the Examiner on April 18, 1908, and on the 1909 anniversary, the Call headlined “HOME AGAIN AFTER THREE YEARS.” In 1915, the city hosted the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, a world’s fair to acclaim the completion of the Panama Canal and showcase San Francisco’s nine-year recovery and celebrate “the rebuilding which has obliterated almost all traces of the disaster.”
In the decades that followed, the city’s skyline grew to surpass its former heights, and “1906” became a universal touchstone for all parts of the disaster—the earthquake, the fire, the injury and death, the loss of one’s home and pets and all material possessions. “1906” was a common answer by survivors to questions of what happened to their childhood home, their first job, their father’s store, the school they once attended, or how a loved one died. It became shorthand for the fate of a church’s first sanctuary or the elegant interior of a hotel, and the reason why, on many city streets, not a single house or restaurant or store or apartment building predates that year. “1906” came to be invoked by residents of all ages and races and classes as a unifying reminder of shared suffering and collective fortitude. “1906 Survivor” was employed as an honorific title for aging survivors who would appear at annual commemorations and share their memories, an exclusive club that dwindled each year until its last known member passed in 2016. And now in a time with the last survivor gone and no living connection to the city that was, “1906” has endured as San Francisco’s historical demarcation line between its current life and its former.
Today, as with the label itself, 1906 is reduced mostly to numbers, recited as quantifiable benchmarks to wedge the catastrophe into its assigned slot on the list of historical disasters ranked by scale. Research seismologists and geophysicists and geologists have studied the data for more than a century to tell us the science: the seismic event that struck the morning of April 18, 1906, was a tectonic earthquake that ruptured 296 miles of the San Andreas Fault with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9. And thanks to archivists and librarians and genealogists and historians, many of whom painstakingly worked to correct a distorted historical record, the quantifiable loss suffered in San Francisco during the Great Earthquake and Fire is now also widely known: every home and business in more than twenty-eight thousand structures covering more than five hundred city blocks—nearly five square miles—was destroyed. Approximately a quarter million residents or more were made homeless, and it has been estimated that more than three thousand people were killed.
* * *
From a distance of 117 years, it is difficult to reach the city as it once was, its sights and sounds and smells and grandeur and grit. And even more difficult to topple tall tales that have ascended to new heights over the past century, many defended with rigor worthy of a better cause. To tell this true story as it happened, to strip away legend from fact and attempt to comprehend what people underwent in those days and hours and seconds, I have worked to sift back through the historical ash and rubble. Letters and diaries and telegrams and unpublished memoirs of eyewitnesses—residents, visitors, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, sailors, guardsmen, city officials—written privately for family histories or published for a wide audience still survive, as do official and unofficial reports and transcripts or recordings of interviews given through the rest of the century and into the current. I have found many of these dutifully preserved in the files of city and university libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives. Others I have obtained directly from ancestors of survivors—letters and photographs they found tucked away in closets or basements of family homes, unseen for decades, a few shared publicly here for the first time. Collectively they add color to monochromatic images and sound to silent-film reels. They give us a better understanding of San Francisco’s first life and the disaster that ended it. And most importantly, they add testimonial corroboration to physical and documentary evidence to reveal how a natural disaster led to such unnatural devastation.
Municipal ordinances and contracts predating 1906 reveal a city and county with public works of water, electricity, gas, and mass transit all in the grip of a few private hands. I have combed through these records and decades of building ordinances and insurance maps and reports of the private water company together with documented recommendations of city engineers and a fire chief’s annual requests and repeated warnings—now ringing almost cinematic in their foresight—that highlight extremes of overconfidence in the face of fire hazards and seismic danger and defiance to almost every safety measure. These chronicle a history of city officials approving cheap construction on unstable fill land and nonenforcement of already inadequate building and fire codes, leaving the city’s poorest neighborhoods a flammable tinderbox of collapsible death traps. And they document decades of reliance on a water company more intent on preserving its monopoly through bribery of city officials than updating or strengthening its water system in neighborhoods where population growth had far outpaced its dated capacity for even basic needs.
In the National Archives at San Francisco, located in San Bruno, I combed through transcripts of insurance trials conducted in the months following the disaster. Many of these have not been previously consulted and are most revelatory, containing sworn testimony from hundreds of eyewitnesses—business owners, night watchmen, barbers, cooks, bartenders, firefighters, soldiers, police officers, water company engineers, even the city’s fire chief and mayor—answering probing questions about what they saw and heard and felt and what actions they and others around them took. These verbatim accounts reveal how and where many of the fires started and how quickly they spread. They expose the near-total failure of an outdated and insufficient water system entirely vulnerable to ground movement. Together with contemporaneous reports of first responders, they highlight the impossible circumstances thrust upon firefighters who worked to the end of their physical and mental tethers and managed, often with improvisational cleverness, to save lives and battle a citywide firestorm. And when read in conjunction with records from the coroner and the Department of Public Health and funeral homes as well as letters from relatives of people missing since the earthquake, all collected over several decades by a city archivist determined to finally build a more complete list of the disaster’s dead, they have enabled me to reconstruct how and where many residents and visitors to the city were injured or killed.
But even when the fatalities are mapped and the origins and paths of fires followed and the actions of firefighters understood, there are questions historical records can never answer. Was thirty-six-year-old Sarah Corbus asleep or awake when the chimney crashed through the roof and crushed her to death in bed? When the Kingsbury Hotel collapsed around forty-year-old Margaret Fundenberg and her fifteen-year-old son, Edwin, visiting the city from Pennsylvania, did they both die instantly? Or did one or the other or both survive, trapped in the wreckage, doomed to asphyxiate from lethal smoke, or burn alive and conscious in the flames that followed? And when a rescuer chopped against time through one of the floors of the same collapsed hotel before being forced out by the fire, who was the man yelling from below that “three persons” were pinned in the wreckage on the other side? Who were the other two? What were their final conscious thoughts?
For all the questions the voices of San Francisco’s past prompt, they tell us there was no universal experience during those three April days in 1906. How the earthquake impacted each person depended on the strength of the buildings around them and the firmness of the ground beneath them. Whether someone was afforded hours or days or only minutes or seconds to evacuate their home before fire reached them was determined by the closeness and flammability of structures on their alley or street and their proximity to businesses filled with combustible materials. The speed or ability of firefighters to stop a small fire from growing into a blaze or a blaze into a firestorm depended on the water pressure in a district’s hydrants and the water level in its cisterns. Thus, someone’s odds of losing their home and all their possessions as well as their ease of escape or chance of injury or death was determined by their location in the moment of impact—not their proximity to the epicenter or fault but their position on an urban minefield of hidden quicksand and ramshackle firetraps.
The earthquake itself did not destroy San Francisco or even cause most of the damage or deaths. It was one minute—roughly, give or take—of shaking sparked the three-day disaster that left the city as it was before 5:12 a.m., April 18, 1906, a place and time unrecapturable forever. Nothing beyond the earthquake was inevitable, not the extent of structural damage or the fires that resulted or the reach of the inferno or the numbers made homeless, injured, or killed. Thousands of lives had been placed at the short end of fortune’s stroke, their fate sealed before the ground moved. The roots of the disaster set in violent motion that Wednesday morning reached back more than half a century to days of bonanza, when man’s hunt for gold grew a waterfront village into the largest city in the American West. It is there where the first seeds of devastation were sowed and our story begins.
1. Seeds of Disaster
AT ITS END, as in its beginning, the face of San Francisco’s first life was shaped by the defiant hand of man fighting stubborn forces of nature. Sixty years before its busy streets splintered and crowded buildings fell, the peninsula on which it stood was a stark landscape of sand dunes, marshland, and mudflats punctuated by shallow streams and steep hills. The city then was barely a town, no more than a shoreline dotted with a few dozen wooden buildings. Its streets, unshaded and unpaved, could be stirred into dust storms by the strong bay winds and melted into quagmires by occasional winter rains.
For thousands of years, the land was home to the Yelamu, a community of Ramaytush Ohlone peoples who adapted to the habitability challenges of a dry, sandy peninsula and lived near the few freshwater streams and on the waterfront where they found sustenance in the shellfish and traded with inhabitants further inland. The Yelamu numbered approximately two hundred or more when their land was settled by Spain in 1776 with the construction of a presidio on the bay entrance and the establishment of Mission San Francisco de Asís, later commonly known as Mission Dolores due to the nearby fertile creek, which settlers named Arroyo de los Dolores. Rather than learning the local language or cultural practices, the Spanish sought to “proselytize” and “civilize” the Yelamu and other local Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, while forcing many into indentured servitude. The Spanish also brought in large numbers of livestock, and the ecological transformation and introduction of diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, scarlet fever, and influenza led to the collapse of the Yelamu community and eventual disappearance of its people.
Surrounded as it was by one of the greatest natural sheltered harbors in the world and with a climate mostly free of summer heat and winter snow, the shallow cove on the peninsula’s eastern waterfront established itself as an important provisioning port for ships traversing the North Pacific. After falling under the rule of Mexico in 1821, the mission was secularized, and the emerging waterfront settlement grew into a year-round trading market and was named Yerba Buena for the fragrant herbs that grew wild on local sandhills. In the summer of 1846, the town consisting of a couple of stores and hotels, a mill, a warehouse, a school, and barely two hundred residents was claimed by the United States without a shot fired when the captain of the USS Portsmouth marched with seventy of his men ashore to the town’s adobe Custom House and raised an American flag on the plaza later named Portsmouth Square.
The next year, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco to match the bay, and in January 1848, gold was found more than a hundred miles away in the sand of the American River in the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains. News of the discovery spread by spring, with a prospect of riches trumpeted in San Francisco by local store owners and the town’s two newspapers—the only ones then published in the territory. With a population lured out to the Sierra Nevada foothills by the hope of instant wealth, the town nearly emptied of its people. And as word spread over the coming weeks and months, gold hunters arrived, and the city became their port and supply center. Over land came Mexicans from the south and Oregon settlers from the north, then voyagers sailed into the harbor from Alaska, the South Sandwich Islands, Canada, Chile, Peru, and Hawaii. Malaysians and Chinese and Australians crossed the Pacific, and after President Polk announced in his December 1848 message to Congress that California had an “abundance of gold in that territory … as would scarcely command belief,” Americans traveled from the East Coast, as did many Europeans, braving months-long journeys that included arduous treks across the Isthmus of Panama or perilous voyages around Cape Horn, all converging to flood the town in one of the greatest peacetime migrations in modern history.
San Francisco began the year 1849 as a trading village of fewer than two thousand residents, and by year’s end it was a city of more than twenty thousand. Construction soared—quick, makeshift, and cheap—of shops and warehouses and gambling saloons and boardinghouses. And wood-planked shanties. And tents, everywhere tents, of blankets or canvas, covering earthen floors packed tight with all of their worldly possessions, living spaces doubling as small shopfronts peddling bagged spices or barreled flour or stacked lumber or used mining supplies. The emerging urban center was built primarily by and for single men, who composed most of the ballooning, transient population, resulting in very few residential structures planned or suitable for permanent residency. As the city grew from the waterfront, wooden and canvas edifices spread along the ungraded dirt streets of the area’s first survey—aligned roughly on a north/south axis on a grid expanding from the central plaza (later Portsmouth Square) with no regard to intervening hills, creeks, marshes, or gullies—and grew rapidly to fill the newly surveyed blocks to the south of (and parallel with) Market Street, mapped on a diagonal from the port southwestward toward the heights of Twin Peaks, the two prominent hills crowning the center of the peninsula.
Billowed sails of barks and clippers propelled tens of thousands of gold hunters through the Golden Gate—the strait so fortuitously named before the gold rush—and into San Francisco’s provisioning waypoint, and as crews dropped anchor and headed for “the diggings,” most of the vessels were abandoned, transforming the eastern waterfront into a crowded thicket of tall masts. Shallow Yerba Buena Cove was jammed with deserted transport boats and even a few larger ships pulled in at high tide and grounded for use as lodgings or storeships on newly mapped water lots for purchase. Martin Roberts, a lumber importer who arrived from New York in 1849, purchased two abandoned vessels on a water lot and fitted one for his wife and baby daughter, then on their way to join him. He also purchased a land lot in the city to build a home, but it would be crowded among the unsightly shanties and lean-tos that already filled the cramped dirt streets lined with canvas houses. The population of a city was wedging into the infrastructure of a village, and still the rush continued. As a visiting reporter noted, “San Francisco seemed to have accomplished in a day the growth of half a century.”
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City planning was hurried by the tsunami of new residents, and from the start it was shaped by fire. On Christmas Eve 1849, a large blaze began in a gambling saloon and, fueled by winds, it devoured downtown’s tinderbox of wooden shanties and painted canvas tents. It burned through the night and into Christmas Day before its progress was finally halted when a makeshift bucket brigade abandoned trying to extinguish the fire and instead covered unburned structures with mud and formed a firebreak by demolishing buildings with black powder. The blaze destroyed most of the business district and caused more than $1 million in damages (equivalent to more than $38 million in 2023). City leaders called a special meeting of citizens to take the first steps toward organizing a volunteer fire department to protect against the next inevitable blaze. Three fire companies were formed around three hand-pump fire engines, led by men with previous experience as firefighters in eastern cities. And residents rebuilt quickly but cheaply. “Scarcely were the ashes cold when preparations were made to erect new buildings on the old sites,” a local journalist observed. “These, like those that had just been destroyed, and like nearly all around, were chiefly composed of wood and canvas, and presented fresh fuel to the great coming conflagrations.”
Five months later, a larger blaze burned through three hundred buildings—many of which had been rebuilt after the first fire—and was still spreading when volunteer firefighters formed another firebreak by pulling down wood-frame structures, halting its advance. Damages exceeded $4 million. The fire chief protested the lack of water available for his firefighters, so city council approved funding for an emergency water cistern and passed an ordinance requiring all homeowners to keep six buckets filled with water. Again, wooden and canvas structures were rebuilt quickly, and again, just five weeks later, a larger fire followed. This time it was caused by a clogged chimney in a home bakery, and stiff summer winds spread flames clear to the waterfront, growing into a firestorm that melted iron and glass and caused more than $5 million in damages, the most devastating yet.
In response, the city expanded and reorganized the fire department and budgeted for more firefighting equipment. And more businesses rebuilt with sturdier, noncombustible masonry and added iron shutters, improvements proven wise by another fire that fall that incinerated a sea of older wooden buildings covering four city blocks between Washington and Pacific Streets near the waterfront, stopped again by the intrepid efforts of volunteer firefighters.
The following spring, a three-day fire, fueled in part by newly installed elevated wood-plank roads and sidewalks, reduced 1,500 buildings across eighteen blocks—three-fourths of the city, including the entire business section—to ashes, causing more than $12 million in damages. One volunteer who worked a water pump for more than six hours fighting the flames wrote to his wife of “over one thousand homes enveloped in flames at once, a perfect sea of fire.” Martin Roberts “worked all night” saving the lumber inventory on his lot and returned to his family’s moored houseboat exhausted. Just six weeks later, during yet another round of rebuilding, another blaze consumed ten city blocks of structures, including the hospital, Custom House, and City Hall.
After six major fires in eighteen months, most downtown structures were rebuilt with brick and stone, such as the four-story Montgomery Block, the city’s first “fireproof” building (and for a brief time after its 1853 completion, the tallest building west of St. Louis). A new city building code established a downtown fire district where no canvas or wood-frame structures could be built and where open fires and candles were banned. Iron shutters and metal roofs were also added to buildings to increase fire resistance. The paving of streets and sidewalks began, replacing wood planking. Reserve water cisterns were finally constructed. And as the city approved more funding for firefighting equipment, a growing number of residents volunteered for duty as firefighters. Companies were formed by groups of friends and neighbors, often of the same national heritage: the Lafayette Hook & Ladder Company was formed by French immigrants, and the Hibernia Engine Company by Irish. The city paid for engines and wagons, but much of the equipment and protective gear was purchased with donations from wealthy citizens or the firemen themselves. Martin Roberts, busy working on the expansion of wharves and building his own home, organized a fire company and served as captain, and he stored his company’s pump engine on his front yard until a firehouse was built a block away. Eventually, more than twenty volunteer fire companies were available to respond to fires, all in healthy competition for the best response time.
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California was admitted to the Union as the thirty-first state in 1850, and San Francisco’s hotels and stores and gambling saloons were brimming with the currency of gold. Miners on their way to or from the diggings paid for liquor and women and lodgings and gambled with gold lumps or dust poured from leather pokes onto scales that topped every bar and card table and store counter. “A copper coin was a strange sight,” a journalist observed. That same year, the federal government established an Assay Office in the city to not only test the purity of miners’ gold but establish a uniform standard for fineness, weight, and value. Private smelting companies were authorized to issue coins meeting these standards until Congress officially established the San Francisco Mint downtown on Commercial Street, the first in the West. Completed in 1854, the three-story “thoroughly fireproof” cement-covered brick structure housing vaults and a foundry converted $4 million (equivalent to more than $142 million in 2023) in mined gold into coins in just the first year.
San Francisco’s population topped fifty thousand by 1853, and city planning lagged behind city expansion as developers flattened nonconforming dunes and hills with steam shovels to grade for streets and hauled the sand and mud to fill ravines and creek beds south of Market Street—to depths in some places of forty feet or more. And most was hauled to the waterfront, where it was dumped into Yerba Buena Cove and down in the coastal marsh of Mission Bay along with trash and the wooden remains of abandoned boats, adding hundreds of acres of landfill real estate to the city’s shoreline for even more new construction. Within the decade, many of the city’s boardinghouses, hotels, and businesses sat on dozens of unstable city blocks atop “fill” or “made” land.
And blocks beyond downtown filled with wood-frame apartment buildings and houses as more tenants stayed and resident families grew. Martin Roberts finished building a house at the corner of Stockton and Washington Streets for his family to move from their water lot just as his wife gave birth to their second daughter, Grace, in 1852. One of a soaring number of native-born San Franciscans in the nation’s newest state, Grace traveled with her parents to Washington, DC, at the age of eight and met President Buchanan at a reception, where he took her hand and remarked, “You are the oldest native Californian I have ever seen.”
By the time the rush for gold waned in the mid-1850s, the city had matured from a mud-lined town of tents and shanties into a wood-frame and brick-walled mercantile center where new fortunes were made in maritime trade, agriculture, and manufacturing. Banks had emerged to offer more opportunities for commercial ventures, institutions which with the mint coaxed order from the chaos of messy dealings among merchants from mismatched world markets. Enterprise flourished in the densely concentrated heart of the city, beating to the rapid pace of a waterfront teeming with Pacific commerce, and the legacies of many of the era’s entrepreneurs would prove immortal. Among them was Italian immigrant Domenico “Domingo” Ghirardelli who decided, after his general store burned in one of the 1851 fires, to open a confectionery shop downtown selling chocolate, candy, liquors, and spices, and later became world-famous for his delicious, sweetened chocolate. And James Folger, who traveled from Nantucket to the Golden Gate in 1850 and made enough money to buy a controlling share in the spice and coffee mill where he worked, from which he shipped roasted ground coffee to towns and mining camps throughout the Pacific Northwest. And Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who started a dry goods store near the waterfront in 1854 and eventually partnered with a customer who was a tailor to patent a new idea of riveting denim pants, giving birth to blue jeans.
In 1865, when news of the start of the Civil War four years before took a dozen days to reach San Francisco on horseback, word of Union victory arrived within hours via telegraph. And with the city topping 100,000 residents during the war and nearly 150,000 just five years later, the greatest challenge for city planners through the urban hyper-expansion and frenzy of construction was supplying fresh water to a growing population on a hilly peninsula with inadequate springs, only a few small lakes, and no large reservoirs in a climate of limited rain. Early on, fresh water from the springs of Sausalito was ferried across the bay in barrels and sold by street vendors by the bucket. Soon, private companies formed to send water into the city, one through wooden pipes across the peninsula from Mountain Lake, and another through flumes and tunnels from a reservoir formed by damming Lobos Creek, but both sources proved insufficient.
Seizing the chance to profit from the mounting demand, a resident financier acquired from the state legislature an exclusive contract to build a water supply system for the city and county of San Francisco, and together with other investors formed Spring Valley Water Works. After absorbing its only competitor, Spring Valley’s control of the city’s water supply was complete, a monopoly preserved for many decades through political favors and outright bribery of city and county officials. Armed with eminent domain rights, the enterprise—renamed the Spring Valley Water Company—grabbed land around the Pilarcitos Creek down in San Mateo County and redirected its water up the peninsula through redwood flumes and wrought-iron pipes more than ten miles to San Francisco, crossing mudflats and marshland on the way. City leaders commissioned the company to build reservoirs and pumping stations and a pipe distribution system throughout the city, projects overseen by Hermann Schussler, who was splitting his time as the company’s chief engineer and a consultant to hydraulic mining companies.
Having forfeited the public issue of water to private interests, San Francisco’s governing body, the Board of Supervisors, did no better with setting safety standards for new construction. After the fires of 1849–51, many downtown buildings had been rebuilt with “fireproof” materials, but as the city grew over “made” fill land, no laws forced developers to test bearing capacities of soil or drive foundations to safe depths based on a new building’s height or weight. As residential streets expanded westward across the peninsula, most new homes had wood frames, and South of Market, businesses and tall boardinghouses were constructed as cheaply and as close together as possible. When the city finally did update building codes to mandate fireproofing of wooden beams and trusses, spacing between structures, and setting thickness and brick/mortar-quality minimums on load-bearing walls and chimneys and flues, the tardy rules did not apply to existing structures, and favored developers were granted exceptions.
In 1866, after the state legislature approved a paid fire department for the city and county of San Francisco to be managed by a board of fire commissioners, volunteer fire companies were disbanded, and a paid-call fire department was placed into service. The company structure of the volunteer department remained, their company names changed to numbers and organized around six newly purchased horse-drawn, steam-pump fire engines with large boilers that built pressure to pump water from hydrants or reserve cisterns and apply to a fire. As these were far more powerful and efficient than the old manual hand-pump engines, the city allocated funds for more new steam engines and horses to pull them. And while many veterans of the volunteer force stayed on, new firemen were recruited and trained for paid positions, though the new department would still rely on a large force of “on-call” firemen paid per call.
San Francisco’s population grew even more with the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, finally linking the commercial center of the West Coast with the East. And within San Francisco, the local invention in 1873 of what newspapers then called an “endless-chain, stationary-engine, uphill railroad”—soon known as the cable car—connected the city’s landscape, pushing more development up to the top of its steep hills and into the western sandhills. David Colton, who had made his millions in gold and real estate, had built a neoclassical villa not far from Grace Church at the top of the California Street hill, and after the Clay Street cable car began running, the “Big Four” founders of the Central Pacific Railroad—Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, and Charles Crocker—staked their claim on the hilltop with baroque, Victorian, and Italianate mansions, followed by silver baron James Flood, whose Classical Revival home was built with Connecticut brownstone shipped around Cape Horn. Newspapers spilled sufficient ink about California Street’s “aristocratic thoroughfare” of gaudy palaces built by the “nabobs of Nob Hill” to give the hill its name.
The cable car transformed transportation across San Francisco as many horsecars and steam-powered streetcars of other passenger railways were converted to a cable system. New cable car companies were formed and new tracks carried passenger-filled cars into the newly graded streets of the Western Addition, extending residential growth out to the Presidio and newly developed Golden Gate Park, keeping middle-class and upper-middle-class residents of newer, more distant neighborhoods connected with downtown. And new cable car lines followed, rolling through North Beach and over Russian Hill—named for the hilltop cemetery of Russian seamen discovered by early settlers—and Nob Hill and down through the banking and harbor districts. Cars of a funicular cable railway even climbed Telegraph Hill, named for the first telegraph office built on the peak (replacing earlier wooden pole-top semaphores) to signal the arrival of ships through the Golden Gate. New lines of rail slots also cut the length of Market Street, and within a few years, electric overhead lines were installed South of Market for trolleys rolling from the waterfront to the Mission District and beyond.
Public and private development soared, raising the countenance of the city to its new station as the “metropolis of California.” At noon on February 22, 1872—the 140th anniversary of George Washington’s birth—the cornerstone was laid for a massive new City Hall, planned as a “municipal palace” occupying an entire city block. In 1874, a new US Mint was completed on Mission Street after four years of construction, an imposing granite and sandstone structure of Greek Revival style housing vaults that would eventually store one-third of the nation’s gold reserve and a foundry that within three years would be minting nearly 60 percent of the nation’s annual output of gold and silver coins. And the seven-story Palace Hotel was built on Market Street, which at its opening in 1875 was not only the city’s tallest building but its most elegant, and with 755 guest rooms, it was the largest hotel in the United States.
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The 1880 census counted 233,959 residents in San Francisco, and as ever, most were immigrants. The population explosion of the gold rush had turned the city’s northeastern piers into a business gateway for fishermen from Italy, Spain, Mexico, and South America. In the years that followed, the area between Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill became known as the “Latin Quarter” for its concentration of Spanish and Italian speakers, and the North Beach district, with its growing population of Italian Americans, would become the city’s “Little Italy.” In the 1880 census, the population of North Beach and the Latin Quarter was included in the broad “white” demographic, which accounted for 90 percent of the city’s official population and included native-born Americans and Californians and those of other non-Asian ancestry, such as Germans, Australians, Russians, Mexicans, French, and Irish.
The city’s Black residents were classified then as “Colored” and composed less than 1 percent of the total population. Some of the earliest pioneers of Yerba Buena had included people of African descent, like William Leidesdorff, a West Indian of Danish African ancestry who arrived in town as a merchant captain and operated the first steamboat in San Francisco Bay as well as the town’s first hotel and commercial shipping warehouse. As a successful businessman—and with his biracial identity mostly unknown at the time—he was appointed the port’s American vice-consul by President Polk, and after the territory fell under US control, he was elected to the town council and served as town treasurer. When he died of typhoid fever in 1848, flags on ships filling the harbor were flown at half-mast and the California Star declared “the town has lost its most valuable resident.”
When gold fever spread through the abolitionist press and free Black communities, many African Americans joined parties taking overland routes to the gold fields. So too did many from the South, brought by white owners as slaves, some of whom gained or purchased freedom for themselves and their families after arriving. Quite a few found success starting and operating businesses, like Mifflin Gibbs and Peter Lester from Philadelphia, who ran the Pioneer Boot and Shoe Emporium; Henry Cornish, who ran a furniture and clothing business on Battery Street; and George Washington Dennis, an ex-slave who ran a livery stable. More than 450 Black residents were counted in San Francisco in 1850 when California was admitted to the US as a “free” state, but they were denied the right to vote as well as equal testimony rights in court, and slavery was effectively practiced before and after statehood, especially after the passage of the California Fugitive Slave Law.
Forced outside the white power structure, San Franciscans of African descent built and maintained their own society. Frustrated by worshipping from the segregated pews of First Baptist Church, a few Black parishioners established the First Colored Baptist Church—later renamed the Third Baptist Church—of San Francisco in 1852, the first African American Baptist church west of the Rockies. That same year, the first African Methodist Episcopal Church of San Francisco—the First A.M.E. Zion Church—was organized. A former slave from West Virginia established the city’s first Black periodical, the Lunar Visitor, and the city’s first Black newspaper, Mirror of the Times, followed. With African American children excluded from early city-run schools, a “Negro Children’s School” was established in the basement of an A.M.E. church. Black ideological leaders set up the Athenaeum and Literary Association, a center for intellectual life and one of the city’s first circulating libraries, predating the public library by more than two decades. And after the Civil War, freed people journeyed west and steadily added to the city’s African American community, which grew from 1,176 in 1860 to 1,330 in 1870 and 1,628 by 1880.
In that same 1880 census, 21,790 of San Francisco’s residents were singled out as “Chinese,” the only demographic segregated by national heritage, comprising more than 9 percent of the population. Gold hunters from China had been among the first to enter the Golden Gate in 1848 and join the diverse populace filling the city’s streets. Even then, the Chinese—derogatorily called “Celestials” and “Coolies” by many of the city’s English-speaking immigrants—were singled out for racial ridicule and stereotype. “There were hordes of long pig-tailed, blear-eyed, rank-smelling Chinese, with their yellow faces and blue garbs,” declared a book of the city’s early history published in 1855, reflecting a prevailing xenophobia that would translate into social, political, and legal exclusion.
By the end of the gold rush, Chinese laborers composed as much as one-fourth of mine workers, and they filled an estimated 85 percent of the jobs on the California Pacific Railroad, where they played an instrumental role in construction of the transcontinental railroad. They worked long days through the unshaded heat of summer and cold Sierra winters, leveling ground and laying track and building bridges and blasting through mountains with gunpowder and dynamite. They slept in unheated tents or caves and survived the perils of boring through rock walls and loading dynamite while working in wicker baskets slung from ropes or balancing on timber frames of bridges high above gorges and canyons. When the railroad work ended, most laborers returned to San Francisco to find jobs, and in the economic depression of the 1870s, Chinese residents became the scapegoat for every ill from crime to unemployment. Editorials on “the Chinese problem” filled local newspapers. “The Chinese Must Go!” became a rallying cry for politicians, especially leaders of the newly formed Workingmen’s Party, which united its white, working-class members with racial grievances aimed at Chinese laborers and elected sufficient members to the state legislature in 1878 to pass a ban on voting by anyone of Chinese ancestry.
In 1879, a new state constitution chiseled anti-Chinese prejudice into the bedrock of the state charter. When admitted to the Union as a “free” state in 1850, California’s first constitution—like most states at the time—restricted voting to white male citizens. During Reconstruction following the Civil War, the 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment extended voting rights to Black male residents, and while the federal Naturalization Act of the same year also extended naturalization to residents of African nativity or descent, it specifically excluded Chinese residents. And both changes were reflected in California’s 1879 constitution, which vested the right to vote in every male citizen “provided, no native of China … shall ever exercise the privileges of an elector in this State.” A new section titled “Chinese” was also added to the constitution, forbidding corporations or state, county, or municipal governments from employing “any Chinese or Mongolian,” and requiring the legislature to regulate, restrict, and remove Chinese residents by all legal means and “discourage their immigration by all the means within its power.”
By 1880 in San Francisco, the Workingmen’s Party held the offices of mayor, sheriff, auditor, and district attorney. Anti-Chinese ordinances were swiftly passed, and existing zoning and public health laws were enforced selectively to purge neighborhoods and lodging houses of Chinese tenants and the city of Chinese-owned businesses everywhere except the twelve-square-block community many Chinese residents knew then as Tong Yun Fow, Cantonese for “Town of the Tang People.” San Francisco’s Chinatown would expand in size and become the largest concentration of Chinese Americans—and the most densely populated neighborhood—in the United States.
Nationally, the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted in 1882, banning further immigration of workers from China to the United States and barring reentry to previous residents—including those born in the United States—resulting in the detention of Chinese residents returning to the city from trips abroad to visit family. One was twenty-one-year-old Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents in 1873. When his parents returned to China in 1890, Wong stayed to live and work in the city he knew as home. But when he returned by steamship from visiting them in 1895—even though he was prepared with an identification document signed by three white residents who knew him to be a born-and-raised San Franciscan—the officer in the Custom House refused him permission to land and ordered him held by the ship’s captain. Wong applied for habeas corpus, and after five months in floating detention, his petition was heard and the federal district judge ordered him released. The US Attorney’s office appealed to the US Supreme Court, and in 1898 the court ruled that the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—itself barely older than Wong—“includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.” Thus, the landmark case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark secured birthright citizenship for all children born of immigrants in the United States, a durable precedent that still stands today. But in its day, San Francisco’s leaders remained undeterred, and strict enforcement of exclusion laws tailored narrowly around the ruling forced American-born Chinese residents to carry their birth certificates or identity cards anytime they left the confines of Chinatown.
Cultural differences—Eastern religious practices of Taoism and Buddhism, the Cantonese and Mandarin languages, the “bound feet” of Chinese women, the long braids (called “queues”) worn by many Chinese men—were often singled out by white residents for mockery, and many of them passed on the most dreadful lies to their children, instilling not just resentment but fear. Etta Siegel, brought to America from Romania by her parents when she was not yet three years old, was from a young age “scared to death of them” because she was warned by her parents to “stay away, be careful or they would kidnap you.” It was not until her later years that Etta understood the racist fables she was taught were fiction: “They were just as ’fraid of us, I’m sure, as we were of them.”
But the fear felt by San Francisco’s residents with Chinese ancestry was real and based on a shared experience of ridicule, legal exclusion, imprisonment, and even violence. Residents of Chinatown were surrounded by a city largely hostile to their neighborhood’s presence, a city led by men who had tried to expel them before and would seize on any reason to try again.
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San Francisco’s population approached 300,000 by 1890, eighth by size in the United States and the largest west of St. Louis. The city’s first skyscraper, the ten-story, steel-frame, red sandstone de Young Chronicle Building, was completed that year with a clock tower climbing 218 feet above Market Street. Not to be outdone, the Spreckels Call Building across the street followed and soared 315 feet to the top of its baroque dome. West of Van Ness Avenue, fresh rows of Stick-style, Eastlake, and Queen Anne Victorian houses popped up in the Western Addition neighborhoods of Cow Hollow and Pacific Heights, and empty lots were bought up for more construction in the new Richmond District and Presidio Heights neighborhoods along newly graded streets through the leveled sand dunes between Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, and in the Sunset District south of the park.
To meet an ever-increasing need for water in the city, the Spring Valley Water Company claimed more land in San Mateo County, built a dam to divert more creeks and runoff into additional reservoirs, and ran more flumes and pipes up the peninsula. The company even pushed into the valleys and creek system of Alameda County, prompting Oakland merchants and officials to protest the company’s encroachment into their local water sources. And until stopped by a series of court rulings, San Francisco received water for all “municipal purposes” free of charge, allowing Spring Valley to compensate by driving rates up on its individual customers, prices considered “extortionate.” But beyond complaints by residents of Spring Valley’s high rates and poor service or talk on the street and in newspapers of the company’s corruption and undue political influence, it was the city’s fire chief, Dennis Sullivan, who reported to the Board of Supervisors that his firemen were “handicapped by the lack of water, the want of pressure, and the dearth of hydrants.” And his was a voice difficult to ignore.
If institutions are “the lengthened shadow of one man,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson once declared, then the man casting the shadow of the San Francisco Fire Department by the mid-1890s was Dennis Sullivan. Clean-shaven with a cleft chin, discerning eyes, and closely trimmed reddish-brown hair, Sullivan was a man of “wonderful physique” and “perfect health” who carried his shorter stature with a squared, upright posture. Sullivan originally joined an engine company of the fire department at the age of twenty-five as a blacksmith, a skill he had refined since his early teenage years in New York. His work ethic and attention to detail earned him a higher-paid position as a stoker, then promotion to hydrant inspector, then district engineer, then assistant chief. After the 1893 death of long-time chief David Scannell, Sullivan’s “extraordinary adaptability to the work” won him the respect of his peers and appointment as chief of the department at the age of forty-one.
The new chief arranged for a drill tower to be built for training his firefighters, conducted inspections of all reserve water cisterns throughout the city, ordered that all officers maintain in their homes a bell connected with the central fire alarm office, and required all battalion chiefs to live within one block of their firehouse. For his part, he made his home1 with his wife, Margaret, on the third floor of the Bush Street firehouse for Chemical Engine 3 downtown. Sullivan earned a reputation for personally responding to most fires, no matter how far removed from his quarters, sometimes even beating the first engines to the scene. “Chief Sullivan arrived in less than five minutes” of the alarm and ahead of his engines, a newspaper reported of a February 1894 fire, where he called in a second alarm and was disturbed by the “scarcity of hydrants” available for his responding engines and low water pressure in the few nearby. He had already witnessed the deadly effects of the lack of water the previous summer when a blaze in the Western Addition burned a block of homes to the ground and took the lives of three firemen because “hydrants were too far away and too few.” And he noted it again at another three-alarm fire a few months later when a grocery store and the San Francisco Press Club were gutted by a blaze that his firemen again fought with “weak streams” of water.
Chief Sullivan wasted no time in making a strong case to the Board of Supervisors for drastic changes. Pointing to the “alarming increase in the number of fires each year” and the steep jump in average monthly fire alarms from fifteen to forty-one over the previous five years, he lobbied for building codes stronger than the existing “faulty and contradictory” ordinances that had fostered a landscape of structures “built almost entirely of wood.” Reminding city leaders that his firemen were charged with the protection of residents crowded on a peninsula “far removed” from any neighboring city’s ability to render aid in the event of a major fire, he requested funding for more engines, hoses, and firehouses, and he urged the board to make the department full-paid, eliminating reliance on part-time “on-call” firemen.
And in what was reported as a “scathing report on the city’s lack of water,” Chief Sullivan took direct aim at the Spring Valley Water Company, calling the feeble water pressure and lack of hydrants “wholly inadequate” in the event of large fires. Sufficient water was delivered into the city from reservoirs through transmission mains, but it was conveyed to most streets through four-inch and six-inch distribution mains with capacities outpaced by new construction that had doubled and tripled the water needs for each block. Larger mains could deliver sufficient water to meet the needs of added residents through additional service pipes, unlike the existing, smaller mains, which resulted in low pressure, especially when more than one or two hydrants on the same block were used, forcing fire engines on a second or third alarm to relay water from hydrants three and four blocks distant. This was especially true South of Market where, along some blocks, a 250-foot stretch of street lined with apartment buildings housing hundreds of residents was fed water through multiple service pipes from a smaller distribution main—four-inch diameter—as compared to a six-inch-diameter main on Nob Hill that along the same length of street supplied one or two houses. This led to water pressure challenges in crowded, poorer sections of the city even in the absence of a fire emergency. Chief Sullivan identified more than fifty streets—most of them South of Market—where larger eight-inch to twelve-inch mains were needed, lobbied for 320 new hydrants, and after his men found most of the city’s reserve cisterns unfilled, unusable, and all in a neglected state, he urged the Board of Public Works to fix, fill, and better maintain them.
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In 1896, San Francisco elected a new mayor, thirty-five-year-old James Phelan, an Irish Catholic millionaire son of a forty-niner. A lifelong bachelor of medium height with a closely trimmed beard gone prematurely gray, Phelan was far more interested in public service and his own ideas of urban improvement than the commercialism that had made his father’s fortune. He was anti-Asian, supported racist Chinese exclusion and zoning laws, and eventually would run a statewide campaign to “Keep California White.” His municipal focus in his 1896 campaign was eradication of the bribery and political favors that had plagued City Hall for decades, and along those ethical lines, as historian Walton Bean noted, “He was immune to the temptations that afflicted politicians of lesser character and inferior financial independence.”
Phelan was elected and reelected on a platform opposing civic corruption and served with an eye toward reform, specifically aiming to gain public control of the city’s water supply. During his tenure, he managed to enact a new city charter, a portion of which restored accountability by providing for rotating membership of municipal boards, appointed annually by the mayor in staggered terms. And after Chief Sullivan’s repeated urgings, the Board of Supervisors approved a “full paid” professional fire department, paying all firemen to be “continuously on duty” rather than “on call.” And new firefighting equipment was added, including more steam-pump engines and more of the new chemical engines, which carried tanks of water and smaller containers of soda powder and acid that, when mixed and added to the water tank, caused a chemical reaction that pressurized the contents, forcing a stream through the hose and acting as large extinguishers.
In 1899, the new City Hall opened after twenty-seven years of construction (the cornerstone had been laid when Mayor Phelan was ten) to little fanfare. It was the largest municipal building in the west and boasted a dome taller than the capitol and third tallest in the world. But beneath its brilliant, original design and imposing façade ran deep scars of graft, and a quarter century of different architects and conflicting designs applied in eight separate construction phases with a laundry list of contractors cutting corners to fund kickbacks fostered doubts in the quality of materials and workmanship. Grand juries heard testimony about “large sums collected for work that was never done” on the massive dome, use of substandard materials such as unreinforced masonry, and “slipshod work” covered with plaster and paint. Before it could be occupied, more money was necessary for repairs to rusting ironwork and falling plaster ceilings. Once opened, it was already dated, “a dark and dismal pile of masonry,” lacking ventilation or heat, and “architecturally a horrible nightmare.” In the end, it cost the city more than $5.7 million (more than $200 million in 2023). As San Francisco entered a new century, City Hall presented a conspicuous monument to civic corruption and a broader, cautionary metaphor of dangerous instability in a city where a seismic menace lurked just beneath a grand but brittle exterior.
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The threat of earthquakes hung constantly over San Francisco, as it does today, even if it was not as widely discussed then, or its science developed or causes understood. The city sits on the junction of the earth’s two largest tectonic plates, the Pacific and the North American, two of more than a dozen gigantic plates forming our planet’s surface kept in slow but constant motion by thermal energy in the mantle miles below. Rock masses along plate junctions are strained and stretched and crushed by the forces of these sections of land mass and oceanic crust colliding or slipping or pulling apart. Where they meet along the North Coast of California, the Pacific and the North American Plates are both gradually moving to the northwest, but the relatively faster movement of the Pacific Plate causes the slower North American to appear as if it is creeping to the southeast. This constant oppositional ground movement has turned the Bay Area into a giant shear system marked with displaced crust and crossed with faults where the ground has fractured in the past, not only scarring the land but shaping its unique beauty into a scenic embodiment of the mobile and active surface of the earth. The Santa Cruz Mountains and Marin Headlands were thrust up along the San Andreas Fault, and the Oakland and Berkeley Hills along the Hayward Fault. Movement of rocks along faults formed Napa Valley, Portola Valley, Monterey Bay, Tomales Bay, and the sand-covered plain we know today as Silicon Valley. Even the deep-water-protected port of San Francisco Bay itself—the trait that made the city the wellspring for the gold rush—was formed by movement along faults.
Periodically, the forces of energy constantly loaded into the region by the applied dynamic stress of rock masses between the creeping motion of the two colossal plates overcome the forces of friction holding them together, causing a sudden and violent break along a fault, resulting in an earthquake. Parked as it is midway between the San Andreas Fault and the Hayward Fault, the peninsula on which San Francisco sits has been shaken at irregular intervals by earthquakes. The original adobe chapel at the Presidio was toppled by a severe shock in 1812, and another in 1838 cracked the brittle adobe walls on other Presidio structures and in Mission Dolores. After 1849 (when records were regularly kept), earthquakes were recorded each year, ranging from “slight” to “violent,” some causing swells in the bay or even tidal waves, a few causing structural damage, injury, and death. In 1865, author Mark Twain was present to experience “the heaviest earthquake shock” and witnessed falling buildings and the panicked rush of frightened residents into the streets: “Never was a solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker.”
In October 1868, the entire Bay Area was shaken by a rupture along the Hayward Fault, causing what would be known—at least until 1906—as the “big” one, “the great earthquake.” Streets split apart and walls of brick buildings cracked or collapsed. Structures on “made” land—which lost its solidity and liquefied in the shaking—were “totally demolished” by catastrophic settlement, and both the original City Hall and Custom House were “badly damaged.” Throughout the Bay Area, more than one hundred people were injured and thirty killed—six in the city, some from falling walls, chimneys, and cornices. The Chamber of Commerce formed an earthquake committee for the purpose of “providing against the effects of earthquakes by improvements in building,” to which were appointed scientists and engineers and architects to make recommendations for upgrades in building materials and structural design. It was another full year before the report was submitted to the chamber, which “was accepted without reading and placed on file.” And for unknown reasons it was never published.
Even without a public report, the committee’s conclusions were no secret to builders, and architects and engineers did study the structural damage caused by the earthquakes of 1865 and 1868, and some changes did follow. Most of the city’s buildings had wood frames, which offered flexibility in response to ground movement but were prone to collapse without diagonal bracing. And most buildings concentrated in the city’s downtown area—particularly within the designated fire limits—were timber-joisted masonry, where outer walls of brick and mortar bore the loads of the inner structure—wooden floors and columns and ceilings and roof supported by timber trusses and joists anchored into the masonry. The thick, heavy, rigid outer brick walls with low tensile strength—little resistance to snapping or cracking—were largely inflexible to ground movement, and lateral shearing motions of earthquakes caused them to crack or collapse, dropping the roof and inside floors. And if joists and trusses supporting the inner floors and roof were insufficiently anchored, even just a few inches of lateral movement of the outer walls could cause a pancaking of the interior living space within a standing outer shell.
Architects and engineers recommended lowering chimneys and using better masonry mixtures and thoroughly cured bricks less prone to cracking. To reinforce brick masonry walls, iron rods could be inserted through the mortar and anchors used to secure wooden joists and girders to outer walls, recommendations for new construction and for retrofitting existing structures. Builders responded and by the 1870s, some new structures employed sufficient strengthening methods to be heralded as “earthquake proof,” such as the Palace Hotel with cross walls tied to strong exterior walls reinforced within iron banding, and the new mint built with iron reinforcing rods within the masonry behind its sandstone exterior atop a floating foundation of deep concrete and granite basement walls. New building codes codified a few of these recommendations, requiring that walls be anchored with iron to wooden beams and foundations laid of stone or brick to resist settlement. But the new code did not apply to existing structures, and with its new requirements inadequately enforced by overworked inspectors, most safety upgrades would be left entirely to market forces. And while pricier hotels such as the Palace and Grand and later the St. Francis and Fairmont spent more on added structural safety, there was little incentive for tenement landlords or owners of lodging houses in working-class districts to assume the cost of structural retrofitting for the safety of tenants, and no building codes required it. Through the minds of civic leaders and developers ran a hope that earthquakes—especially 1868’s “big” one—would simply be forgotten.
But unavoidable reminders visited the city a few times each year, usually in the form of “long rolling” tremors or a “sharp, undulating shock,” a few severe enough to make tall buildings shake “like the snapping of a whip.” These shudders and minor earthquakes rippled through the ground beneath the city when the bedrock holding together the two shifting plates fractured along one of the region’s smaller faults, or along a distant section of a larger fault. But the long portion of the San Andreas running through northern California—and directly alongside San Francisco—was locked together as it had been for many decades even as the rocks beneath the ground on each side continued moving, constantly contorting the crust and loading the fault with massive amounts of elastic strain. The small, periodic breaks along other faults could not accommodate the two plates’ continuous creeping movement, and eventually the overwhelming, opposing forces of strain and friction would reach a violent breaking point. It was inevitable: another “big” one would strike the Bay Area, sooner or later.
As year after year passed, the additions of gas lines and electric wiring and more densely jammed, wood-frame structures in the crowded city compounded the hazards to follow the next great earthquake with the additional risk of widespread fire. And every year with increasing urgency, Chief Dennis Sullivan urged the Board of Supervisors for changes. He listed locations where more hydrants were needed, a list that grew longer after the repeated reply from the Spring Valley Water Company’s engineer Hermann Schussler: “the company declines.” Sullivan stressed the need for an auxiliary saltwater system for the downtown banking and harbor districts patterned after that of the city of Boston. And he recommended that a large seawater reservoir be built on the high elevation of Twin Peaks connected with hydrants “to ensure a sufficient supply of water in case of a large conflagration.” And a “light-draught, high-power” fireboat “of good speed and large pumping capacity” for protection of the waterfront to ensure an open lifeline for water traffic. And larger water mains to replace “the small and inadequate” mains of many streets. With frustration firmly rooted in the immovable Spring Valley Water Company’s increasingly inadequate water delivery system and refusal to spend on improvements, Sullivan finally wrote the board that “as the carrying out of these recommendations depends upon the will of a private corporation, very little has as yet been accomplished.”
In 1901, after intervening in a labor fight and siding with employers by using the police force against striking workers—a move that drastically eroded his popularity in a city where more than one-third of the population paid union dues—Mayor Phelan declined to run for another term, unable during his tenure to accomplish either of his grander goals of eliminating Spring Valley Water Company’s private monopoly or removing the supervisors who enabled it. Into the political vacuum stepped millionaire lawyer, real estate investor, and political boss Abe Ruef. A native San Franciscan who stood five feet, eight inches tall with a receding black hairline and a full dark mustache beneath a prominent nose, Ruef was a studied master of patronage and political favor. Recently frustrated by his inability to overcome the Southern Pacific Railroad’s continued control within even the local Republican Party, Ruef spied an alternate path to municipal power in a new political party then forming out of the city’s recent labor disputes, the Union Labor Party. And after packing the convention with his chosen delegates, the man known to locals as “the power behind the throne” found his perfect candidate for mayor in his friend and client Eugene Schmitz.
Also a native San Franciscan and the same age as Ruef (they both turned thirty-seven by the 1901 election), Eugene Schmitz was “a commanding figure of a man.” He stood six feet tall, had a head full of curly black hair, sported a thick mustache and goatee, and dressed impeccably. A concert violinist, former conductor of the Columbia Theatre orchestra, and president of the musicians’ union, Schmitz was both cultured and amiable. And married with two children, he was also a practicing Catholic of German Irish descent, helpful with three of the city’s largest, overlapping voting blocs. After giving speeches written by Ruef in a campaign financed by Ruef, Schmitz won the election and was sworn in the following January. Abe Ruef acted officially as unpaid “legal advisor” to the new mayor, meeting regularly with seekers of favors or jobs, followed by payments of political contributions or “attorney’s fees” to his law firm “for advice in matters of municipal law,” after which Ruef would “share his fees” with the supervisors and the mayor. Schmitz’s administration—soon referred to as the “Ruef-Schmitz” government—would halt the momentum of even modest reform, undermine the new charter’s civil service organization by appointing paid loyalists to important public boards, and erode what little accountability had been previously forced on Spring Valley’s monopoly.
* * *
By 1902, with a population nearing 400,000, more of San Francisco was made of wood than any other major American city (93 percent of its structures, compared with 70 percent in Boston, 20 percent in St. Louis, and only 6 percent in Philadelphia). In New York City’s Manhattan borough, the National Board of Fire Underwriters found “very little frame construction.” And Chicago, with stronger building codes thirty years past its own citywide conflagration, had rebuilt responsibly and was only 44 percent wooden. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an updated building ordinance in 1903 mandating fireproof roofing and incombustible materials in future construction, prohibiting additions or expansions to existing wooden structures, and mandating fire escapes on all buildings. But the new code did little to reduce the risk of fire or improve durability against seismic threats in the city as it currently stood. And enforcement of the new standards was in the hands of Mayor Schmitz’s appointees on the board of the Department of Public Works—led by his own brother—who granted permits for the most favored developers regardless of noncompliance.
National recommendations for use of steel or reinforced concrete in construction of taller structures were ignored by officials indebted to the bricklayers’ union, resulting in more use of brick masonry, which lacked elasticity and was more likely to crack or crumble under the stress of an earthquake. Because the new code yet again did not apply to existing structures, within the “fire limits”—expanded to include more of downtown, the banking and harbor districts, and a portion South of Market where supposedly only “fireproof” structures would be allowed—a third of the buildings were wood-frame and nearly two-thirds were timber-joisted masonry (with outer load-bearing brick-and-mortar walls but floors and roofs and columns of timber, boards, and planks, most without fireproofing), proportions that would not improve before 1906. And while the city also approved initial funding in 1905 for the auxiliary seawater reservoir on Twin Peaks for fire suppression, construction fatefully would not begin until after 1906.
In the middle of this tinderbox, Dennis Sullivan had during his decade as chief managed to upgrade the fire department itself into one of the most modern and efficient in the world. 584 full-time firefighters practiced multiple times daily with their equipment, building instinct and muscle memory that was triggered into quick action when the alarm sounded. They worked out of forty-five firehouses with thirty-eight steam engines and seven chemical engines. There were also a dozen ladder companies, ten truck companies, and enough dray and trotter horses stabled in every company house to hitch three to each steam engine and two to each chemical engine and hose wagon for more power and speed up the city’s steep hills. It was a state-of-the-art fire department tasked with the impossible: protecting a city of wood with insufficient water.
A cautionary omen reverberated across the nation in early 1904 when a major fire destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in downtown Baltimore. The following year, the National Board of Fire Underwriters formed a committee to rate the fire risk in major cities. In New York City, the committee found the probability of fire devastation “light” and concluded “a general conflagration over a major portion of the city is practically impossible.” But in San Francisco, the risk of fire was “alarmingly severe,” due to highly combustible, poorly built, wood-frame buildings, a general absence of firebreaks, congested occupancy of tall structures, and “almost total lack of sprinklers.” The board found only 2.2 percent of buildings within the city’s designated fire limits to be “fireproof,” and down in the poorly zoned mix of residential and commercial streets South of Market, the few “fireproof” buildings were surrounded by flammable wood-frame or timber-joisted masonry. Any large blaze, the board declared, would be “unmanageable from a fire-fighting standpoint.”
This “alarmingly severe” rating assumed the water system would work and predicted that even with sufficient pressure in hydrants, any localized fire was likely to spread into an “unmanageable” disaster. One wonders what language of alarm the board would have added had it accounted for the fault line that ran alongside or crossed many of the water system’s supply pipes and tunnels from reservoirs in San Mateo and passed within one hundred yards of the Crystal Springs dam itself. Or what cautionary words the board might have used had it factored in seismic risks where the city’s entire water supply flowed through wooden flumes over creeks and soft marshland and was delivered to neighborhoods through water mains which were—as Chief Sullivan had warned time and again—too small to provide sufficient pressure for even a two-alarm fire in most places, reaching homes and businesses and hydrants through an intricate web of cast-iron pipes that sprawled through the sand and mud of unstable “fill” and “made” land. And with most of the city’s sixty-three reserve water cisterns—the backup system in case of water shortage—only half filled, a few entirely empty or filled with trash, and all in a poor state of repair, the risk of a widespread inferno was higher than even hyperbole could reach. “San Francisco has violated all underwriting traditions and precedents by not burning up,” the board concluded. “[T]hat it has not done so is largely due to the vigilance of the fire department, which cannot be relied upon indefinitely to stave off the inevitable.”
2. The Day Before
EIGHT-YEAR-OLD WILLIAM DUNNE was enjoying a two-week Easter vacation from school in mid-April 1906. His father, an Irish immigrant, worked as a liquor merchant, and his mother, a California native, worked as a midwife. William loved baseball, playing cards or checkers, and listening to the phonograph in the parlor of his parents’ flat. His folks did not own an automobile—and would not buy one for many years—so to get around they hired horse-drawn buggies or paid a nickel each for cable car rides. On Sundays, they would often venture out to Golden Gate Park with other neighbors, picnic for an early dinner to beat the fog, or ride the ferry across the bay to Marin County, where they would take an electric train up to picnic in Muir Woods.
As with so many San Franciscans of his generation, William felt “pride and identity” in his neighborhood, which for him was the Mission District. Built between Potrero Hill and Twin Peaks and centered around the eighteenth-century Mission Dolores, its streets were home to working class and wealthy alike, and its residents were mostly Irish and nearly all Catholic. Corner grocery and sundry stores capped long blocks of narrow, wood-framed, flat-front, and slanted-bay-windowed Italianate homes and apartment houses mixed with occasional fenced yards surrounding a few palatial estates, some dating a half century back to the expansive years following the gold rush. Young William delivered newspapers through these streets for extra money and played tennis at the park where people left community rackets and balls on the court (“I never had to buy a racket and I very seldom ever had to buy tennis balls”). San Francisco, as William knew it, “was a big city with country manners.”
“In my generation,” he later said, “you measure everything before and after the fire and earthquake.” People like William who knew San Francisco as it was before the tragedy would often refer to the time before the earthquake as not just another time, but another place. It was as if the city they knew died and what was later reborn was a “new city.”
* * *
Tuesday, April 17, 1906, was the last full day of life for the city young William and so many others knew, and it dawned gorgeous and pleasant. Up in the Italian American community of North Beach, the sun shined through the gray clouds puffing from smokestacks over the sea of wood-frame dwellings that were home to fishermen, produce sellers, brickmasons, and shopkeepers. Merchants and patrons in Broadway Street’s tailor shops, drugstores, and ristorantes scoured the morning issue of L’Italia—“The First and Largest Italian Daily in the United States”—for updates on known deaths from the April 5 eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Naples, and dozens answered the newspaper’s call to contribute at its Montgomery (present-day Columbus) Avenue office or the nearby Italian Consulate to a fund set up for the victims. $650 had already been raised and $80 more would come that day from local wage earners in amounts of 25 cents, 50 cents, or $1, for some a full day’s pay. As the day’s temperatures rose into the mid-60s, the residential slopes of Telegraph Hill saw children on their Easter break from school playing hopscotch on sidewalks so steep they were “cleated like the gangplanks of a river steamer,” as a local reporter observed, and where impromptu games of baseball ended with “the lucky batsman knocking the ball on the tops of the houses half a block below.”
Down at the Ferry Building, forty-three-year-old Melissa Carnahan and her husband, William, in town from Pennsylvania to visit her family, had ventured from the St. Francis Hotel to join the crowd stepping onto the morning ferry to Sausalito. After crossing, they rode the train up the zigzag tracks ascending Mount Tamalpais, the highest peak in the Marin Hills, where the clear day afforded them a beautiful panorama of the Golden Gate and the San Francisco skyline. After lunch, they took the train down and ferried back, enjoying the view on the fogless day. As they returned in the early afternoon, on a waterfront pier beside the ferry slips, chains clanked and pulleys shrieked and trucks rattled beneath a puffing steam crane emptying the holds of the tall-sailed Italian merchant bark Elisa after it made fast to the pier more than a month overdue. The crew disembarked, reportedly “tired, but well” after 210 days at sea. Their journey had brought them from Hamburg to Staten Island, then south around Cape Horn where they hit rough weather, spotted three icebergs, and sailed against northwesterly gales in dense fog and lost a sail. Their cargo was more than six tons of concrete, which builders in the city with delayed construction projects had been awaiting.
As on any other weekday afternoon, commuters and visitors stepping from the Ferry Building into the city were “confronted by a confusion of tracks” of rail lines crisscrossing the brick paving stones of East Street (present-day Embarcadero), jumbled with wagons and pedestrians amid the steady parade of cable cars, a congestion problem Sunday’s papers reported would soon be remedied by a planned pedestrian footbridge. A crowd stood in a bunched line at the double turntable where United Railroads’ Market Street cars painted by line—red, blue, green, yellow, white—rolled on and were swung around and aimed back up Market. Conductors exchanged transfer tickets for a nickel from each rider as they boarded, most opting for open-air bench seats to enjoy the day’s warm weather. With a clang of the roof gong, gripmen pulled grip handles back with a squeeze of their ratchet lever, and as iron jaws tightened on the whirring cable below, cars pulled as many as 130 passengers at a time forward for an eight-and-a-half-miles-per-hour ride up Market Street’s wide thoroughfare past the city’s tallest buildings, largest banks, and grandest hotels. Newspapers in recent days had reported on United Railroads’ plan to convert its cable car lines in the city to faster, larger electric streetcars, something most business owners and merchants opposed because of “unsightly” overhead wires that city leaders pledged would never clutter the open vista of Market Street.
Inside Market Street’s forty-year-old Grand Hotel, an eclectic, four-story homage to Second Empire and Italianate styles, Terry Owens, the chief of the Denver Fire Department, was staying with his wife and baby, vacationing from Colorado seeking to cure his monthlong cold. He was surprised by the “many wooden blocks” of the city—not just the high number of wooden structures, but especially their concentration downtown. “Bad place for fires,” he told a local reporter that day in an interview to be printed in tomorrow’s paper. In the afternoon, Chief Dennis Sullivan stopped by the Grand Hotel and gave the visiting fire chief a ride in his buggy to a blaze down in the Mission District. Impressed with the prompt response and efficient work of the fire crews, Chief Owens judged them “the best of a class that I have ever seen and I have visited every big department in the United States.” And he effusively concluded, “I see now why San Francisco has been free from disastrous fires; her men are too prompt and too intelligent. It does my heart good to watch them work.”
Cable cars continued up and down Market Street in the early evening, and the Market/Hayes green line rolled out through the newer neighborhoods of the Western Addition within one block of the Fell Street flat where twelve-year-old Marion Baldwin looked from her second-floor window facing the grass Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. Her parents were dressed up to attend a banquet at the Palace Hotel. Her father was in a tuxedo, and her mom in a satin dress “looked just like a queen.” With their permission to visit her friend Bertha who lived on the corner, Marion walked downstairs and out to the street where she saw the “hack-man”—the hired driver—on the carriage waiting for her parents. She walked on to her friend Bertha’s, and they worked on drawings until after dark.
* * *
Electric lights brightened downtown streets and buildings against the night’s falling darkness. In Chinatown, where red-and-gold-lacquered lanterns lit brightly painted green-and-yellow wooden balconies projecting from brick Italianate buildings along Dupont Street (present-day Grant Avenue), wide-eyed tourists slowly walked past the glowing windows of bazaars and curio shops filled with jades and porcelain. Barbershops along Waverly were closing and toy peddlers had mostly retired for the night, but fortune-tellers still sat at their folding tables hoping for a few evening customers. A few herbalists in closely spaced storefronts kept their doors open past dusk, advertising their pulse diagnosis to sell more cures of bark, roots, nuts, and flowers from their drawers, and dried meat dealers still stood at their sidewalk racks, hoping to unload their last bits of dried duck, oysters, and frogs. Workers climbed the steps of Waverly Place’s pastel-painted brick Tin How Temple for evening prayer ceremonies, and just beginning their night’s work were madams in the doorways of brothels and “singsong houses” lining Sullivan and Bartlett Alleys. Narrow sidewalks lined with closed display stands concealed a subterranean maze of cellars and basements packed with card games of dou dizhu or tables crammed with tired workers reading one of several neighborhood newspapers: Mong Hing Yat Bo (Chinese Daily World), Tai Tung Yat Bo (Chinese Free Press), or Chung Sai Yat Po (Chinese-Western Daily). And above the streets, through thickets of laundry lines and balconies lined with potted plants, conversations in Cantonese and Mandarin carried through open windows.
Two blocks from the edge of Chinatown’s confines, beyond where its residents dared not roam for fear of harassment, arrest, or worse, Dupont Street opened into Union Square, a grassy city block crossed by walkways lined with hedges and trees. The square was dominated by the Dewey Monument, an eighty-five-foot-tall column topped by the Goddess of Victory statue, dedicated three years before by President Theodore Roosevelt as a tribute to naval victory in the recent Spanish-American War. Buildings surrounding the square were dwarfed by the twelve-story St. Francis, the newest and tallest of the city’s grand hotels, where Melissa and William Carnahan had dressed in formal wear for dinner after returning from their Mount Tamalpais trip. They took the elevator down from their sixth-floor room to the hotel’s impressive gold-and-white dining room. There they dined with Melissa’s three cousins, then walked out to Union Square and mingled with the night crowds.
Much of the talk on the streets was of the opening of opera season, specifically the premiere of Carmen that night at the Grand Opera House on Mission Street. The world-famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso was in town headlining in the part of Don José, and famous soprano Olive Fremstad was playing the lead role of Carmen. In this golden age of opera, Fremstad and especially Caruso had generated much print in San Francisco newspapers since their arrival with the rest of the touring Metropolitan Opera company on Easter Sunday.
The opera company had premiered the night before with a performance of The Queen of Sheba, which was well attended and well received. The Call’s headline read “BRILLIANT ASSEMBLAGE CROWDS GRAND OPERA HOUSE,” and reported of “grandeur never equaled here before.” But Monday night’s premiere was widely considered a warm-up for the real thing, or as described in the Examiner, “the predecessor of the storm that awaits Caruso and Fremstad tonight.” Tickets for balcony seats started at $7 (more than $232 in 2023), and box seats cost $65 each (more than $2,160 in 2023).
The night was still warm, and downtown was windless. At the opera house, the air itself was charged with anticipation. Open carriages and automobiles clogged Mission Street, delivering the city’s wealthiest to the main entrance. A steady stream of tuxedos and dresses and tiaras flowed up the steps, through the main corridor, and around the elaborate crystal fountain in the grand vestibule beneath a moonlit skylight. Reporters who had covered many previous opera premieres would effuse that “the dresses seemed more beautiful, the jewels more brilliant and the people more interested and interesting.”
The theater was a grand space trimmed in shades of pale blue. Tiers of elegant luxury boxes rose high above either side of the stage, which was boasted to be the largest in the country. And behind the floor seats, three tiers of balcony seats receded at angles affording every attendee a splendid view. Famous society photographer Arnold Genthe was among the crowd taking their seats for the show. Maybella Tevis and her husband, William, the millionaire banker, sat up in a box. Also in a box was twenty-four-year-old actor John Barrymore, spending his final night in town after completing his run of performances in The Dictator. He was to sail for Australia the next day with the rest of his touring company, and of that night’s audience he observed, “[A]ll of San Francisco and his wife was there.”
At 8:00 p.m. the curtain lifted. Every seat was filled. Caruso’s “ringing tenor woke up the house on his first phrase,” wrote a reporter. “Caruso has the kind of tenor that rings in the ears long after it is heard and seems to echo in the memory at call.” Former mayor James Phelan thought the singers “a brilliant company.” And twenty-two-year-old Stanford sophomore Laurence Klauber, sitting up high in the gallery with a friend, thought the Italian tenor was simply “the goods.”
The audience gave a standing ovation that reportedly included at least two curtain calls and lasted ten minutes. Twenty-nine-year-old James Hopper, a former college football star, coach, and lawyer who was now living his passion for writing as a reporter, was so moved by the performance that he walked the city block slowly back to his paper, the Call, saying to himself, “Surely, what I have felt tonight is the summit of human emotion.”
Laurence Klauber and his friend walked out of the theater and into a post-show traffic jam—a “string of carriages” clogging the streets and blocking in the electric trolleys—so they had to run six blocks down to catch a car. Others avoided the traffic by walking up one block for a late dinner at Zinkand’s, a German restaurant popular with theater patrons. Photographer Arnold Genthe walked eight blocks from the opera house to his home on Sutter Street. He fell asleep, as he would later recall, “with the music of Carmen still singing in my ears.”
* * *
Back across town on Fell Street, time had gotten away from Marion Baldwin, still drawing with her friend Bertha, whose mom called up the stairs to tell Marion the street lamplighter had already been by. Startled by the late hour, Marion dropped her pencil, then ran downstairs and out the front door and into the dark night air feeling “ashamed and guilty.” Her parents were still at their dinner at the Palace Hotel, and the street was quiet and empty, “no wagons or horses.” She reached home, used the hidden key under the mat to unlock the door, went inside, changed, rushed upstairs to her bed, put her head down, and “went right to sleep.”
In Chinatown, above the family liquor store on Washington Street that he had operated since his father’s death the year before, fifteen-year-old Hugh Kwong Liang went to sleep on a narrow bunk in a cramped, second-floor flat he shared with his cousins. The room was lit by the glow of the Chinese Grand Theatre across the street. Two blocks away, Lily Soo-Hoo, who had turned seven two days before, shared a bed with one of her older sisters in their parents’ third-floor apartment. Kept awake by the family’s cats, which were restless and “making lots of noise,” she stared at the blue eyes and gold hair of her prized “beautiful French doll” as she tried to get to sleep.
Down in the Mission, eight-year-old Gregory Lighthouse had enjoyed the “delightful” evening playing outside in Garfield Park one block from his parents’ 24th Street home. But he had stayed out past his curfew, and now in his bed he felt guilty and found it tough to get to sleep. And a few blocks away, another “Mission boy,” eight-year-old William Dunne, fell asleep on his small bed in his parents’ room, ready to wake up to another day of his Easter vacation.
* * *
At midnight, switchboard operator James Kelly and relay operator Charles Daley began their shift in the central fire alarm office, a large third-floor space with windows overlooking Portsmouth Square. The night had turned cool, and they kept a fire burning in a brick fireplace. The central switchboard was connected by an electric line to each of the more than three hundred fire alarm boxes on street corners throughout the city, so thickly located in the downtown area that, as Charles explained, “a man could stand on one corner and by looking four ways he would be apt to see one box if not two or four boxes.” Painted red, the boxes stood out prominently, with “FIRE ALARM STATION” in white lettering on each, followed by the words “FOR FIRE BREAK GLASS PULL HOOK DOWN ONCE AND LET GO.” Inside large buildings, private lines from wall alarms also connected with street boxes.
When the handle of any street box or building alarm was pulled, a signal traveled to the fire alarm office’s central switchboard, where a ticker-tape machine punched out a four-digit number denoting the alarm’s location. At the switchboard, James was connected by telegraph with every firehouse, battalion chiefs’ homes, and restaurants frequented by firefighters of certain companies. Three or four fire companies local to the alarm box location would be sent, and their battalion chief would ride in his buggy with his telegraph operator, who would unlock the alarm box and, on the telegraph key inside, tap out messages to the switchboard. If the fire needed more engine companies (ten firefighters each), the chief’s operator would tap out a second alarm (“10–2”) for six more companies, or a third alarm (“10–3”) for another six, and he would signal once the fire was contained.
By the time James and Charles came on duty that night, an alarm had been pulled on the box at the corner of Bay and Mason Streets. The fire was burning at the Central California Canneries warehouse, a substantial two-story brick building that occupied the block on Mason Street between Bay and North Point Streets up in North Beach. The company’s night watchman and his wife and brother, who all lived inside, had been saved an hour earlier by a neighbor who saw smoke coming from the second-floor windows, pulled the fire alarm, broke into the warehouse, woke them up, and got them out.
When the bell rang on the alarm panel in the three-story O’Farrell Street firehouse of Engine 2, the night watchman checked the box number, saw his company was to respond, sounded the house gong to wake the rest of the company, and pressed the button to turn up the firehouse lights. The button also released the horses from the stable in the back of the street-level apparatus floor, and they lined up beneath their hanging harnesses. The captain, his lieutenant, and the seven other firefighters of the company rushed down the spiral stairs from their second- and third-floor quarters, pulling up suspenders and rubbing sleep from their eyes. Men lowered and secured collars and harnesses onto three engine horses (set up to take no more than “12 seconds,” a procedure rehearsed daily). Two horses were hitched to the hose wagon, which carried lengths of folded cotton hose and helmets and protective turnout coats. A fireman swung open the tall, wide firehouse double doors to the street, and the captain confirmed the location of the alarm by matching the box number with the one at Bay and Mason Streets.
Two firemen ensured the horses were hitched securely to the front of the engine, while at the rear, after checking that the boiler was full on the water gauge, the engineer kicked the valve connecting with the wall heater pipe shut and used a match or kerosene torch to ignite the wood-shaving kindling inside the firebox beneath the boiler. Up on the seat in the front of the engine, the driver slapped the reins, and as the horses yanked the engine from the house, the engineer stepped onto a narrow foothold behind the back coal tray for the one-and-a-half-mile ride up to the North Beach fire, holding on to a side rail and using his free hand to shovel coal through the boiler door to stoke the growing fire, a bumpy trip over brick and cobbled streets affording enough time for the fire to heat the boiler to sufficient pressure for pumping. Behind the engine followed two horses pulling the hose cart, with a driver up top and the rest of the firefighters hanging on to the sides.
When their company arrived at the fire, the driver pulled the engine near a hydrant, jumped down, unharnessed the horses, walked them a safe distance away, and covered them with blankets. As the hose wagon rolled to a stop, firemen jumped off and donned coats and helmets. One carried a spanner wrench to the hydrant and spun the outlet cap off with a kick followed by quick hand turns; another connected a stiff suction hose from the engine to the hydrant; and others connected a cotton hose to the engine and ran its unfolding length up toward the flames. At the hydrant, a fireman wrenched the rear stem nut to open the stream, filling the suction hose to the engine where the engineer shoveled coal into the firebox and watched the needle on the brass pressure gauge. When it reached 40 PSI, he opened the release valve, the hose stiffened along its length, and at its end two hosemen aimed the brass nozzle and threw water on the flames. The remaining firefighters pulled another hose from the wagon and connected it to the engine, ready for the engineer to signal pressure had reached at least 80 PSI, when they could open a second line on the flames.
The night air was dry, and onshore winds fed the fire. Glass in the windows on all sides of both floors shattered in the intense heat. By 1:00 a.m., flames shot from window openings as the blaze sucked oxygen from the air venting through the warehouse. Sweat ran down the blackened faces of firefighters who endured oven-like temperatures and choking smoke, attacking the yellow and orange flames through every opening in the cracking masonry.
Hearing the initial alarms in his Bush Street quarters, Chief Dennis Sullivan made the twenty-block trip to the blaze in his two-seat buggy with his driver behind his trusted horse, Brownie, to personally supervise. On arrival he directed his operator to send a second alarm from the alarm box. The ticker-tape machine at the fire alarm office punched out a “10–2”—ten dots, then two dots—and James Kelly tapped out the second alarm to six more engine companies in the surrounding area. Gongs sounded in firehouse after firehouse, and, as with Engine 2, watchmen and officers and drivers and engineers and hosemen of company after company carried out their jobs with muscle-memory precision and arrived at the cannery to join the battle.
By 1:30 a.m., more than one hundred firefighters were playing powerful hose streams into the warehouse blaze and soaking the walls of neighboring buildings on surrounding streets with hoses running from ten fire engines pumping from street hydrants a block and two blocks away. And with flames still intensifying and threatening to spread, Chief Sullivan directed his operator to send a third alarm, calling in six more engine companies.
* * *
In the small hours of the morning, after a post-opera dinner with fellow company members and gracious greetings of late-night fans lingering in the Palace Hotel lobby, Enrico Caruso finally retired to his fifth-floor suite. His valet slept in the adjoining room along with three dozen traveling trunks. Each of the Palace Hotel’s large guest rooms boasted its own fireplace, bathroom, and telephone. When completed in 1875 at a mammoth cost of $3 million (more than $80 million in 2023), the Palace could boast not only its size but especially its opulence. Its landmark was the “big and bulging” central Grand Court of marble floors surrounded by the ornate balconies of seven floors climbing to the massive domed skylight above. Five safety-catch hydraulic elevators (known then as “rising rooms”) carried guests to lavish bedrooms finished with oak floors and thick redwood paneling in Louis XIV style.
And it was safe. Constructed with cement-covered brick walls wrapped in interlocked iron rods, the “basket-work of iron enclosed in brick” with its own water supply and emergency hoses on every floor boasted to be earthquake-proof and fireproof. Fading somewhat in the shadows of the St. Francis and the Fairmont, the Palace was no longer San Francisco’s tallest or newest but was still the grandest. Most of the Metropolitan Opera company members, including the manager and director, were staying at the Palace. And the most famous among them, Caruso, had chosen his suite, in which President Grant had once stayed, for its elegance. French chandeliers lit satin-covered walls, an English marble fireplace, and Turkish carpets, and a Persian bedspread covered the bed. He dressed down in a nightshirt for sleep, “happy” with his performance and with the audience’s effusive reception, and he “went to bed feeling very contented.”
One block away stood the sixteen-story Call Building, the city’s tallest and part of Market Street’s “newspaper row.” Inside, reporter James Hopper finished writing his article about the opera around 2:00 a.m. He left, crossed Market, and began walking the sidewalk up the Post Street incline for six blocks to his room at the Neptune. The night struck him “as particularly peaceful,” but when he passed a boardinghouse’s livery stable, he heard horses inside screaming “with a sudden, shrill cry” and “the thunder of a score of hooves crashing” against the stalls. A stableman in the doorway remarked of the horses, “Restless tonight; don’t know why.”
By the time Hopper reached his six-story corner hotel, he had climbed Post Street to a point affording him a view “of the big buildings below, the Bay beyond with the red and green lights and the long silhouettes of ships at anchor, and still farther, the familiar hearth-like glow of the mainland towns.” But the heights of Nob Hill and Russian Hill blocked from his view the harsh glow of a fierce battle still being waged twenty blocks away in North Beach by more than 160 firefighters against the flames of the cannery fire.
Hopper passed through the quiet lobby of his hotel and entered the elevator.
“Fine night,” the operator remarked.
“Beautiful,” Hopper responded.
He reached his third-floor room and was in bed by 3:00 a.m. Still stirred by the opera, his sleep was restless and his dreams were filled with the voice of Caruso and the cries of the horses.
At the cannery, the firefighters won the battle, finally extinguishing the blaze around 3:00 a.m., but not before it destroyed 20,000 cans of food and caused more than $50,000 in damages. While his firefighters watered down the hissing, smoking embers, Chief Dennis Sullivan rode his buggy back to his Bush Street quarters, a three-bedroom flat on the third floor of Chemical Engine 3’s firehouse. As was his custom on returns from late-night calls, he retired to the guest bedroom so as not to wake his wife, Margaret, who was asleep in their bed.
In the fire alarm office, Charles Daley tapped out a signal at 3:05 a.m. to all companies and chiefs that the fire was out. For the next two hours, firefighters and inspectors roamed the warehouse’s charred, water-soaked ruins. Horses pulled the last engine from the scene just as daylight began breaking through the morning mist. It was 5:00 a.m.
* * *
Bells atop old St. Mary’s Church in Chinatown and Nob Hill’s Grace Church sounded the hour in unison. Predawn light spilled down the wide expanse of Market Street, and electric streetlights clicked off, block by block. But the lights of “newspaper row” shined as they had through the night, through the windows of the Examiner Building and the towering Call Building next door and the Chronicle Building across Market. Through front lobby doors shuffled employees in suits wrinkled from a long night of writing and editing and formatting the morning issues. Examiner news editor Jack Barrett stood on the corner with two coworkers waiting for his ride. Looking up Market, he noticed the sunlight “spread its brightness on the roofs of the skyscrapers, on the domes and spires of churches and blazed along up the wide street with its countless banks and stores, its restaurants and cafes.” At that hour on that corner, “the city was almost noiseless.”
Chronicle newspaperman Frank Ames stood on the same sidewalk at the far end of the block, looking through the large windows of the Palace Hotel. He stared at the “bright and inviting” lights of the Grand Court, where servers readied tables for awakening guests.
Examiner reporter Fred Hewitt and two coworkers crossed Market’s empty pavement and strolled together along a sidewalk and stopped as they met two police officers on a walking patrol. After a brief conversation, the policemen headed toward their station, and the newspapermen walked on to “within a stone’s throw” of City Hall and its ornate, imposing dome.
Three blocks away, police officer Harry Schmidt spoke briefly with his shift sergeant, Jesse Cook, then walked patrol past storefronts of fruit and produce merchants just opening. He stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of C.W. Gould & Co., a frequent stop on his beat. He entered and made his way between stacked orange crates to the back of the store for a drink of water.
In that moment, on a street corner one block away, Sergeant Jesse Cook spoke with young Sidney Levy about what could be making his delivery horse act so excited. It was 5:12 a.m.
3. It Seemed Eternity
THOMAS CHASE’S MORNING walk was hurried. Already a few minutes late for his early shift as a ticket clerk at the Ferry Building, he fast-walked down a sidewalk three blocks South of Market. Also called “South of the Slot” for being south of Market Street’s cable car slot, the district Thomas walked was a working-class neighborhood of factories and clustered, cheaply built lodging houses painted with ads and overcrowded with transient laborers and immigrant workers. “North of the Slot were the theaters, hotels, and shopping district, the banks and the staid, respectable business houses,” author Jack London wrote of Market Street’s class demarcation line. “South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the working class.” Smoke from fifty of the city’s sixty-six foundries wafted through its narrow alleys and well-worn streets where congested tenements shared party walls with blacksmith shops and taverns, wedged in among railroad yards and warehouses. Its sidewalks at the five o’clock hour were almost empty, and the air was warm and dry, what many locals called—with pardonable erroneousness—“earthquake weather.” Thomas noticed the pleasant “clear and bright” conditions, and he particularly noticed the stillness: “not a breath of air was stirring.”
This part of the South of Market district east to the waterfront was built above what was once the shallow waters of Mission Bay. As with the streets near the waterfront a few blocks north, this “fill land” was an unstable layer of mud and trash and rotted wood leveled off atop the thick sedimentary layer of old bay clay and topped with brick streets, concrete sidewalks, and heavy buildings. Its hidden threat snaked south and west in fingers of soft “fill” stretching deep into the city, and the crowded urban landscape above was little more than a brittle veneer masking deep voids where marshy lake beds and creeks once ran.
One of these underground spurs of soft soil reached west beneath the city more than two miles through South of Market and into the Mission. There it crossed Valencia Street directly beneath the Valencia Hotel, fixed on a stone foundation but perched on ground that was soft, sandy fill to a depth of more than forty feet. When it was constructed in 1888, the four-story building (then the Hillenbrand Hotel) was the tallest in the district, and in 1906, updated only in name, it still dominated the street, with bold five-foot-tall letters reading “VALENCIA ST. HOTEL” painted across the top of its wood siding visible for blocks.
At 5:12 a.m., predawn light began to shine through the Valencia Hotel’s front windows and glass-paned double front doors into its lobby, where the night clerk was making his morning wake-up calls to roomers—weekly and monthly boarders—for work shifts or early trains. Off the back of the lobby in the all-night cafe, two groups of men played cards, drank coffee, and a few, having worked night shifts, sipped beer. Henry Powell, a police lieutenant on his morning patrol, checked in with the clerk, then walked through the cafe where “[e]verything was peaceful and orderly.”
* * *
At that moment, seven miles from the peaceful lobby of the Valencia, the force of decades of accumulated strain and shear stress from the creeping of the Pacific Plate against the North American Plate overcame the strength of the rock crust and erupted in a break along the San Andreas Fault. The focus—the point of the break’s initiation—was at least five miles beneath the seabed where the fault runs beneath the forty-foot-deep Pacific waters of the Gulf of the Farallones, and the epicenter—the point on the water’s surface directly above the focus—was only two miles west of San Francisco’s western shore. The break was horizontal, a strike-slip fracture where the crust on each side moved horizontally past the other. And the movement was right lateral, so for a person standing on either side of the fault line, the ground on the far side of the fault ripped loose in a rightward direction. The moment magnitude was an estimated 7.9 with a release of accumulated energy in the elastic rebound of the crust—the springing of bedrock back into its original shape after snapping loose from years of strain—roughly equivalent to detonating more than eleven million tons of TNT (greater than seven hundred times the force of the atomic detonation over Hiroshima).
Seismic shockwaves shot out in all directions. Initial primary waves pulsated through the ground and seawater at the estimated velocity of nearly three miles per second, compressing and dilating—pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling—the water and rock and soil as they traveled. Stronger secondary waves followed through the ground at slightly slower velocities of roughly two miles per second with the resulting shearing forces violently shaking the ground from side to side. Primary and secondary shockwaves reached the ground’s surface quickly and at full strength because the rupture was relatively shallow, and the surface waves combined side-to-side jerking with up-and-down motions and crossed the ground like swells of water crossing a still pond.
* * *
Clarence Judson, a thirty-six-year-old railroad mechanic, was wading into the surf of Ocean Beach on the western shore of San Francisco. He had left his home three blocks away—where his wife, Nellie, their two-year-old son, Robert, and their newborn twin girls, Anita and Florence, were still asleep—and walked the road through the sand dunes to the beach for his customary early morning swim. Clarence left his shoes, robe, and hat on the sand, walked into the water, and was chest-deep when “a breaker larger than usual came in and shot away up the beach.” It almost took him off his feet, and before he could get out, “instantly there came such a shock” that it threw him to his knees. He tried to get up but was thrown down again. Clarence, “dazed and stunned,” was “tossed about” by larger and larger waves, his “ears full of salt water and about a gallon” in his stomach. Three times he was “thrown down” and “only by desperate fighting” did he escape the crashing tides of water and reach the sand.
“The motion of the quake was like the waves of the ocean—about twenty feet between crests—but they came swift and choppy, with a kind of grinding noise.” Clarence tried to run through the sand to grab his shoes, robe, and hat, but he felt “paralyzed.” Each successive shockwave shook the ground so violently, he could not get his feet to land where he aimed: “I reached for my shoes and landed with both feet onto my hat, twice.” He managed to get into his shoes and robe “after being thrown to the ground a few more times.” Worrying for his sleeping wife and babies, he ran staggering “like a drunken man” through the sand dunes onto the road, already “badly cracked,” toward his house “at top speed.”
Leading tremors whipped through the Richmond District, and less than a half second after smashing ashore, they reached Ernest and Louise Adams, asleep on the second floor of their wood-frame house on the north end of 24th Avenue. Their bedroom window afforded them a view over Lobos Creek and the sand dunes of China Beach, and on a clear day they could see across the waters of South Bay and the Golden Gate to the heights of Mount Tamalpais above Point Bonita Lighthouse and the Marin Headlands. The violent shock threw Ernest out of bed, and his first waking impression was feeling the morning air fill the bedroom and seeing the side wall “dashed to the ground.” The floor was moving beneath him, creaking and jerking as the shaking grew stronger, and with his wife he “crawled down the stairs amid flying glass and timber and plaster” and made a dash for the street.
To the south, the shock rippled through Golden Gate Park, almost empty at that hour. The force toppled pillars of the park’s stone gates, snapped large sections of trees down onto cracking walkways, damaged the Temple of Music, collapsed the roof of the Sharon Building covering the indoor children’s playground, and turned the “earthquake-proof” Sweeny Observatory atop Strawberry Hill into ruins.
To the north, the vibrations swept east through the hills of the Presidio military post, opening cracks through the grass of the parade grounds and throwing chimneys from the Army General Hospital. Soldiers sprinted from the two-story enlisted quarters, expecting the structure to topple and trap them inside. The earthquake jolted the two-and-a-half-story wood-frame quarters of Major William Stephenson, who awoke to his “bed sliding about on its castors” and the house “jerking, swaying and groaning like a ship in a heavy sea.” He lay in bed hearing plaster crumbling onto floors and picture frames crashing and glass shattering and expected “any jerk to be the last.”
But the jerking continued as the wall of devastation barreled east from the open Presidio grounds into the residential streets of Cow Hollow and Pacific Heights, where seventy-eight-year-old Eugenia Poston likened the leading wave of tremors to an “unwonted stir” of a “hollow rumble, creaking, crashing.” The retired schoolteacher “sprang up, or was thrown out” of bed by the stronger secondary waves that followed: “the convulsive upheaval of Mother Earth, rocking, twisting, wrenching, as if torn from her moorings.” She grabbed her robe, ran to the door as tables and chairs danced out of her way, and reached her hallway where “the side wall seemed to have sprung from the roof—light poured in from above—and plaster, lathes, brick—was falling through the opening.”
One mile south, surface waves shot east from Golden Gate Park and beneath the narrow, two-story, wood-frame house where seven-year-old John Conlon was “awakened from a sound sleep” by his bed and house quaking. His father, a fire department battalion chief, rushed into John’s room, grabbed him and his younger brother, and herded them “into a doorway for protection.”
* * *
Stronger shockwaves rolled through block after block of two- and three-story homes. Violent convulsions sent church steeples crashing onto streets and sidewalks and brick chimneys like wrecking balls into bedrooms and neighbors’ homes. In her home near the park Panhandle (a newer neighborhood soon known as Haight-Ashbury), a young girl who was not frightened by the initial tremors “thought it was time to get up” once the vibrations grew. As she reached her door, the chimney smashed through her ceiling and into her bedroom in a pile of bricks and mortar. With the house shaking and morning light shining through the jagged hole of ripped shingles and snapped roof joists and trusses, she climbed over brick piles with bare feet to escape.
But many residents were caught in their beds, still asleep as falling chimneys bored through their ceilings. Twenty-four-year-old William Carr was crushed to death in his bed by a falling chimney, and another fractured the skull of twenty-one-year-old Henry Magill, who was rushed by his father to a nearby house for treatment but died within hours. The chimney of a three-floor residence crashed through the ceiling of sixty-year-old maid Annie Whelan’s top-floor bedroom and crushed her in her bed. She was found by the family who employed her after they climbed up from their second-floor bedrooms. Annie’s only obituary was a brief mention in the listing of known victims in the next day’s paper reporting she was “killed while asleep.”
A few blocks away, twelve-year-old Marion Baldwin slept through the first few tremors. Her parents had returned late from their Palace Hotel dinner and let her sleep. Now she dreamed she was on a boat and “could hear the creaking and the roaring and the noise of waves as they bounced around and bounced around, and then something hit us!” She opened her eyes and realized the jolt in her dream was her dresser hitting her bed. Her senses were overtaken by violent jerks and ominous sounds. Her room was “going from side to side” and the house filled with “the noise of things falling and flapping.” After “more jerks,” she “thought it was the end of the world.”
Surface waves reached Emma Burke as she tried to sleep in the bedroom of her fourth-floor flat. Her husband was in the kitchen lighting the gas stove to heat water for coffee. “The shock came” and tossed Emma’s bed against the wall. She jumped up and grabbed her bed’s jumping footboard, trying to keep her balance to reach the door in the darkness as a din of “rumbles, crackling noises, and falling objects” filled the air. The apartment building torqued and twisted and the door wedged shut. Emma pulled on the doorknob with all her weight, yelling, and from the other side her husband pushed, and the door yanked open only as intensifying shocks twisted the walls back. They braced together in the doorframe: “It grew constantly worse, the noise deafening, the crash of dishes, falling pictures, the rattle of the flat tin roof, bookcases being overturned, the piano hurled across the parlor, the groaning and straining of the building itself.” A large, 125-pound framed painting smashed to the floor of their flat. So too did the chimney through their ceiling. They noticed neither as they gripped the doorframe, hoping their building would stand.
The earthquake caught most residents throughout the city asleep. People not crushed or trapped awoke to a violent assault on all their senses: unfamiliar sounds of cracking walls and crumbling bricks, sights of streets opening and homes falling, the smell of burning gas, the taste of thick dust and soot, the pain of broken glass on bare feet or the agony of a shin bone broken by a wooden beam. For some the shock alone was too much to survive. Forty-four-year-old Margaret Bullard died in her Lombard Street home of heart failure soon after the earthquake hit. So too did young fifteen-year-old Ottilie Kettner, who reportedly rushed into her father’s room when the awful shock came and shouted: “‘Oh papa, I am dying,’” then “fell dead in [her] father’s arms.”
* * *
Surface waves rolling into the Mission District caught eight-year-old Dewitt Baldwin up early for his piano lesson in his parents’ third-floor flat on Dolores Street. “I had gotten as far as sitting up with my feet over the side of the bed when totally unexpectedly the house began to shake violently.” He heard dishes break and watched furniture move. He had felt earthquakes before, but this was “a more destructive one than [I] had known.” A few blocks away, another eight-year-old, Gregory Lighthouse, was also awake and sitting up in bed “when the house started rocking.” Still feeling guilty for staying out past his curfew the night before, he thought God was punishing him. “I tried to pray, but could not.” His father rushed into his room: “I don’t remember what he said, but I will never forget the terror and frightful expression.”
Shockwaves slowed and strengthened as they pulsated into the soft fill land beneath the Valencia Hotel, bouncing off bedrock and back again through the loose soil, doubling and tripling the shaking of the foundation just as police lieutenant Henry Powell stepped out the hotel’s front door onto the sidewalk. The vibrations made him “hurry [his] paces” toward the street out from under the three floors of iron fire escapes and wooden bay windows above him. Secondary waves then bounced and whipped the street as if it were the surface of a shaking bowl of gelatin, dancing and rolling “in waves like a rough sea in a squall.” Two sets of cable car rails “lifted themselves out of the pavement, and bent and snapped.”
Powell found it “impossible” to keep his balance as he ran from the hotel. Wood-frame houses around him “were cracking and bending and breaking the same as the street itself and the car tracks.” Sinkholes that were swallowing the street and sidewalk crept nearer to the hotel. Still running away, Powell “heard the hotel creak and roar and crash,” and he turned back to see the night clerk sprinting out the front door with one of the men who had been playing cards in the cafe seconds before. Powell glanced up at the four-story face of bay windows and fire escapes, which “lurched forward as if the foundation were dragged backward from under it, and crumpled down” over the pavement.
There was no cloud of destruction or pile of debris: “It did not fall to pieces and spray itself all over the place, but telescoped down on itself like a concertina.” The fourth floor and roof, seemingly undamaged, settled on a forward tilt at street level. The bottom three floors—filled with at least fifty people—had simply vanished, sunk deep into an underground void or smashed to flattened oblivion.
* * *
The earthquake reached Van Ness Avenue, a residential north-south thoroughfare running between the Western Addition’s neighborhoods and the older city to the east—Nob Hill, Russian Hill, North Beach, Chinatown, and the banking and harbor districts. Among the homes of the wealthy lining the wide boulevard was the three-story Victorian home of seventy-five-year-old James Stetson, president of the California Street Cable Railroad. The “very severe shock” woke him up and grew “so violent that it nearly threw [him] out of bed.” A large bookcase and china cabinet in his room were both thrown to the floor, and plaster chunked onto the mantel and tables. A widower with two housemaids, James made for the door, carefully aiming his steps on a shaking floor covered with shards of shattered glass and jagged pieces of broken china.
Two blocks away, a twelve-year-old boy woke up to the shaking on his third-floor bedroom and buried his head in the pillow. “[I]t felt like this was the end of the world. I really did some praying.” Violent convulsions yanked the house side to side, slinging the top floor in concussive jerks that wrenched the wooden frame apart and snapped load-bearing beams. An outer wall collapsed and pulled his bedroom wall away in an explosion of cracked plaster and splintered siding. “It opened up the side of the house, and here I was, looking up in the sky.”
Two blocks east of Van Ness, Examiner reporter Fred Hewitt was walking on a sidewalk past the sprawling columned wings and domed top of City Hall when the shock came. He was “thrown prone” into the street on his back “and the pavement pulsated like a living thing.” Tall buildings all around him “wobbled and veered” as “[c]rash following crash resounded on all sides” and “terrified humanity streamed out into the open in [an] agony of despair.” Lying in the street, Fred caught a blurry image of his friends running and yelled, “Keep in the middle of the street, Mac!”
When leading tremors rolled beneath City Hall, Officers Edward Plume and Jeremiah Dwyer were each working the desk shift on the first floor in the City Hall Police Station. At first, Officer Plume felt only “a slight trembling,” but in a few seconds it strengthened. Officer Dwyer said, “That’s an earthquake!” and Plume “was thrown clear out of the chair.” Both were at the mercy of the massive building torquing violently above and on all sides. The power went out. Chunks of masonry crashed down the flue, tossing burning wood and cinders from the fireplace and filling the dark room with smoke and soot.
Seismic convulsions rippled up through City Hall’s structure to the top of its towering dome 330 feet above the city where the Goddess of Progress statue teetered in creaks, side to side. The rumble in the ground below grew to a deafening roar, and vibrations intensified to violent shaking, surpassing the building’s structural limits. With insufficient cross supports, the massive dome’s steel frame rippled and bent, and its one- and two-ton masses of masonry and tall columns cracked free and peeled off in chunks. Immense sixty-foot-tall decorative pillars of the outer colonnade fractured, sending cornices and eaves from the façade crashing to the ground.
Down in the first-floor police office, Officer Plume grabbed at things in the dark to steady himself while “the noise from the outside became deafening.” Pillars cracked “with reports like cannon, then falling with crashes like thunder.” Outside the office doors, “[h]uge stones and lumps of masonry came crashing down,” and the chandelier in the grand lobby crashed to the ground. Plume felt like he was riding a ship in a heavy storm, “expecting every moment to be buried under a mass of ruins.” He shouted to Officer Dwyer to “get out.” They both rushed for the door, “stumbling over chairs and desks and other litter” before making it out onto Larkin Street.
* * *
Leading tremors ripped up the steep incline of Nob Hill. A police sergeant who lay awake with his wife in the darkness of their bedroom in their Broadway Street flat noticed the air was unusually “stuffy” and “oppressive” and asked her if the windows were open. They were. He looked out and noticed “a peculiarly beautiful pink sky.” At that moment, the apartment building “began to jump and twist and crackle with a noise that sounded as if somebody was trying to crash a giant cigar box under a giant heel.” His wife grabbed him: “My God! What’s that?” As the wooden beams and walls of their flat shook and twisted, they rushed to grab their two young daughters.
A few blocks away in his Sutter Street home, photographer Arnold Genthe “had scarcely been asleep” since his late-night walk home from the opera when the “terrifying sound” of his Chinese porcelain shattering on the floor awakened him. His “whole house was creaking and shaking,” and his chandelier swung “like a pendulum.” Plaster crumbled from the ceiling, and he covered his head, telling himself to “accept what comes.”
A block up the steep incline in an apartment house, Sarah Phillips and her roommate Lillian Simpson were both awakened by the shock. Lillian saw “pictures falling” and “the walls apparently caving in.” Sarah jumped out of her bed and “caught the china cabinet as it was about to fall.” Lillian rushed to help her, “glad to have it to hold, as if not we could not stand on our feet.”
Another block up the hill, Ada Higgins and her husband, Jack, held each other in bed. The earthquake shook them “like rats in a trap,” and Ada felt certain they “would be buried in the crash.” Convulsions tossed the rooftop water tank off the apartment building, and on its fall it took out the back stairs, damaged support beams, and crashed into the corner of their bedroom. The room filled with the sounds of neighbors’ screams and Ada’s screams and “crushing timbers, falling tile, dishes, and glasses crashing and breaking, pictures falling.”
Vibrations sent rooftop chimneys tearing into living spaces and smashing onto streets all up and down Nob Hill. Thirty-six-year-old Sarah Corbus was killed in her second-floor bedroom of her father’s Jones Street home when the chimney slammed directly onto her bed “in an avalanche of brick.” One more block up Jones, school principal Jean Parker was killed in her bed when the chimney of her two-story home fell through her ceiling and crushed her. “Miss Jean Parker” was later eulogized as “one of the best-known teachers ever taught in S.F. schools.”
Surface waves rippled along the peak of California Street, shaking iron fences and the opulent woodwork of mansions built for Crocker and Colton and Stanford and Hopkins and Flood. Bells atop Grace Church clanged with discordant notes. Stone garden urns tipped and brick gateposts toppled and statues fell and chandeliers crashed. In the Stanford mansion, the earthquake awakened Chinese butler Ah Wing, who “could not stand steadily” during the shaking and, through his upstairs window, could see the chimneys of nearby homes “tumbling down.” But through Nob Hill’s firm ground of sandstone and shale, seismic waves traveled faster without intensifying, and most of the hill’s mansions stood largely undamaged. The Stanford walls stood “unhurt,” and even its chimneys “stood the quake well.”
* * *
But down in the crowded working-class streets South of Market, where construction was not so sound and much of the ground unstable, the experience was starkly different. Seismic waves rolled into the soft fill beneath streets and buildings, the vibrations slowing and amplifying, bouncing back and forth through the clay and mud and exaggerating even initial minor tremors into the most violent jolting. Even stronger shocks followed, liquefying fill land and jerking the brittle shell beyond its breaking point. The effect on old, closely built, wood-frame apartment buildings and hotels was devastating.
Seven-year-old Peter Mullins awoke to his “house in motion,” and even though his parents “remained cool,” he could hear frightened neighbors running into the street. Surface waves crossed 11th Street and rocked the tightly wedged rows of two-story apartment flats along an alleyway where Edward and Anna Butler slept in their second-floor bedroom. Large chunks of brick masonry from the three-story brick factory next door to them bored down through their building. Both suffered serious wounds, and Anna’s were mortal—she would die the next day, along with their neighbor Mary Donovan, also hit in her bed by masonry from the same wall.
Leading tremors crossed 10th Street and woke up thirty-eight-year-old liquor merchant Hermann Meyer, who had been sleeping in the front room of his Mission Street home. He was rushing to go check on his wife, Julia, and their five-year-old daughter when “a chimney crashed through the roof and buried him.” Newspapers would report Hermann “was conveyed to a hospital and died the next night.” But no report of what it was like for Julia to find her husband so broken, of whether they were able to speak with each other as she pulled the bricks off his wounded body, or what must have gone through their young daughter’s mind in the sad final hours of her father’s life.
Vibrations ripped eastward across 9th Street, then 8th, then 7th. Through block after block South of the Slot, the scene repeated itself: sleeping families falling victim to the force of an earthquake turning the ground beneath them to jelly and reducing their rickety, wooden apartment houses to matchsticks. These “cheap mantraps,” writer Mary Austin observed, “folded in like pasteboard.” And death came in different ways. Fifteen-year-old Myrtle Muge died of suffocation beneath a fallen support beam. Twenty-four-year-old Cecilia O’Toole also suffocated when the large picture over her bed fell and crushed her face. Adolph Schwinn, a grocer, was killed when a falling wall fractured his skull. And John Judge, a locomotive engineer, died of a heart attack while fighting to open a jammed door to free his family from their shaking apartment.
In no other part of San Francisco was the destruction from the earthquake so complete or deaths so numerous as South of Market, and the area surrounding 6th and Howard Streets was ground zero. Once a swampy wetland where subterranean lakes were covered with a crust of peat moss, when the first piles were driven into the muck to construct Mission Street one block north, they reached a depth of eighty feet without hitting bedrock. Timbers were stacked and sand was poured until leveled and paved at official grade, and on this fill land were crowded blocks divided by narrow, thirty-foot-wide alleyways lined with cheap two- and three-story wood-frame tenements. The deepest, most unstable fill lay beneath the northwest corner of 6th and Howard Streets, where taller lodging houses stood side by side by side like dominos. On the corner at Howard Street was the four-story Brunswick House, then beside it the three-story Ohio House, then the three-story Lormor, then the four-story Nevada on the alley corner. The four buildings were home to 120 people or more at the moment of impact.
Among them was eighteen-year-old Edna Ketring, asleep in her room on the second floor of the Brunswick. She was one week away from her wedding day, and her fiancé, Thomas Bowes, was two rooms down. She leapt to her feet when the building began shaking: “The walls were cracking open, the plaster was falling in showers, the furniture was being tossed about.” She rushed into the hallway filling with dozens of other guests, and she caught sight of Thomas running out of his room to find her.
On the floor above them, another guest, James Jacobs, “jumped out of bed and made a grab for [his] clothes,” and when the stronger shockwaves hit, they felt to him like a “second quake.” Through the thin walls of his small room, James heard the “shrieks” of other boarders and the ominous sounds of structural failure—the “noises of cracking, and rending.”
Three buildings away on the fourth floor of the Nevada House, the violent shaking of William Stehr’s bed and noise of creaking timbers jarred him from sleep. He ran and opened his window overlooking the roofs of the Lormor and Ohio Houses. With the shaking so violent, he was about “to jump out of the window on to the roof” of the Lormor below him when the Lormor itself “collapsed with a deafening roar and spilled down in a cloud of dust.” Through his open window, William could hear “agonizing screams” of the people inside the Lormor as it fell. Its debris cloud rose and “choked” him and he backed away from the window, then heard another “crash.” Through the dust he saw the Ohio collapse and beyond it, the Brunswick “tumbling into a heap of ruins in a smother of dust.”
Inside the Brunswick, engaged couple Edna and Thomas had fought their way through the crowded hallway and were just three feet apart and reaching for each other when the ceiling caved in and everything went “intensely dark.” In his room on the floor above, James Jacobs felt the building break apart around him and “felt paralyzed as the building crackled downward and outward with a noise [he could not] describe.” He was “suffocated with the lime and dust,” and the space around him “was dark as a dungeon.” The Lormor and Ohio Houses had toppled sideways like dominos onto the Brunswick, and it split into three pieces: the south side fell onto Howard Street, the front pitched into 6th, and, as James described it, “the northwest corner of the building, diagonally back from the street corner, remained standing,” its broken rooms exposed like an open dollhouse.
Back up on the top floor of the Nevada House—the only one still standing—William Stehr threw clothes on to flee his own swaying building but could not escape his room: his door was jammed. And stronger jerking jammed it “faster and tighter.” His floor tilted and sank and he knew the building was falling. He “hung on instinctively to the door handle while the whole floor dropped.” On his room’s grinding slide down, William felt “three distinct bumps” as each floor beneath him flattened, and “[w]ith each bump came a frightful crash and cracking of timbers and glass and the cries of other people in the house.”
All four buildings had “collapsed like card houses.” And even stronger seismic shocks followed. One block away, the four-story wood-frame Corona House also sank into the fill, trapping or crushing at least three dozen boarders. Another block away, the newly built, three-story, timber-joisted masonry Kingsbury House toppled and crushed the wood-frame Girard House beside it, killing or entombing untold more. A police officer who responded later said the Girard was crushed “flat,” and guessed “some fifty or sixty people were killed at this spot.”
* * *
A few blocks away on Market Street, a world removed from the crowded, “cheap mantraps” south of its expanse, tremors reached the Palace Hotel as Chronicle newspaperman Frank Ames stared through its large windows at the palm trees and “bright and inviting” lights of its Grand Court. He saw the palms start to sway and thought it was an optical illusion, but then “the ground felt as if it were sinking under [his] feet.” Frank likened the sensation to riding “in a swiftly descending elevator.” He turned to see the Chronicle Building wavering and the Call Building rocking. Bricks and cornices smashed on the sidewalk around him, and horses broke free from a nearby carriage and ran past him, their eyes “big with terror.” By the time he reached an alcove for safety, the pavement was moving “in waves under [his] feet” and “the cobblestones of Market Street seemed alive.”
Five floors up, Enrico Caruso’s bed rocked him awake. He felt like he was “in a ship on the ocean” and thought he was dreaming of “crossing the water” back to Italy. But as the rocking intensified and chandeliers jangled and marble rattled, he went to the window, raised the shade, and saw “buildings toppling over, big pieces of masonry falling, and from the street below the cries and screams of men and women and children.”
Most guests in the hotel were jerked from sleep by the shock, awakening to plaster falling and lights crashing. Some stayed in bed gripping their blankets; many sprung to their feet to escape; and some were thrown to the floor. A man on the sixth floor was tossed from bed “and halfway across the room,” and a woman one story above him who woke up on the floor felt that the entire hotel had “turned on its axis.” Another said the building swayed “like the top of a tree in a heavy windstorm.”
One of the first shocks cut the building’s electricity, sending frightened, half-asleep guests stumbling into dark, crowded corridors as the shaking grew even stronger. Ominous, foreign sounds, “tremendous and indescribable,” filled their ears, “the roaring and cracking of falling timbers” and “breaking glass” and “the rumbling of the earth.” Young maids and bellboys ran through hallways “as if they were mad,” and guests wandered unclothed, aimless. A salesman from Detroit raced to the elevator shaft in his nightshirt and considered sliding down the cables but, worrying of fire, he ran through the shattered hallway window and descended the swinging fire escape in bare feet bloodied by broken glass. On the second floor, Caruso’s opera company manager, Ernest Goerlitz, held his wife in bed while chunks of the ceiling fell on the blanket he pulled up over their heads.
The scene was similar three blocks away in the taller St. Francis Hotel, where Melissa Carnahan awoke feeling she was “on a ship in a gale pounding against the rocks.” She woke up her husband, Will, who felt they were on a train “coming to a sudden halt or stop with grinding noises, twistings and jarrings, ending in a vicious bump.” Guests in the top floors feared the building would fall. On the tenth floor, St. Louis brewing millionaire August Busch felt the building swaying “from south to north like a tall poplar in a storm.” A physician visiting from Pasadena feared the hotel “would tip over,” and after running to the window to view the city, he “saw the big buildings waving like stalks in the wind.” Down on the second floor, a guest awoke to the sensation of his bed being lifted and dropped and lifted and dropped and worried “that the ten stories above us would fall, not allowing us to escape alive.”
The structure twisted, cracking walls and jamming doors. A man on the top floor trying to escape with his wife later remembered that their room door “required all my strength to open it.” In the dark hallway they found men “shouting and women screaming hysterically.” Without power, no elevators were running, and people “fell and rolled down the narrow stairway” even as the shaking continued.
* * *
Leading tremors rolled into Chinatown, sending bricks slicing through laundry lines and filling narrow alleyways with crashing balconies and smashed awnings. A thick dust cloud of grinded masonry and rafter dust from the initial tremors snuffed out the morning light on Commercial Street where a police officer felt the stronger secondary shockwaves hit: “Then the big twist came and the whole place seemed to rise up and sink down.” He yelled to his partner that he expected a tsunami from the bay. “The buildings began to give way and the crashes of falling cornices, walls and chimneys joined in the uproar.”
Seven-year-old Lily Soo-Hoo and her older sisters were all “woken up very rudely” in their parents’ third-floor apartment, and fifteen-year-old Hugh Kwong Liang and his cousins awoke in their second-floor room to their beds tossing and plaster falling. Police officers and early-rising merchants escaped the falling brick buildings of Sullivan and Baker Alleys to the safer, wider breadth of Jackson and Washington Streets, which soon filled with frightened, half-naked residents in full sprint for the open space of Portsmouth Square.
Up in the third-floor fire alarm office overlooking the square, James Kelly stood at the window watching the morning light—still twenty minutes from sunrise—cast across the stone of the Hall of Justice opposite him and spill over the grass and walkways below when the first tremors reached his building. He ran to the wall clock to time the earthquake’s duration, but the secondary shockwaves “became so severe” he feared a “danger of the walls and ceiling of the building falling” and could not count past nineteen seconds before running underneath the wide frame of a front window for safety. Across Portsmouth Square, James saw large, jagged pieces of the outer walls of the Hall of Justice’s bell tower shaken to the street, leaving higher sections clinging precariously to the frame.
The fire alarm office fell dark as gas lamps and electric lights went out. In the back room, shelves of glass-encased wet-cell batteries that powered the circuits were shaken into “a mass of glass”—the batteries were ruined, and all the “circuits were broken and disconnected.” Before the jerking even stopped, all fire department communications were severed and any street alarms with wires not already cut were rendered useless.
* * *
Convulsions ripped down Washington Street through Sergeant Jesse Cook’s harbor district beat, where the noise startled one of Cook’s officers, Harry Schmidt, as he grabbed a drink of water between stacked orange crates in the back of a wholesale fruit warehouse. “It sounded like thunder outside,” and around him “was a creaking and snapping of beams, and the rush of falling plaster, and all sorts of other jarring noises.” Schmidt rushed to the front of the building, “looking which way to dash” while hurtling orange crates fell into his path. He halted when he reached the front doorway, seeing men across the street waving for him to stay back. He heard “the pattering of bricks on the awning” above the sidewalk in front of him, “jumped back into the arch of the doorway,” and braced his hands over his face and head. The building’s upper front wall fell forward; it “crushed through the awning as if it were paper” into a pile on the sidewalk and through the doorway where he stood. His feet were covered by “dust and debris,” and the “wall of ruin and rubbish” blocked the entrance in front of him as high as his neck.
One block away, Sergeant Jesse Cook watched the surface shockwaves roll down Washington Street “like the waves of an ocean coming down the hill” before he took refuge in a doorway. He saw forty-four-year-old Frank Bodwell and his clerk crushed to death by a falling wall, the same wall he thought also killed his friend fruit merchant Tom Burns. But in the cloud of dust and chaos, Cook could not see Burns’s narrow escape: a short, heavy man, Burns had somehow managed to leap through a tight opening between walls of stacked wooden fruit boxes and onto the street clear of the raining brick. A chunk of masonry hit his heel and he twisted his ankle as he bolted for the open street where he collided with a stampede of panicked horses. Dazed, Burns ran toward the far side of the street until he saw a wall falling toward him, then ran for his life: “At that moment I believe I was beating every world’s record running against time, and running every way at once.” As he ran, the shaking pavement “opened and shut.”
In no section of the city were there more people awake and working when the earthquake hit than in the streets near the waterfront, where fruit sellers and produce merchants had been working for an hour or more. And in the fish market along Merchant Street, inside old, heavy, timber-joisted masonry stores on fill land, fishermen and fishmongers had been up even longer, weighing and cleaning and cutting and wrapping inside open-air brick stores. Handcarts of seafood and wagonloads of shad and bass and salmon crammed curbs outside. Eighteen-year-old Alex Paladini, working for his father’s business, Achille Paladini Fish Company, was helping unload a wagon when the shaking began. Immigrant workers and fishermen began running into the street, but Alex, accustomed to tremors, yelled for them to return: “It’ll be over in a minute!” Then secondary shockwaves hit, and the ground beneath the pavement liquefied and “Merchant Street began waving in billows, houses began to waggle and topple, horses screamed as the masonry crashed down on them and the wagons.” Alex “dropped the fish, quit business, and ran for shelter.”
Directly across the street, the three-story brick building of Enea Fish Company “fell outward on top of the men and horses.” Alex stopped in his tracks and retreated into his father’s store, a newer building that “stood solid.” But the Enea building’s “whole front fell across the street as if it had been pushed out.” And “the dust of the masonry” of the Enea building’s collapse “blew across” the street into Paladini’s building, and stores neighboring both sides of it also “collapsed and crumbled,” burying workers inside and deliverymen and horses on the sidewalk. Relentless shockwaves hit with stronger jolts and shook more bricks loose and kept survivors in huddled groups inside doorways and under wagons. But already the carnage on just that single block was complete: dozens of men crushed or trapped, dead or dying.
* * *
South of Market, tremors reached the brittle shell of 1st Street where Thomas Chase fast-walked to work. Pulsations of primary waves arrived as “a low distant rumble” and stopped him mid-stride. He stepped off the sidewalk and turned his head to listen as the deep, approaching sound grew “louder and louder.” At once, the stronger secondary waves hit, thrusting the ground sideways and jerking it back and then over again and each time faster and harder. Slung side to side, Thomas struggled to stay on his feet, jumping out into the open street.
The fill land liquefied, and the paved surface of cobblestone and concrete began cracking. Thomas noticed that buildings “crumbled like card houses” the length of 1st Street. Overhead, power lines and streetcar wires “snapped like threads” and whipped loose onto the street “writhing and hissing like reptiles.” He jumped back to avoid the sparking electric lines, but the shaking grew stronger, knocking him flat on the street. On all sides, glass pieces and bricks crashed onto cobblestones, which “danced like corn in a popper.” He worried that the two-hundred-foot-tall brick shot tower above him would fall, but it stood even as the flag at its top “whipped and snapped like the popping of a whip.”
* * *
Tremors reached the eastern waterfront and rippled up through the Ferry Building, bending the flagpole above its clock tower and dislodging the gears of its giant clock, freezing the hour and minute hands a few seconds past 5:15—three minutes fast to the end. It had taken less than three seconds for the first seismic waves from the break in the fault to span the entire city. And the Pacific Plate was still ripping loose from the North American Plate along the fault northwest and southeast at the speed of about three miles per second in both directions, splitting and crushing bedrock that had been locked at depth with the rock mass of each plate tearing free from its strained position, then springing back into place. And as the fault fracture lengthened, the increased surface friction and violent releases of accumulated energy with each elastic rebound of bedrock produced a range of seismic convulsions that propagated new shockwaves to smash through the city, one after another after another, second after second after second.
For all its strength, it was the sounds of the earthquake that would be forever stamped on the memories of survivors. One man likened the noise that rolled through the ground beneath him to “distant thunder” that grew in volume “much as it does when a train approaches one through a tunnel.” A musician related it to “a thousand violins playing off key.” Punctuating the roar was the clatter of destruction, “the sound of groaning lumber, the creaking of nails and spikes being drawn, the snapping of painted woodwork,” the loud report of “cracking bricks,” and “the rattle and jar of everything loose.” Above it all were the awful screams of human pain, the “crying of the children,” and “a horrible chorus of human cries of agony.” Thirty-nine-year-old art gallery owner Henry Atkins later wrote the “indescribable sound” was one “you feel rather than hear.”
And the shock of the earthquake reached far beyond San Francisco. Primary seismic waves rolled eastward through the bay, followed through the ground by secondary shockwaves that smashed into east Bay Area communities. In Oakland, Agnes Ehrenberg “huddled up in bed,” afraid her parents’ house would collapse, and the next day wrote it felt “much jerkier” than riding “in a small boat on a stormy sea.” Frank Leach, superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, awoke to his Oakland home “jumping up and down a good part of a foot at every jump” and “terrifying noises, the cracking and creaking of timber” and the “thumping of falling bricks coursing down the roof sides from the chimney tops.” In Berkeley, twenty-two-year-old Ivan Rankin awoke “feeling something shaking me like a dog does a rat in its jaws.” His house, only two years old, “groaned, creaked, and cracked,” and out his window Ivan could see “the chimney come tumbling down” off his neighbor’s house. Also in Berkeley, Gertrude Atherton “sprang out of bed and opened the door” before it jammed, and as the “earth danced, and leaped, and plunged, and roared,” she worried everyone in her hotel was “going to the bottom of the Pacific.”
The shock rolled northward to Sausalito, where William Hancock was admiring the “rosy dawn” of the “lovely morning” from his window in the top floor of a boardinghouse. He “felt a slight trembling of the room” followed by a “crash”—part of his ceiling was pulled away as the cupola of the house collapsed down three stories into the lobby and chimneys fell outward. Further north in San Rafael, the shock struck US Ninth Circuit Judge William Morrow’s home “like a cyclone.” Vases were thrown to the floor and the house twisted “as though it was in the grip of a demon.” Even further north in Glen Ellen—forty miles from San Francisco—writer Charmian London awoke to the shaking in the upstairs bedroom she shared with her husband, Jack. Through the window, she endured the “sickening onrush of motion” while “watching the tree-tops thrash crazily” through “the longest half-minute I ever lived through.”
Tremors ripped southward down the peninsula to Stanford University where twenty-two-year-old Laurence Klauber—only a few hours into sleep after a late-night return from the opera up in the city—was awakened by “the noise of the falling buildings.” The jerking motion was so strong, he noted, that “you couldn’t fall, because when you started to, you were jerked in another direction.” And further south in San Jose, Anna Poston felt her end of the hotel where she was staying “lift clear off the ground, and then the other.” She did not try to get out of bed because she “would have been unable to stand.” Even there the shaking “seemed like hours.”
The great earthquake was felt as far north as Oregon, as far east as Nevada, and south beyond Los Angeles. Across the country, the pen of the seismograph machine at the weather bureau in Washington, DC, registered the “violent agitation.” The Pacific and North American Plates had displaced in some places more than twenty feet horizontally and six feet vertically, and the rupture in the San Andreas Fault stretched from near Cape Mendocino to San Juan Bautista, a distance of 296 miles.
* * *
The final vibrations rolled through San Francisco as Mary Ashe Miller, up in a home on Telegraph Hill, found herself asking, “Will it never stop? Will it never stop?” Finally, mercifully, it did stop. Precisely how long San Francisco was shaken is impossible to pinpoint. For those who endured the great earthquake’s dragging seconds, it seemed eternal. Reporter James Hopper wrote that it lasted a “hideous minute and a quarter,” and Examiner newspaperman Jack Barrett wrote, “It seemed a quarter of an hour before it stopped,” but edited that to “about three minutes.” There were some who thought it lasted “not more than 25 seconds,” or “about 30 seconds,” others who felt that it “kept up without stop for three or four minutes,” and even a few who recorded that it “seemed five or six minutes,” or even longer.
Because primary and secondary waves travel at different speeds, people further from the epicenter sensed the shaking for longer than those nearer, just as those in homes on soft fill land endured much stronger vibrations than those on bedrock. The duration—as with the intensity—varied by location. Professor Alexander McAdie of the city’s weather bureau, who was so intent on keeping accurate earthquake data that he kept a watch, open notebook, pencil, and electric flashlight on his bedside table, estimated it took him at least six seconds to wake up and begin timing, and by his watch the shaking lasted “about forty seconds duration” from that point. Sometime the next morning, a clerk in the city’s circuit court noted in the court minutes “a most violent earthquake shock, lasting for 48 seconds.” The next day’s newspaper would also declare “the shock lasted forty-eight seconds,” a duration adopted by many eyewitnesses who later recounted the great earthquake, even if a few added the context of human experience to the sterile number: “I am told that the shake only lasted 48 seconds,” one man wrote, “but it seemed to me nearer 48 minutes.”
After interviewing hundreds of witnesses and collecting data “from every damaged area as well as from records from seismograph stations throughout the world,” the State Earthquake Investigation Commission published a report on the disaster two years later concluding that “the sensible duration of the shock was about one minute.” Today, the US Geological Survey reaffirms that assessment, estimating that a foreshock was followed twenty to twenty-five seconds later by “strong shaking” that lasted forty-five to sixty seconds.
No matter the earthquake’s precise duration, James Hopper felt “incredulity at the mere length of the thing, the fearful stubbornness of it.” Thousands of eyewitness accounts survive as monuments to small, private impressions of those slow ticks of the clock, each person’s attempt to convey their own longest minute of indescribable devastation and fear and confusion through colorless words on flat paper. Of them all, perhaps Walter Scott, a young salesman shaken awake in his downtown lodging house, found a way to describe the time best in a letter to his aunt: “how long it lasted God alone knows—it seemed eternity.”
4. Fire and No Water
“THEN I NOTED the great silence.” From his third-floor hotel room, James Hopper observed “when the roar of crumbling buildings was over and only a brick was falling here and there like the trickle of a spent rain, this silence continued, and it was an awful thing.” He looked through the hole in the wall where his window had been just a minute before. In that minute, he had felt “like a fish in a frying pan” in his bed and watched the window jerked from its frame and the back wall of his hotel fall onto “little wooden houses in the alley below,” the bricks smashing through their roofs “like tissue paper.” Now after the awful “snarl” of the violent shaking, he heard only the “awful” silence. Hopper bounded down two flights of stairs to the street that was already “full of people, half-clad, disheveled, but silent, absolutely silent.”
Two blocks away, photographer Arnold Genthe also noticed an “ominous quiet.” His frightened Japanese valet, Hamada, gathered a basket of food and headed for the door, saying, “Master, very bad earthquake—many days nothing to eat—I go, yes,” then bounded down the stairs. Out the window, Genthe saw “a number of men and women, half-dressed, rushing to the middle of the street for safety.” The same silence filled the air down in the Mission, where eight-year-old Gregory Lighthouse followed his parents and little sister outside and “noticed the quietness that people stood in groups and only seemed to whisper.”
A few people awakened by the earthquake fell back to sleep. James Warren and his friend Sam Mack, both visiting from Sacramento and staying in the St. Francis Hotel, were “shaken up pretty lively with the shock,” but feeling their building was safe, they returned to sleep. In his Mission District home, eight-year-old William Dunne was in bed with his parents, and although all three awoke during the shaking—his father covering his mother and him and saying, “It’s an earthquake”—all three “dropped off to sleep again.” Even the violent shaking and deafening racket was not enough to wake some residents from their deep slumber. Seven-year-old Alex Young was “sound asleep until awakened by [his] father’s touch, feeling only the last few vibrations of the quake.” And five-year-old Anna Meakin “did not even feel the earthquake.” Her first memory of that morning “was the comfortable sensation of being dressed while waking up.… Everyone seemed disturbed about something.”
In their home on Lower Nob Hill, police sergeant William Ross and his wife, Permelia, were both awake and about to head outside but wondered about the silence from her uncle David’s room. William ran upstairs and traversed “the fallen furniture and debris” in the room and found the Murphy bed folded upright—it had “shut up like a jack knife” with David inside. William wrenched the bed open and found David “nearly dead from fright and suffocation.” A few blocks away in Hayes Valley, the guests in Charlotte and Hiram Daniels’s home went to check on their hosts, who were asleep in a folding bed in another room, having given them use of their own bed. As in the Ross home, the bed was folded up against the wall. When the guests pulled it down, Charlotte gasped for air, having nearly suffocated, but her husband beside her was dead—he had sat up when the first tremors hit, and the subsequent shaking had sprung the bed up, breaking his neck. He was sixty-six. Charlotte, also sixty-six, was now a widow after forty-eight years of marriage.
South of Market, Thomas Chase picked himself up off 1st Street’s cracked pavement and surveyed the damage around him: holes and depressions where there should be pavement, bent streetcar rails, and a half-collapsed apartment house with its rooms exposed “like a dollhouse.” People had run or been thrown onto the sidewalk “in their night clothes and barefoot, moaning and wringing their hands.” A man in a third-floor flat ran to his window “and saw that the streets were full of people, who looked like frenzied ants whose home had been stirred up with a stick.” Another man ran to his fourth-floor hotel window and “raised the shades, and looked out” to see people “running out of the houses helter-skelter in all sorts of attires, yelling, gesticulating, talking excitedly and many could only gasp.” But a nurse who made it outside noticed the “quietness of everyone” in her neighborhood and guessed they “were evidently struck dumb with awe.”
“I did not think there were so many people in our street until the morning of the quake,” one man noted with surprise of the scores of neighbors he had never before met and who now “swarmed out of their houses like bees out of a hive.” As a woman on Nob Hill observed, they “seemed to grow in the street like magic—all of them keeping well in the middle of the road.” Sidewalks and yards and streets throughout the city filled with people of all ages and all classes shocked and dazed and wide-eyed, most wearing only what they wore to bed or were able to grab on their rush to escape their houses, flats, and hotel rooms. “The streets presented a weird appearance,” Arnold Genthe observed, “mother and children in their nightgowns, men in pajamas and dinner coat, women scantily dressed with evening wraps hastily thrown over them.” South of Market, six-year-old Etta Siegel’s father took her and her brother and sister outside; her siblings did not have “a stitch of clothes on,” and she was wearing “just an old top shirt.” Out near Golden Gate Park, Emma Burke looked from her fourth-floor apartment and saw a neighbor rush into the street “in her nightclothes,” carrying her baby. Emma yelled down that she should cover herself, and the neighbor replied that her husband was getting something for her.
As people cast their vision beyond the damage to their bedrooms or living spaces, they were confronted with a tragedy incomprehensible in scope: their city broken in every direction as far as the eye could see. Many were silent as they huddled in the middle of streets—away from buildings in case of aftershocks—scanning the scene and absorbing the ruin to their homes and neighborhoods. Once the cloud of white dust on Van Ness Avenue settled, it revealed the fallen chimneys and wreckage of carved woodwork on the Spreckels mansion and fallen stonework of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, which was, as one resident would describe, “piled up on the sidewalk and against the sides of the church for a depth of 8 or 10 feet.”
Throughout the city, electric poles were bent over sidewalks or thrown flat into streets, their wires draped over fallen bricks and overturned wagons. Sidewalks were buckled and raised, cable car slots were bowed and rails misshapen, and in some places, pavement had sunk five or six feet or was pushed up and cracked open with broken mains gushing water. Yards were filled with chunks of smashed chimneys and broken glass, with front stone steps split open and wooden stairs splintered. One man walking through downtown to check on his business wrote days later, “I do not remember a single chimney standing anywhere.” Buildings “were badly cracked” and stood at strange angles, in some cases “laying over against another.” One witness described the leaning houses across the street from her: “You know when you build a deck of cards and you touch it and all the cards fall?”
Many found the devastation even within the limited view of their street or city block overwhelming. Former mayor James Phelan threw on a suit and hat, turned off the gas, ordered his staff not to cook, and walked out of his Valencia Street home. As soon as he made it through the gate, he was confronted by excited neighbors pointing to the ruins of the Valencia Hotel a block away, saying, “Everyone is killed!” He rushed there to see only the top floor of the four-story building visible, at street level, leaning forward with the bottom three stories gone, and deep inside were “men and women imprisoned by the fallen timbers.” Their moans and cries were audible. A small crowd, including police lieutenant Henry Powell and residents of the top floor who had stepped out to the sidewalk through broken windows, was trying to rescue the dozens trapped. Both nearby water mains had broken—one sixteen inches in diameter and the other twenty-two inches—and “the street was like a river,” with water flowing into the buried hotel, adding urgency to the rescue. Phelan ran home, gathered his house employees, and drove his two-horse carriage back to “the hotel disaster” with axes and saws.
On the streets of Lower Nob Hill, police officer James Welch was walking patrol when the earthquake hit. He saw the chimney and upper portion of the brick wall of the eight-story California Hotel “shake off and topple over” and smash through the roof of the three-story firehouse beside it, directly into the third-floor apartment of Chief Sullivan and his wife. When the jerking ended, Officer Welch managed to “find [his] feet again” and ran into the firehouse. It was lit only faintly by predawn light through its broken windows and the jagged holes in the roof and ceilings above. Firemen “were barefooted and in their underclothes,” disoriented, pulling beams and rubble off their engine and checking on their horses in a “smother of darkness and debris and choking dust.” The chimney and wall of the hotel had bored through both upper floors and crashed onto the ground-floor fire engine, hose wagon, and the chief’s buggy.
Dust settled and word spread through the house that the Sullivans were buried beneath the debris on the first floor. Officer Welch jumped in to help. The rest of the company rushed down the stairs from their quarters to pitch in. Hot spray from a cracked radiator hissed from the pile. The men pulled the wreckage back and could see the chief’s bloodied head and bared shoulders being burned into blisters by the scalding steam. They heaved beams off him high enough to pull their chief out. Two men lifted his arms over their shoulders and carried him to a buggy at the stable next door to rush him to a hospital. Chief Sullivan’s skull was cracked, his ribs were broken, his lung was punctured, and the burns to his skin were second- and third-degree, but he was conscious and, according to one witness, “in full possession of his senses, and his first words were to ask the men to look for his wife.”
The first tremors had awakened the chief, asleep in the guest room just a couple of hours after returning from the cannery fire. Reportedly, after hearing Margaret’s “cries,” he was “instantly alarmed” and ran into Margaret’s room, but in the darkness he could not see that the floor was gone—the wall and roof of the California Hotel had smashed through it and the floor below and taken Margaret in her bed with it. He stepped blindly into the void and fell two stories onto the concrete floor, not far from Margaret and directly beside the cracked radiator. Joists and furniture and debris rained down on top of them through holes in both floors “as through a funnel,” trapping them. Now that the chief had been rescued, the men dug for Margaret, buried deeper, and extracted her and sent her to a hospital as well. Protected by mattresses and bedding, she was not as seriously injured.
* * *
In firehouses throughout the city, men awoke to the clamor and confusion and leapt into action. In their 6th Street house South of Market, the firefighters of Engine 6 ran down the dark stairs to find their horses gone—the earthquake had shaken the large wooden doors wide open, and morning light shined in through settling dust. The stone floor was cracked down the middle, and toward the back of the house the floor was crumbled and the walls were torqued and broken at angles where the whole back wall had sunk down at least three feet. The firemen were still throwing on their uniforms and caps as they walked out onto 6th Street to survey the damage on their block.
The three-story wood-frame building beside them was “completely wrecked.” The soft fill land beneath it had liquefied, causing second- and third-floor dwellings to pancake onto the first-floor liquor store, leaving a flattened pile of snapped beams and joists. Someone spotted a tiny bare foot in the debris, prompting a scramble of men to heave timbers and broken window frames up to rescue the child. With axes they cut into the rest of the pile, pulling two more children and five adults from the wreckage. And on the other side of their house was a “partly caved-in” two-story building in danger of collapse. Without a moment to spare, the firefighters cut through the collapsed front to free five more adults and three more children.
Cries of “fire!” carried up and down 6th Street while the men of Engine 6 rescued survivors. “Turning our eyes from our work,” their captain, thirty-three-year-old Charles Cullen, reported, “we beheld threatening flames rising from different directions.” He and his men returned to their firehouse, where the alarm panel was dark and silent. Wasting no time and without horses, the firemen strained to pull their three-ton engine by hand over the cracked house floor and onto the brick street. Captain Cullen sent five men to haul the engine up a block to the nearest fire, and he kept five at work clearing crashed buildings of survivors.
Up in the fire alarm office at Portsmouth Square, as soon as the shaking stopped, the floor caught on fire. As with nearly every building in the city, the earthquake had knocked the chimney off the roof. Bricks and mortar had plunged down the flue and hurled flaming embers onto the office floor. Switchboard operator James Kelly ran to the sink to draw water, but there was no pressure. Water from broken wet-cell battery cases in the adjoining power room streamed in and snuffed out the fire. But the dual omen of fire and no water pressure lingered as Kelly went to the window and “saw the smoke of an apparently large fire begin to rise” above Market Street. His coworker Charles Daley looked out the other window a few moments later and saw “three columns of smoke,” and within minutes, Kelly could see “five additional fires starting” across the district. Alarms were being pulled throughout the city, but in the office there was only silence—no phone rings, no ticking of the ticker-tape machine with incoming alarms, and no way to send messages to fire companies—all lines were severed and communication broken.
* * *
One of these first columns of smoke coiled upward from a single-floor wood-frame laundry house on Howard Street, South of Market. The earthquake had shaken the roof down and a falling ceiling joist had knocked over the furnace used to heat irons, spilling burning coals. The small building “blazed up like tinder.” William Dove, a carpenter and habitual early riser, was standing on the corner of 3rd and Howard Streets when the shock hit and saw the roof collapse and fire ignite. He “could see the flames” through the front windows of the laundry and worried for his friend who owned and lived in the saddlery shop directly next door. He broke into the saddlery shop, “found [his] way through the smoke,” and rushed his friend out to the safety of the street.
Thick black smoke poured from the laundry house. Inside the dry, wooden structure, wool, cotton, and silk laundry in stacked piles on tables or jammed in linen bags fueled the flames’ spread until flashover—the point where every combustible substance in the building was aflame—which produced deadly carbon monoxide and even deadlier hydrogen cyanide. Heat shattered storefront windows and flames shot out the top, licking up the wood siding of the taller buildings on either side. Directly across Howard Street was the Engine 4 firehouse, where Captain Charles Murray and his men had spent the minutes since the earthquake pulling bricks of a collapsed wall off the limp body of fireman James O’Neil, “crushed and instantly killed” while serving as night watchman. Captain Murray “ran out into the street,” saw the fire in the laundry, and gathered his men—still “bewildered” by the death of one of their own—who rolled their steam engine out to the street by hand (like Engine 6, the shaking had flung the doors open and their horses had disappeared in a stampede). A hoseman ran a spanner wrench to the hydrant in front of the firehouse, twisted the cap off, wrenched the back stem nut to open the water flow, and, in a portent that would repeat through the coming hours and days, he yelled back, “No water.” He ran to the other corner hydrant: no water. And the further corner hydrant: no water.
Unable to send a message to the fire alarm office for support, Captain Murray sent one of his men running around the corner to Chemical Engine 1’s firehouse on 2nd Street. Hearing “yelling” from inside the flaming laundry, Murray “grabbed an axe off the wagon,” chopped an opening through the wall, held a full chest of breath behind pressed lips, and rushed into the wall of smoke to save the trapped workers. But the blaze was beyond control, and the men pulled their captain out before he was incapacitated by the lethal fumes and just a few seconds before the burning structure collapsed. Within minutes, Chemical Engine 1 rolled up behind its horse team, its firefighters having dug their way through the collapsed brick front of their firehouse to respond. Chemical Engine 1’s firemen hooked up a line to their tank and put a stream of water on the blaze, but the fire was too large, having already turned the three-story boardinghouse next door into “one mass of flames.” Engine 4’s firefighters, still trying to find water, dropped a suction hose through the manhole of a nearby cistern, but what little they were able to pump from inside “was of no use whatever.” As one frustrated hoseman reported of the blaze, “[I]t soon got away from us.”
* * *
Three blocks away, smoke from another fire rose from the five-story Mack & Company Drug Wholesaler on Fremont Street just south of Market. Like most of downtown’s older buildings of timber-joisted masonry construction, its floor framing and girders and floor trusses and interior support columns and ceiling joists were all wooden. Interior columns were plastered for fire resistance, but there was no fireproofing for the rest of the wood and timber supports, as none was required. The store carried “drugs, chemicals, and fancy goods,” and its combustible inventory—most stored in glass jars on high shelves—included alcohol, kerosene, the highly volatile diethyl ether and glycerol, oxidizers like copper oxide and peroxide (which release oxygen when heated), and ammonia, prone to explode at high temperatures. Next door, the three-story corner office of the Oceanic Steamship and Western Sugar Refining Companies, owned by the Spreckels family, fronted Market Street, and next door to that on Market was the five-story Montague Company, a stove and range wholesaler. The back walls of Spreckels’s office and Montague’s adjoined the side wall of Mack’s, and each business employed night watchmen and private security guards.
When the shaking stopped, the night watchman for Montague’s rushed from a coffeehouse across Market Street and into his store. In the back he could feel intense heat through the rear wall and “heard several explosions” from Mack’s drugstore on the far side. He unrolled the emergency fire hose but “discovered that we had no water.” He ran back outside onto Market Street where the security guard for Spreckels’s office had just tried pulling a street fire alarm with no response. When they ran around the corner onto Fremont Street, the front of Mack’s “began smoking and banging in a series of explosions.” A police officer arrived and held them and other onlookers back as the drugstore went up like fireworks, its inventory “going off like artillery discharges and shooting lighted beams and brands all over both sides of Fremont Street.” The night watchman rushed back around the corner and into Montague’s and saw flames burning through the back wall.
Mack’s drugstore was a “mass of flames” by the time the first fire engine rolled up. The captain had noticed the smoke from the company firehouse three blocks away, hitched up his horse to his buggy, and ordered the men of his engine company to follow. When they arrived and jumped off their hose wagon to hook their stoked engine to the nearest hydrant at the corner, they could get no water. The captain sent them down one block to the next hydrant on Fremont Street: no water. They doubled back to the next one a block down on Market Street. The captain grabbed a wrench and ran “from one street to another to find some water.” On Fremont, all five stories of Mack’s drugstore were “burning fiercely.” Inside the brick shell, flames consumed the wood and timber skeleton while ceilings collapsed and floors pancaked one onto another. Firefighters pulled the steam engine and hose wagon back from the heat just before another explosion blew the entire front wall out into the street. And still the yells kept coming: “No water!”
At last, a hoseman found a working hydrant a block down Market at Beale Street, and the captain ordered the line connected and ran back to the engine at the corner of Fremont. By then, Mack’s drugstore was engulfed, and flames had spread to Spreckels’s corner office. Firemen “threw a stream” on the office and on Montague’s next door, but with the blaze growing on the inside in the rear of both buildings (where the fire from Mack’s had burned through), the effort was futile. Hoping to keep the fire from jumping blocks, the captain ordered his men to shift the single line of water they had onto the buildings on the opposite side of Fremont Street.
Another engine company arrived and was directed a block and a half down Fremont Street past Mack’s where the Martel Power Company was ablaze. The four-story structure was a combustible mix under a single roof: the power company occupied the first floor with engines and generators; the second floor was a silk factory; and the third and fourth floors housed a tamale factory, with multiple ranges and steam kettles. It is unknown where the spark ignited the powder keg, but a saloonkeeper across the street looked out his apartment window “immediately after the earthquake” and noticed the building already on fire, and within a minute it was fully engulfed. Firefighters worked their way through hydrants along the block with no luck, and the power company blaze spread to the machine shops and hardware stores to its left and right.
* * *
Countless small fires started with the earthquake, and in different ways: open flames or electric sparks ignited leaking gas, broken chimneys tossed burning embers from fireplaces, space heaters and ovens overturned and spilled flaming contents, kerosene and oil lamps fell and cracked, lit candles tipped. One man awoke to the chandelier falling in his bedroom, leaking gas. On his way to turn it off at the meter, he stomped out a flame where some matches had fallen and ignited. Every fire started small, and most were like this, in a home or apartment or, as in the fire alarm office, a workplace where someone was able to douse the initial flames immediately.
But in a sea of dry wooden buildings bunched in clusters on streets with almost no water, any unattended small fire could burn down not just the building or block but also its neighborhood and district beyond. There was no main fire or first fire, but in every district there were a few that ignited in unoccupied spaces—mostly commercial—and enough of these spread so rapidly that their smoke climbed high enough to be seen by many—as the men observed up in the fire alarm office—as soon as the earth stopped jolting. “Immediately after the quake,” a man in the Western Addition saw smoke rising “in half a dozen places.” It was “within five seconds of the end of the shock” that the British consul general, Sir Courtenay Bennett, saw from his hotel room “twenty or thirty fires [that] broke out all over the lower parts of the city.” When the ground finally stilled near the top of Sacramento Street in Chinatown, a woman looking out her window noticed the “columns of smoke,” which she later likened to “signals of alarm.”
In the absence of working building alarms or street boxes and with no telegraph communications, bells and gongs of firehouses sat eerily silent, forcing captains and battalion chiefs out to streets or to the roofs of their houses to spot the “signals of alarm” lifting above the broken city, and they then aimed their engines to the nearest one. Just as the first smoke pillars South of Market pointed fire companies to Mack’s drugstore and the Martel Power Company and the Howard Street laundry house, out in the Western Addition the first smoke rose from the corner of Hayes and Laguna Streets in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. Firefighters of a truck and engine company two streets away saw the “large columns of smoke” and “left at once.” So did crews of two other nearby engine companies, where men saw the same smoke and responded. A local physician could see the same fire “growing larger” and “heard the fire engines rattling over the streets on their way” past his house.
Five blocks from the fire, the Ellis Street home of fifty-three-year-old Patrick Shaughnessy, the second assistant chief of the fire department, was equipped with a bell and telegraph connected with the fire alarm office. Both had sat silent since the last of the alarms transmitted for the North Beach cannery fire before 4:00 a.m. As he dressed in the moments following the earthquake, Shaughnessy did not know Chief Sullivan had been gravely wounded or that he was now the department’s acting assistant chief. His operator pulled up to his house in his buggy within ten minutes to alert him of—and take him to—the fires in Hayes Valley.
On the corner of Hayes and Laguna Streets, flames were consuming a two-story wood-frame drugstore, and three fire engines had already arrived. No sooner had firemen started pumping from a corner hydrant than the water pressure faded to a trickle and “gave out after a few minutes.” As elsewhere, they checked hydrant after hydrant without luck. Another company of firemen arrived and joined in the hunt for water, having worked their way two blocks down from a bottling company blaze that had already consumed half of its block and was still spreading.
“After a long search” for water, firefighters found “a good supply” in a single hydrant a block west at the corner of Hayes and Buchanan Streets. Tapping this valuable source, an engine pumped the water through a hose back up the street to another engine, where crews applied a line of water on the drugstore fire. And through two more engines positioned block by block connected one with another by eight-hundred-foot-long hoses, water was pumped to the bottling company fire. With water scarce, improvisation played an outsized role, and these “engines in tandem” managed to stretch the reach of water from a single hydrant across five blocks to keep both Hayes Valley fires from spreading further to surrounding homes and apartments.
While his crews fought both fires, Acting Assistant Chief Shaughnessy looked to the east and saw “several columns of smoke rising perpendicularly in the air” and “several fires South of Market.” He hopped on his buggy to find an automobile “for the purpose of going from fire to fire,” still unaware Chief Sullivan was in the hospital, leaving him second-in-command. Four blocks behind him and on higher ground was the city’s fire marshal, fifty-six-year-old Charles Towe, who had ventured in his buggy to the top of the Hayes Street hill, reined his horse, stood up in his buggy, and squinted into the eastern sky where the sun was just breaking above the horizon and the morning’s blue was shrouded by “smoke or fire arising from different parts of the city.” Charles saw smoke at the lower end of Market Street, and along the waterfront, and South of Market, and “in several places” in the Mission. “I should judge I counted from 15 to 20 columns of smoke.”
At the base of each of these smoldering columns were other battles being fought: another axe-wielding fireman hacking his way into a burning structure, another police officer keeping curious crowds back, another parked engine puffing steam with an engineer feeding coal to keep its boiler fire stoked, another driver walking blanketed horse teams further away from the spreading flames, another frustrated battalion chief sending runners off with urgent requests for support, and another hoseman lugging a wrench in a flat sprint from hydrant to hydrant searching for water without luck. “The lack of water,” one man later declared, “was perhaps the worst feature of the calamity.”
* * *
In the minutes following 5:12 a.m., running water throughout San Francisco was, with very few specific exceptions, cut off. In many places, as with James Kelly up in the fire alarm office, nothing trickled from faucets after the earthquake. In others, a small amount could be dripped from pipes but was soon exhausted. One man wrote that he and his family filled “every receptacle we had with water,” and soon after, “it ceased running.” Another woman, still “speechless” from the shock of the earthquake but thinking quickly, “set to work filling the three tubs, washtub, and every pot and pan or anything that could hold water.” Still another, unable to get any from the dry tap, “went about and took all the flowers out of the vases to save the water that was left.” A twelve-year-old girl, instructed by her father to fill the bathtub as soon as she dressed, watched water fill the tub slowly “and then it just stopped by itself.”
Water in bathtubs and sinks and hydrants stopped running because the earthquake caused an almost total failure of the Spring Valley Water Company’s distribution system. Although all three of the company’s reservoirs and both dams in San Mateo County withstood the earthquake, as did eight of its nine reservoirs in San Francisco County, almost nothing else went right. The forty-four-inch pipe that carried water up the peninsula from the largest reservoir, Crystal Springs, which supplied the waterfront area and entire South of Market district, broke in seven places south of the city where the wooden trestle that lifted its pipes over swamps and marshland collapsed (nearly a mile of the pipe was torn and scattered, and an entire five-hundred-foot-long section was “thrown from its trestle onto the mud flats”). The San Andreas reservoir pipeline, which supplied the Mission and much of the city north of Market Street, “was badly fractured,” and the thirty-inch pipeline from the Pilarcitos reservoir, the source for most of the western portion of the city, “was so badly damaged” that company engineers “decided to abandon it.” In the city, fill and made land was turned into what an engineer described as a “bowl of mud,” and transmission and distribution mains telescoped into iron ribbons or tore apart. More than three hundred street mains cracked, and more than twenty-three thousand breaks were later found in service pipes, which delivered water from mains into buildings and homes.
Although no water was flowing into the city, in many places there was a small amount of water left in pipes, sufficient for a short supply of drinking water. In a few hotels and apartment buildings with rooftop tanks, tenants and guests still had pressure where wall service pipes had not cracked. And the eighty million gallons of water sitting in distribution reservoirs in the city—more than enough to fight even a citywide fire—was either emptying into subsoil or could not be accessed because mains were broken. A handful of street distribution main sections and at least one long section of the transmission main from the Laguna Honda Reservoir held, and within these small pockets there was a continuous supply of water. But these isolated supplies were limited and scarce, and of the city’s 4,213 hydrants, fewer than four dozen were found to connect with working mains. Even if fire crews located each of them—as with the Hayes and Buchanan Streets hydrant near the fire in Hayes Valley—and stretched each supply to reach the nearest blazes, it would not be enough. By sunrise at 5:31 a.m., more than fifty fires were burning and spreading, and the fate of most of the city was already sealed.
5. Indescribable Confusion
MANY OF THE first South of Market fires were in businesses unoccupied at the moment of impact. But flames did not have to spread far to reach highly congested residential buildings, mostly wooden and all in a district quickly running out of the last small amounts of water firefighters could pump from trickling hydrants or half-empty cisterns. On Howard Street, the laundry house fire ate to both ends of the block within the first hour—west to 3rd Street and east to 2nd—and then jumped to the north side of Howard. Firemen of Chemical Engine 1 watered down buildings at the end of the block where Howard met 2nd “to check it from going easterly,” and when forced back by the heat they shifted and applied their engine’s last drops of water from its tanks onto buildings on the east side of 2nd Street to keep them from catching. But tall orange flames shot burning chunks of awning and wood more than eighty feet across the street, and another block ignited, this one mostly residential.
Seeing this, fireman Frank Tracy left the engine and ran down the east side of 2nd Street past the growing flames to evacuate the neighborhood. He ran down the next block of Howard Street shouting for people to get out. He ran down alleyways between boardinghouses, yelling up at open windows that the fire was coming. He jumped fences and kept shouting his warning. “I had to run as fast as I could,” he later reported. When he saw more smoke ahead from the fires at Mack’s drugstore and Martel Power on Fremont Street, he worried the two blazes could merge, and he ran up and down more blocks “and ordered the people out.” The earthquake had awakened most residents, and many had spilled into the street driven by curiosity or worry of aftershocks. And his warnings coaxed more out of apartments and hotels who might otherwise have stayed.
But many were trapped, and rescues were slow going. Deep in the wreckage of the Brunswick House on 6th Street, Edna Ketring awoke (“I guess I must have fainted”) pinned in total darkness. She could hear “excited people” crying out around her. Reaching with her free arms, she “found on all sides timbers and plaster” but sensed an open space. She wrested herself free and began crawling through the dark void; she smelled smoke and heard “crackling of burning timbers,” and she scrambled toward daylight. By the time she emerged from the pile, flames were “raging furiously.” Bruised and covered with blood, she wrapped herself in a comforter she found, and her eyes darted over each face in the crowd gathered around the flaming ruins, but she could not find her fiancé, Thomas.
From the smashed space of his own room, James Jacobs “burrowed toward the daylight.” On his way, he helped another roomer loose from between timbers, and both emerged “on part of the roof that had pitched over into Sixth Street.” As they stepped from the shattered rooftop onto the street, “the whole mass of ruins seemed to be blazing into flames.” A crowd of volunteers gathered, but the woodpile “burned like tinder” and the few who attempted rescue were driven back by the heat. Arriving firefighters pushed into the burning pile toward screaming voices while onlookers “held up blankets and comfortables [sic] to protect the workers from the heat.” They rescued two people before “the heap of wreckage was a mass of flame.” From the flames could be heard moans, pleas, screams, and what one witness described as “a terrible, low, heart-rending cry of utter resignation.”
Dozens of people were still trapped in the wreckage of the Brunswick. Among them were the proprietor, Frank Keefe, his wife, Florence, and their twelve-year-old son, Leo. And Abraham Lichtenstein, who lived behind the shop he ran on the first floor, along with his wife, Johanna, their twenty-year-old son, Moses, and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Esther. And sisters Maud Johnson and Mary Irwin. And Edna Ketring’s fiancé, Thomas. Lodgers included widows, families between homes, nomadic blue-collar workers passing through town, recently evicted single mothers, and immigrant laborers working odd jobs. Most had no family to notice their later absence and the records of their stay at the Brunswick burned with them.
Months later, the night clerk who had managed to escape before the collapse strained his memory for names of those staying that last night, his mind running through flashes of faces never to be seen again. Some he remembered in groups, like the “Wilson sisters” or the “Cummings (2)”; of a few he could only remember last names, like “Murray, Randoff, Jones, and Woodward”; and without any specific number, he remembered the “children.”
The same world of employers and lodgers was lost in the Ohio House next door. And in the Lormor House the next door down. And in the Nevada House at the corner, where the proprietor’s son later remembered prying himself from the heap, one of only thirteen to escape before the flames came. Still trapped were his mother, father, and eighteen-year-old sister. And twenty others he knew as neighbors. Single mothers, like forty-year-old Emma Greiner who lived with her eighteen-year-old daughter, Edna. And Alma Harris with her three-year-old daughter, Virginia. Laborers like Joseph Cook, a barber; Fred Espinola, a lather; James Reilly, a plumber; and Joseph Murray, a tile setter. A fortune-teller he knew as Mrs. Francis and a dressmaker, Mrs. Jones. All were trapped and all died in the flames. The four lodging houses, collapsed and burning, became the final, unmarked resting place for countless souls, their final moments unrecorded and lives unremembered.
A dozen blocks away in the Mission, a squad of policemen and at least fifty volunteers—including former mayor Phelan and his house staff—“were working with rageful energy at the tangle of wall and rafters” of another lodging house, the wood-frame Valencia Hotel. The street “was split open about six to eight feet,” allowing the growing throngs to look down into the mud of the old Mission swamp. Water gushed from the broken twenty-two-inch-wide transmission main (from the College Hill Reservoir) and poured “like a river” into the chasm filled with hotel wreckage and trapped survivors. With axes and saws and pry bars and rope pulled from their own houses or nearby hardware stores, rescuers cut and lifted and peeled away layers of bent siding and split beams toward the sounds of moans and cries and rushing water. A truck company of firefighters rolled up on the way to another fire, reined their horse teams, jumped off, and joined the rescue. “[B]y pulling up floors and sawing away the joists,” people were pulled out of the top of the sunken structure one by one. Some were awake and talking, others were limp, wounded, and moaning, a few were unconscious, and the rest were dead.
“The sights there were very distressing,” Lieutenant Powell later related, “even for a man as well trained in casualties as a policeman has to be.” Eight of the dead were pulled out and “placed in the alley at the rear of the hotel.” Among them were lone boarders like Annie Conway, a twenty-seven-year-old widow; Patrick Broderick, a fifty-nine-year-old laborer; Lorenze Goetz, a sixty-four-year-old carpenter; and William Krone, forty, also a carpenter. And laid out side by side were the Johnson family, thirty-two-year-old Nathan; his wife, thirty-one-year-old May; their little son, two-year-old Harold; and Nathan’s older brother, Edward. Their daughter, six-year-old Virginia, was pulled out alive. She would be taken in by her uncle days later, after he identified the bodies of the family, including those of his two brothers.
Approximately seventy-five people had been inside the Valencia at the moment of impact, including the manager and his family, upward of fifty boarders and guests, and hotel employees including a clerk, a cook, a bedmaker, a waitress, a dishwasher, and a chambermaid. Only two—the night clerk and a guest—managed to sprint out the front door in the seconds that followed before the earth swallowed three of the hotel’s four floors. Many in rooms on the fourth floor were able to climb out of their shattered windows onto the street, but fewer than a dozen were rescued from the ruins of the bottom three floors in the minutes and hours that followed. The wounded were carried on doors and large boards to a nearby house for treatment, and later to one of the few hospitals not in the path of the spreading fire. At least two of those rescued would later die.
Among those pulled out alive were Annie Bock, fifty-seven, unhurt, and her son, Albert, twenty, with a broken shoulder. Annie begged rescuers to find her husband, fifty-one-year-old William, who was the hotel manager, and her older son, William Henry, twenty-three, both still trapped. Whether William and William Henry were dead already or whether they would drown in the flooding or whether they were fated to die in the fire that would eventually reach them is unknown. Nor is there any way of knowing when or how death came to the rest of those still trapped, and most of their bodies were never recovered.
* * *
Downtown in the moments after the shaking stopped, a “cloud of deep dust hung tenaciously around City Hall,” reporter Fred Hewitt noticed as he picked himself up from Larkin Street, which was littered with large pieces of columns and chunks of masonry. Together with onlookers filling the streets around the civic plaza—many in underwear and nightclothes—Fred stared at the debris cloud, spellbound. “As the wind carried the dust away and uncovered the ruins there stood a mountain sheared of all its crowning glory.” The towering dome, stripped of its outer shell, now “appeared like a huge birdcage against the morning dawn.” One man noted the “dome was stripped clean off and only the uprights were supporting what was left of the dome,” and a teenage boy likened it to “a huge skeleton.”
The dome’s top and statue balanced atop iron supports, bent and exposed. Walls and pillared colonnades had disintegrated like plaster, and massive columns that had once appeared so solid lay broken across street pavement, their soft insides exposed by cracked eggshell façades. “Earthquakes uncover strange secrets,” a magazine editor who saw it that morning articulated, adding that its expensive, ruined edifice “cried to heaven the shame of the men who built it.” As a passing nurse perceived, it “stood now like a lie exposed.”
Among onlookers on Larkin Street were Officers Plume and Dwyer, smacking dust from their uniforms and winded from their sprint out of the City Hall Police Station. Dwyer walked with a limp after almost breaking his leg falling on a streetcar rail where the paving stones had been removed for the line’s conversion from cable to electric traction. Mindful of their lieutenant and three arrestees still trapped inside, both officers ran back into the settling debris cloud, climbed stacks of rubble into the darkness of an inner hallway, and made their way back into the station. Joined by their lieutenant, they felt their way deeper inside to the holding cells “in perfect darkness.” The male arrestee “was shaking his cell door and howling to be let out.” Held only for a misdemeanor, he was released. In the other cell, the two women—sisters—were quiet, found “lying on the floor senseless.” The officers carried them out, revived them with a wet towel, and “after the terrible fright and punishment they had been through,” released them also.
Also trapped were the staff and patients of the city’s Central Emergency Hospital occupying much of City Hall’s ground floor and basement. “It was black dark and smothering” inside, and the officer on duty, “choking” on plaster and mortar and “suffocating dust,” could not “see his hand in front of his face.” Exits were blocked with rubble stacked to their tops, and slivers of morning light sliced through settling mortar clouds. Joined by a nurse and the physician on duty, the officer pulled fallen bricks and ceiling slabs from the entrance to the mental health detention ward to release patients held on involuntary commitments, and amid their “yelling and shrieking” ushered them over debris and upstairs into the light where a group of officers had “managed to effect an entrance” from the outside by digging away piled rubble and tearing iron bars from the loose grout around windows, allowing the staff to carry and escort the patients out onto Larkin Street.
Another of the hospital’s physicians hurried to the scene and, with a police captain, rushed across Larkin Street to Mechanics’ Pavilion, “forcibly opened” its large front doors, and found the superintendent, who then opened the enormous wood-frame building “as a temporary hospital.” Inside was a vast open space normally used for roller-skating, prizefights, balls, revival meetings, presidential speeches, and annual fairs. The night before, the pavilion was host to a “masked carnival” on roller skates, where prizes from season tickets to diamond rings were awarded for the fastest skater and best costume. Streamers and decorations from the event still hung from the sixty-foot-high arched ceiling, and two rows of windows stretched its length, casting morning light on more than 92,000 square feet of open floor—nearly the size of two football fields.
Patients walking under their own strength entered and sat on the floor. Others were carried in and laid on mattresses rushed over from the hospital. A chain of nurses and physicians and police officers formed across Larkin Street to the ruins of the hospital, passing “operating tables, cots, medicine chests, instruments, and every other accessory we could carry out of the place,” some hauled on gurneys and in handcarts, all into the pavilion. Nurses unfolded cots, and surgeons established operating spaces. Two police officers loaded a patrol wagon with “bandages, cotton, lint, and other necessary medical supplies” from a nearby pharmacy and grabbed beds and blankets from hotels and rooming houses and returned. Soon the hall was transformed into “a serviceable semblance of a real hospital,” ready for the countless injured incoming from all corners of the city.
* * *
As in the Mission and South of Market Districts, rescue work north of Market Street was feverish. After the fish market collapse, Merchant Street was in a “terrible state of ruin,” blocked entirely by piled bricks and masonry. Horse teams and wagons and the dead and wounded were “littered all about” beneath fallen brick walls. A police officer noted “the spectacle was pitiable.” He helped workers and arriving fire crews “dig and drag from the ruins” bodies. “Legs and arms were sticking out here and there to guide us.” At least nine were dead and two dozen injured. Alex Paladini helped his father dig from the rubble a man with a broken leg, then loaded him on their fish wagon and took him to the waterfront’s Harbor Emergency Hospital.
Across the street from the Tivoli Opera House a block north of Market Street, the sidewalk in front of the Orienta Bar and Café was choked with heaped remains of the eight-story front wall of the Hotel Orienta. A crowd of bystanders watched a police officer and volunteers lift the body of a dead young woman off the top of the pile. She had fallen from five stories up. Still in her nightclothes, without a mark or bruise on her, she “looked as calm as if she were asleep.” Word passed through the onlookers that a police officer was buried beneath the rubble, possibly alive. A second officer rushed up to help the gathered crowd heave chunks of mortar and slabs of brick walls, and they reached the officer, thirty-eight-year-old Max Fenner. Tall and muscular, Max had been a boxer and wrestler before joining the force and was known as the “Hercules of the police department.” During the earthquake, he had reportedly seen a woman run out of a building beneath a tottering wall, and when he started across the street to warn her back inside, the wall of the hotel smashed on him. He was found beneath the rubble lying on the sidewalk with his eyes open, still breathing, looking “terribly crushed and battered.” Officers loaded him on a commandeered wagon and jumped on to ride the seven blocks to Central Emergency Hospital, where they were redirected to Mechanics’ Pavilion.
In the wrecked firehouse on Lower Nob Hill where Chief Sullivan had already been carried away with serious injuries, the firemen of Chemical Engine 3 pulled Mrs. Sullivan from beneath the wreckage and ushered her next door into the lobby of the California Hotel where she was checked by a doctor. There Battalion Chief Walter Cook received reports that a local physician, Dr. J. C. Stinson, was trapped in his room on the hotel’s top floor by a portion of the brick wall that had smashed through the firehouse. Finding the hotel elevator had “crashed down the shaft,” Cook and a couple of his men ran up the stairs to the eighth floor and found the room “full of bricks and the floor badly caved in from the heavy weight.” The ceiling and a portion of the outer wall were gone, a breeze filled the room with the sounds from outside, and instead of a bed there was a mound of bricks. “Thinking that he might be alive we dug for him and found him, but he was dead.”
From down at street level with a view blocked by tall buildings, Battalion Chief Cook had not seen smoke rising from other parts of the city. But now from the commanding vista of the eighth floor, he looked out and “saw fires in every direction.” And word passed to him there was no water in the hotel. If hydrants were also dry, the water in the pressured tanks of their chemical engine would be crucial. Cook directed his firemen to gather volunteers to clear the debris from their firehouse and “get the horses and chemical engine out.” The engine was broken in two, but after rigging it together with a large bolt, they hitched it to horses and headed to fires on Davis Street near the waterfront.
As with Chemical Engine 3, most fire crews north of Market Street, in firehouses from Chinatown to Nob Hill and up to North Beach, were “tired and worn out,” having spent most of the night at the cannery fire. After hours fighting the blaze, most had not returned until after 3:00 a.m. By the time the earthquake hit, some had managed to grab one or two hours of sleep, but at least a couple of men in each house had spent that time cleaning out their engines and still had not slept at all. Now they would each be called to draw from their already drained reserves and give battle at fire after fire, for what would be days without rest.
* * *
Inside the Palace Hotel, morning light shined through the shattered windowpanes of the expansive skylight above the Grand Court and spilled through its encircling balconies and down darkened corridors. Shielded from the devastation outside, hotel guests still in nightshirts and sleeping gowns were “standing in their doorways in a state of shock.” Many who had run into hallways during the shaking now retreated into their rooms to get dressed as panic turned to bewilderment. Chairs had danced to room centers, dressers and bookshelves had overturned, and broken glass and ceiling plaster covered carpeted floors, but the hotel had withstood the earthquake without serious structural damage. As one visitor observed, “The proud boast that the Palace was earthquake-proof had been vindicated.”
After dressing, a physician from Chicago found his room door jammed, so he and his wife climbed with their luggage out the window to the balcony overlooking the court and descended the stairs. Elevators were not running; their shafts were “blocked two floors deep with plaster and other debris.” The lobby was filling with people, most calm and quiet, unsure whether to leave or stay. “Women and children with blanched faces stood as if dazed.” At the check-in counter “by the glimmer of a tallow candle,” clerks shuffled room cards and squinted at registries helping guests settle their bills and check out.
The dining room was not scheduled to be open at that hour, but a cook was “preparing coffee and rolls for the help,” and a few guests grabbed handfuls. Soon the doors were thrown open, and employees brought out stacks of plates and cups and milk and rolls and butter from the kitchen. Couples and lone boarders helped themselves to “delicious dishes of coffee and hot rolls,” which they enjoyed at empty tables in the Palm Court while employees in white shirts “calmly” swept up broken glass and dusted plaster from the furniture.
Enrico Caruso, who had reportedly spent the minutes after the earthquake “in a frantic state” running up and down the hallways “in the scantiest of attire, shouting excitedly and twirling at his moustache with unconscious nervousness,” was now back in his room. He dressed, grabbed a signed photograph of President Roosevelt—personalized “To Enrico Caruso”—for identification and safe passage, left his valet packing his trunks, and descended five flights of stairs to the street. On the second floor, opera company manager Ernest Goerlitz “tried to wash, but only an ink like fluid flowed from the faucets.” He and his wife dressed, walked downstairs to the court, and, after hearing that Caruso and other members of his company were heading to the St. Francis Hotel, decided to follow them. Outside, he would finally confront the “enormity of the damage done by the earthquake.”
Men in derbies and pressed suits and women in waist jackets with elbow-length sleeves and train skirts and feathered hats emerged from the sheltered confines of the Palace Hotel into the turbulence of the morning, exhibiting a shock of realization like first-class passengers on a sinking ship joining lines for lifeboats across a listing deck. People in every manner of dress clogged the width of Market Street “like herds of sheep,” dodging wandering horses and frightened livestock, and sidestepping large fallen chunks of ornamental cornices. Many were “stunned speechless,” and others craned their necks to see smoke rising above jagged rooftops. Wagons and automobiles edged through the crowds, as did fire engines chugging black smoke from boilers and heading to fires South of Market. Power lines lay across sidewalks, “spitting blue flames and writhing like snakes.” Even the air itself carried a “peculiar smell,” alternating between the foul odor of leaking gas and the creosote of railroad ties, and tinted “sort of a bluish yellow.”
Terry Owens, the Denver fire chief, exited the Grand Hotel beside the Palace with his wife and little boy and encountered a scene “of indescribable confusion” on Market Street: “Wires were down, naked and half naked men and women were running along the streets, cattle and horses were mixed up with the nude.” Owens saw fire two blocks away where the blaze from Mack’s drugstore had spread to Montague’s and Spreckels’s office building on Market, and he watched as an engine hitched to a hydrant but then “seemed to be doing nothing.” He ran closer, asked the engineer what was wrong with the engine, and the answer was “no water.” As Owens later shared, “I saw enough in those minutes to convince me the city was doomed.”
* * *
Ernest Goerlitz and his wife crossed Market Street from the Palace in the direction of the St. Francis Hotel through streets “strewn with debris.” They walked four blocks, forced into the middle of the street for fear of bricks and cornices “still falling” from the tall buildings on either side, several of which had “collapsed in themselves.” Another man visiting from Detroit walked the same route among “automobiles, wagons, vehicles of all kinds rushing through the streets that were passable.” He could “see and hear strong men and helpless women crying.” Looking back and seeing “the smoke and flames” then growing south and east of the Palace, he “felt sure that the world had come to an end.”
The twelve-story St. Francis, like the Palace, had withstood the earthquake without serious structural damage. Aesthetic cracks ran through the outer walls, and the steel frame of a new third wing under construction stood strong. Inside, a few broken pieces of stucco and marble wainscoting littered floors and the elevators were jammed inoperable. The lobby, like that of the Palace at that hour, was “filled with an excited throng.” Some were still in robes while many had descended from their rooms “gorgeously dressed and bespangled with jewels.” Wealthy guests sat in large lobby chairs “amongst their luggage waiting to escape,” and around them, groups of women and children “were dazed and did not know which way to turn.”
Melissa Carnahan and her husband, Will, felt “no occasion for hurry” and “leisurely dressed” before walking downstairs to the lobby. They entered the dining room where cool morning air gusted in through the shattered front window as staff served coffee and leftover rolls to “the chilly and excited crowd.” Will found a comfortable chair in the library facing a large window where Melissa sat and surveyed Union Square, already “crowded with more or less frantic people who were in ludicrous stages of attire.”
The square’s green lawn and walkways were stirring with men, women, and children, some sitting on benches or lying on the grass. They had walked from the St. Francis and other hotels and apartment buildings facing Union Square, like the Savoy and the Geary, both with collapsed floors. One man noticed the park at that early hour was “filled with people—hardly a square foot unoccupied.” Another saw families congregated “in a state of terror—children and women crying and carrying on or huddling on bundles of clothing and valuables.” James Hopper passed through and saw “a man in pink pajamas, a pink bathrobe, carrying a pink comforter under his arms, walking barefooted upon the gravel.” In the center of the square, he saw an elderly man “with great concentration of purpose deciphering the inscription” at the foot of the Dewey Monument, oblivious the lenses had fallen out of his glasses. Most in the crowd were silent, but when a man in the square yelled, “Look!” Hopper and others turned their gaze to where the man was pointing and saw smoke rising through the top of the Geary Hotel.
The Geary was a three-story wood-frame lodging house facing Union Square sandwiched between a seven-story furniture company and a nine-story-tall steel frame of a new dry goods store under construction. The earthquake had shaken an upper portion of the furniture company’s brick wall onto the Geary, crushing its roof “like an eggshell” and driving portions of all three floors into the cellar. The front wall stood “like cardboard scenery,” and portions of each floor still dangled in place. At the sight of smoke, the sidewalk out front began “swarming with rescuers.” A fire engine company arrived, and many of its firemen threw on coats and leather helmets and rushed into the smoke while hosemen tried the hydrants on both nearby corners without success.
The cries of trapped men and women could be heard, but the structure “was very rickety and dangerous,” making rescue work difficult. Firemen were joined by two police officers and a few eager volunteers, including James Hopper. They ascended the partially dislodged stairs gingerly, climbing “over piles of plaster and laths” and hugging the wall. In one room they found a young woman “still alive, a little,” and carried her down. They found another woman pacing a small portion of hallway floor still connected to the side wall, repeating that her husband was dead, pointing into a room filled with “a mound of bricks with the end of a bed-post emerging.”
Smoke lifting over the wreckage added urgency to the already frantic efforts. The second-floor hallway “had been broken away from one wall, and was slanting at a heavy angle, threatening to drop at any moment,” but the men rushed through it, one at a time, toward audible cries. A little boy was found dead, his mother carried out with internal injuries, and his father with a broken arm. “A stairway gave out” beneath the fire captain as he carried a woman to safety, dislocating the bones in his foot and spraining his ankle. Each person carried from the tottering frame brought applause from the watching crowd out in Union Square. Two survivors were placed in a fish wagon, a third in a furniture delivery wagon from next door, a fourth in an automobile, and all were taken to Mechanics’ Pavilion for treatment. The fifth, forty-eight-year-old Ida Heaslip, died minutes after being carried from the ruins. At least two more bodies were removed, but no one else was rescued. And even without water, firemen were able to isolate the “incipient blaze” in a back corner of the wreckage against the rear brick wall of Delmonico’s Restaurant behind the hotel and get the fire “entirely subdued” before it spread further.
* * *
Mechanics’ Pavilion was “chaotic” and quickly becoming “a ghastly sight.” Its massive floor was “strewn with mattresses” and cots “filled with dead, dying, and injured,” and “its vaulted ceiling echoed their cries and groans.” At each entrance with large barn doors propped open, new patients arrived by the minute in automobiles and delivery wagons and handcarts, “carried in on the doors or shutters or whatever other apologies for stretchers on which they arrived and were laid on the floor.” The injuries of those crushed by falling walls and collapsed buildings were horrendous, with arms and legs “horribly mangled,” often with “broken bones protruding through the flesh.” Others were brought in with collapsed lungs and deep gashes from glass and second- and third-degree burns, most from South of Market.
Dr. Charles Miller, chief surgeon of Central Emergency Hospital, took charge with four physicians and two surgeons. The pavilion was used “much as a field dressing station is used in war,” as one doctor explained. “Each patient was dressed and patched up as well as could be done without recourse to major surgery.” Bandages for burn victims were fashioned from torn bedsheets, and splints for broken limbs were improvised “from packing cases or anything else that came in handy.”
When nurse Lucy Fisher, who had walked from her home to offer her services, entered, she was surprised at how “well-equipped” the makeshift hospital was, with operating tables, dressings, instruments, enamel pans and basins, and hot and cold sterilized water. She removed her hat and wrap, pinned a pillowcase to her waist to carry dressings, and “hurried around among the quickly strewn mattresses with an extra blanket and a hot water bag or cup of hot coffee for those with feeble pulses and blue lips.” She encountered “heart-rending scenes,” as when she knelt to hold the hand of a crying woman who had lost her three children, giving Lucy a sense “of a grief that made physical injuries seem slight in comparison.”
When local physician Dr. Margaret Mahoney entered to offer her own help, the first thing she saw was “a dead body [being] carried out in a wicker basket coffin.” Priests and a rabbi walked among the mattresses and cots, kneeling to minister or pray with the injured, or, in a few cases, offer last rites. Bodies of the dead were laid under sheets behind folding chairs on either side of the floor “so as not to distress the injured.” Among these was police officer Max Fenner, who was dead on arrival. By some reports, dead bodies within the pavilion would number sixteen within the first hour, and by morning’s end, sixty were “piled in the corner to make room.”
Afterword
FOURTEEN MONTHS AFTER the disaster, in the second week of June 1907, throngs of reporters and city officials and business owners and curious residents jammed the seats and aisles of a makeshift courtroom in the Bush Street Temple to see a jury of twelve find Mayor Schmitz guilty of extortion. The felony conviction automatically stripped him of the office of mayor, and the judge ordered him held in the County Jail. Three weeks later, after proclaiming “no man, no matter how exalted his station or how strong and powerful the social and financial influences which surround him, is above the law,” the judge sentenced Schmitz to five years in San Quentin.
The municipal and judicial spectacle filling the next eighteen months of “graft prosecutions” played out like implausible fiction. Abe Ruef, by that time facing seventy-five indictments for bribing supervisors and accepting bribes from telephone franchises, United Railroads, and French restaurants in the Tenderloin, had signed a limited immunity agreement and testified against Schmitz. Based on the testimony of police officers and elected supervisors also granted immunity, other men were indicted in the scandal, including the former attorney general of California, lobbyists, boxing promoters, and executives with local telephone and railroad franchises. The city’s police chief resigned after being indicted for perjury. A witness’s house was dynamited, and the witness—not home at the time—fled to Canada to avoid testifying. A man removed from one of the juries for having an undisclosed felony conviction—and accused of accepting a bribe from Ruef for an acquittal vote—returned to the courtroom and shot the prosecutor during a recess. The prosecutor survived, but the former juror later died of a gunshot to the head while in his city prison cell, in a scene pointing to—or possibly staged as—suicide. The new police chief—himself accused of being on the take from Ruef—was blamed for allowing the juror’s death on his watch, and then disappeared from a boat during a bay crossing, a death ruled “accidental.” Some of the graft/extortion trials ended in deadlocked juries and most in acquittals. Mayor Schmitz, held in the County Jail during his appeal, was released after seven months when his conviction was set aside by the Court of Appeals, a ruling affirmed by the state’s Supreme Court. But luck ran out for Abe Ruef in December 1908 when a jury convicted him of bribery, and he was sentenced to fourteen years in San Quentin.
In 1912, Eugene Schmitz was brought to court again on the remaining twenty-seven indictments for bribery. Abe Ruef, brought from San Quentin under subpoena, refused to testify, and Schmitz’s attorneys moved to dismiss the charges for insufficient evidence. In announcing his ruling granting Schmitz’s attorneys’ motion and dismissing the last “graft” cases arising from the “wholesale debauchery of the government of the city,” the judge concluded, “It will remain a source of shame to San Francisco that where the showing of grave crime was so formidable the vindication of the law fell so far short of what was needed in the way of example.”
In 1915, Abe Ruef was granted parole after four years and nine months in prison. Disbarred from the practice of law, he opened an office on the top floor of the Sentinel Building (later Columbus Tower) advertising services in “ideas, investments, real estate.” And Schmitz, working in real estate, ran for mayor to, in his words, “redeem his good name” and “bring back the good old times” before the office was “stolen” from him in 1907. He was decisively rejected by voters who reelected by a wide margin the popular incumbent mayor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph.
Schmitz ran successfully for supervisor in 1917, was defeated by Mayor Rolph for mayor yet again in 1919 in what the Examiner characterized as a “K.O.” in “1 round,” was elected supervisor again in 1921, but defeated in 1923. He retired from politics, shaved his familiar beard and pompadour, returned to playing the violin, reportedly lost heavily investing in real estate and mines, and died of a heart attack in 1928. And Abe Ruef never did regain his former broker status in city politics, nor did his “ideas” ever take off again. He died in 1936, seventy-one years old and bankrupt.
* * *
Death came, as it must to all, to Frederick Funston at the age of fifty-one in early 1917, just before America entered the First World War. In the days and weeks following the earthquake and fire, largely based on the self-congratulatory account he wrote for Cosmopolitan magazine, the press hailed him as a hero and credited him with saving the city. He was also praised by Congress—especially members of California’s delegation—even though his actions were, they admitted, “wholly and undeniably unconstitutional.” When a San Francisco attorney dared dissent from the acclamations filling newspapers and published a letter critical of Funston’s unlawful actions, the thin-skinned Funston—ever sensitive to his image in the press—responded with an open letter belittling the writer as “cowardly” and “ignorant.” Funston continued his career in the Army, worked as commandant of Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth—a school for professional Army officers he never attended himself—then was posted in the Philippines and Hawaii. After promotion to major general, Funston commanded the Army’s Southern Department during the Punitive Expedition into Mexico chasing the revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa. He died of a heart attack six weeks before America declared war on Germany, and he was buried in San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio after lying in state in San Francisco’s new City Hall, the first individual to be honored so.
* * *
Most other military leaders who found themselves serving in San Francisco during those critical days received little credit in their time or historical note since. Raymond Briggs, the young artillery lieutenant who, acting under the misguided limitations placed on him, supervised demolition crews in safer employment of dynamite and prevented a wider use of black powder, continued his service in the Army and was promoted through the ranks. When the US entered the First World War he served as a colonel on General Pershing’s staff, and on the Western Front he commanded a field artillery regiment and—after promotion to brigadier general—a field artillery brigade. Briggs served on General MacArthur’s staff in the Philippines as America entered the Second World War, and he was kept on active service to command the VII Corps Area until 1944. He retired to San Diego and passed of a heart attack at the age of eighty-one on Christmas Eve 1959. He was eulogized not just as a veteran of the Spanish-American War and both World Wars, but also “for fighting the great San Francisco fire in 1906.”
Dora Thompson, who led her team of nurses in treating all the patients inundating the Army General Hospital, continued her service as chief nurse in the Philippines and then as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps through the First World War, for which she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for “her accuracy, good judgment” and “her splendid management of the Army Nurse Corps during the emergency.” In 1932, after more than thirty years of service in the Army, Captain Thompson retired to San Francisco, where she lived until her death at seventy-seven in 1954. Her obituaries in city newspapers did not mention her role in helping so many in the disaster or her decorated service during the First World War, only that she was retired from the Army Nurse Corps. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC.
Lieutenant Colonel George Torney, who had ensured his hospital and staff could treat unprecedented numbers of wounded and succeeded as the sanitation officer in preventing disease outbreaks, was promoted twice more to brigadier general and appointed the Surgeon General of the Army in Washington, DC. He died of pneumonia at sixty-three years old and was buried with honors in the West Point Cemetery, but few today know his name or how much sickness and death he prevented in the disaster’s aftermath. “Histories of the Army’s role in 1906 concentrate on how soldiers dynamited buildings to stop the fire and on rumors that they shot looters,” Chronicle reporter and columnist Carl Nolte observed in 2020. “But they did not write about what did not happen: The disaster was not followed by an outbreak of disease.”
Also largely forgotten today is the man who saved San Francisco’s waterfront, the Ferry Building, the Southern Pacific rail line and depot South of Market, the Custom House and surrounding businesses, and a good portion of North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf. Frederick Freeman was credited in letters from business owners to the admiral for saving their buildings and was cited by both the Army and Navy for his leadership and initiative averting greater disaster. Freeman was promoted to lieutenant commander, where he led a reserve torpedo flotilla, and after promotion to commander, he skippered the cruiser San Diego and a task force of destroyers. His star was still rising when he captained an admiral’s flagship on an Atlantic crossing of torpedo boats during the First World War. But after losing merchant vessels to German U-boats on convoys he was escorting in 1918, mental depression forced Commander Freeman into a Philadelphia hospital for treatment. Reportedly so “[o]vercome by grief,” Freeman fled the hospital, went absent without leave, was apprehended, and was dishonorably discharged from the Navy twenty-seven years after reporting to the Naval Academy at the age of fifteen.
Freeman went to live with his sister in Kentucky, then moved to San Mateo, California, where he struggled with alcoholism—resulting in a 1929 arrest for driving while intoxicated—and probably also suffered from untreated depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He lived his final years in a hotel room in Soledad, where he was tracked down in 1940 by the man who served at his side through all three days of the fire, John Pond. The son of a rear admiral and a retired commander, Pond used his contacts in the Navy Department to clear his former boss’s name, and in January 1941, President Roosevelt granted Freeman a full pardon. The very next month, as Pond worked to have Freeman’s name added to the list of honorably retired officers, Frederick Freeman died at sixty-five.
Freeman was remembered in Bay Area newspapers as the “Navy Man Who Saved Piers in 1906” and the “Hero of ’06 Quake.” Survived only by a distant nephew and two nieces all out of state, Freeman’s memory survived through John Pond, who sent obituary notices to local papers and scattered Freeman’s ashes in the San Francisco Bay, reuniting him with the water thirty-four years after he saved the waterfront and so much of the city. It was only nine months later that John Pond died at his home in Berkeley, sealing forever the living memory of his lieutenant leading him and his sailors through the most exhausting and consequential seventy hours of their lives. Pond was buried with honors in Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno.
Two months after the fire, Acting Chief John Dougherty of the fire department was officially offered the chief job by the fire commissioners, but he turned it down, opting after thirty years of service to retire as he had planned to his Webster Street home in the Fillmore District, where he passed four years later at sixty-four. Acting Assistant Chief Patrick Shaughnessy was appointed chief, and over the next four years he oversaw the start of construction of the Auxiliary Water Supply System, the project pushed for for years by the late Chief Dennis Sullivan and proven so critical in 1906 and still in use today. Water from a 10.5-million-gallon tank built atop Twin Peaks feeds tanks in Ashbury Heights and Nob Hill, and the three reservoirs supply water at high pressure to nearly two thousand oversized hydrants throughout the city. The AWSS was, in the words of the fire department’s superintendent of engineering and water supply, “dedicated to the principle that the City will never again be destroyed by fire.” And before his retirement in 1910, Chief Shaughnessy augmented the system with two fireboats, one of which was named Dennis T. Sullivan. Shaughnessy died in 1925, eulogized as a “fire hero, chief of fire fighters during the disaster of 1906, and builder of the existing system for prevention.”
In 1919, as a stark reminder of the dangers faced by firefighters at all levels of the department, Assistant Chief John Conlon—who had returned home to his young sons after three straight days of work as a battalion chief in 1906—died of asphyxiation supervising the response to a basement fire in a Post Street apartment building. He was the nineteenth firefighter to die in the line of duty since the earthquake and fire, and his name is inscribed on the San Francisco Fire Department’s Memorial Wall, displayed at the department’s 2nd Street headquarters with the names of 148 other firefighters killed in the line of duty since 1851.
Addressing the heart of the water deficiency so starkly unmasked by the earthquake and fire, voters in 1910 approved a bond to construct a dam on the Tuolumne River more than 150 miles east of San Francisco and convert the Hetch Hetchy Valley into a reservoir to provide ample water and power for the city and the Bay Area. And in 1930, San Francisco purchased the Spring Valley Water Company, finally realizing the goals of the ex-Mayor Phelan and the late Chief Sullivan to free the public water supply from private hands. A few months later, James Phelan died at sixty-nine.
Phelan had continued his oversight of the relief fund after the disaster, supported the graft prosecutions to remove corruption from City Hall, and continued his successful battle for damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a better water source. He was elected to the US Senate in 1914—the first in which the senator was selected by voters and not the state legislature—and in Washington, DC, he continued his fight for public ownership of water and power and persisted in his anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese campaigns for immigration restrictions and discriminatory laws at the city, state, and federal levels. He campaigned for reelection in 1920 to pass stricter quotas on Asian immigration and “Keep California White,” but he was defeated at the polls and returned to a very public life in San Francisco where he continued his generosity as a public benefactor, playing the critical role in extension of the civic center and creation of the War Memorial Opera House. And Phelan continued blaming societal ills on Chinese and Japanese residents, urging voters and civic organizations to “save our country from the yellow menace,” public sentiment culminating in the 1924 passage of the Asian Exclusion Act. When Phelan died in 1930, flags statewide were lowered to half-staff and he was eulogized as a pioneer, a “great leader of California,” and a “name linked with city growth” who “led fire relief,” an outsized legacy forever stained by his bigoted, degrading policies and use of his prominent pulpit to dehumanize so many of his fellow San Franciscans.
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Less prominent are the legacies of so many city residents who worked as a force for the greater good through the earthquake and fire. Lucy Fisher, the forty-three-year-old nurse who walked from her home the morning of the earthquake to offer her services to help the wounded in Mechanics’ Pavilion, was also the associate editor of the Nurses’ Journal of the Pacific Coast and already known for the work she did on behalf of tuberculosis patients. But she suffered from heart disease, and her exhaustive work for patients and refugees in 1906 reportedly “weakened her and she never fully recovered her former strength.” Knowing her time was short, she handwrote a will in September 1910 noting she had “nothing of intrinsic value” but left her few earthly items to her sister and people “whose friendships have been my most precious possession.” Declaring, “I believe in the immortality of the soul,” she quoted the poem “Life” by Anna Lætitia Barbauld: “Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime / Bid me Good morning.” Lucy passed away two months later at the age of forty-seven and was laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
Dr. Margaret Mahoney, the forty-eight-year-old physician who had spent the morning of the earthquake treating patients in Mechanics’ Pavilion and had helped organize their safe evacuation when the fire reached the building, continued her medical practice, taught night classes, served as president of the San Francisco Teachers’ Federation, and was an active leader of the Society for the Advancement of Women in Medicine. “We were not disheartened,” she wrote after the disaster. “We old Californians are the children of pioneer fathers and not afraid of hardship.” Margaret had been one of ten children born in the city to Irish immigrant forty-niner parents, graduated from the University of California and Cooper Medical College, and used her position as one of the early woman physicians of the West Coast to work to establish a women’s hospital with a staff of female physicians and to help organize for women’s suffrage, which was achieved in California in 1911, nine years before the Nineteenth Amendment enshrined it nationwide. In 1931, in her seventy-fourth year, Dr. Mahoney suffered a broken hip from a fall and died a few days later from her injuries. She was eulogized in Bay Area newspapers as a “pioneer physician,” was memorialized by the Native Daughters of the Golden West, and was laid to rest in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma.
The year 1931 marked twenty-five years since the earthquake and fire. San Francisco’s population numbered just more than 634,000, roughly half that of Los Angeles, which was now California’s largest city after more than doubling in size in the previous decade. Chinatown’s thirty-thousand-plus residents lived in cramped tenements still owned by white landlords, and their streets were still patrolled by officers of the police department’s Chinatown squad. War had come to their ancestral country that year when Japan invaded Manchuria, and in the previous quarter century of rebuilding their neighborhood, most had been denied or stripped of citizenship by the United States, the land where they lived and worked and made their home. That same year, one of the individuals most responsible for the survival of Chinatown as a San Francisco community, Ng Poon Chew, died of a heart attack the day before his sixty-fifth birthday. The minister, lecturer, editor, and essayist had traveled America speaking and writing on behalf of Chinese Americans about the degrading immorality of exclusion laws and worked tirelessly as the managing editor of his newspaper Chung Sai Yat Po until the end. He was survived by his widow and five children.
After staying in Oakland for some time following the disaster, seven-year-old Lily Soo-Hoo’s parents decided to relocate her and her ten siblings to San Rafael, where her minister father began a new mission and wrote articles for Chung Sai Yat Po and where, as she would later recall, “there was not as much racial discrimination and prejudice.” Lily’s birth certificate was destroyed in the fire, but her father was able to get her a new one, and she was educated at the University of California and Oberlin College in Ohio where she met and married William Sung, a fellow student visiting from China. Under US law at the time, her marriage to William, a Chinese citizen, stripped her of her American citizenship, and she moved with her new husband to Shanghai, where he taught at a university and they raised four children, staying even through the occupation of Japan, finally returning to California after World War II and regaining her citizenship. They lived in Berkeley until William’s passing in 1967, after which Lily Sung settled in Palo Alto. There she was interviewed in 1980 about the earthquake and fire and vividly remembered being “too frightened” and her mother and father calming her and her older sister, walking her from the flames for two days and nights (“We could feel the fire on our faces, even several blocks away”) before finally escaping on a ferry. “And when I smell hot coffee now,” she noted, it still brought back to her the feeling of relief she had felt as a seven-year-old when Red Cross workers greeted her family in Oakland, finally safe from the “burning city.” Lily suffered a stroke in 1987 and passed in 1993.
Lee Yoke Suey, still bearing the scar of a guardsman’s bayonet inflicted when retrieving his birth certificate before the flames destroyed his home, brought his family back to the new Chinatown where he worked again as an export merchant for Levi Strauss and the Haas Brothers. Lee Yoke Suey took his wife, Lee Wong Shee, and their six children back to visit her family in China, but on a return trip without them to the city for business in 1922, he died of liver cancer during the crossing. When his family returned after him, the children were allowed entry but Wong Shee was detained—as a widow born in China she had no legal status. She was jailed on Angel Island, a “victim of technicalities of the immigration laws,” as a newspaper would report. An attorney for the Haas Brothers was able to stop her deportation, but her detention appeal took more than a year, where she was separated from her young children who were taken in and cared for by families in Chinatown, able only to see their mother during occasional fifteen-minute visits. After fifteen and a half months, Wong Shee was released and reunited with her children in Chinatown.
Legal walls to immigrants from China were not torn down in San Francisco or the United States until 1943, and then only because China was an ally against Japan, war years that also saw the illegal detention and forced relocation of Japanese Americans into “internment camps” for three years, including more than five thousand from San Francisco’s neighborhood of Japantown, which formed soon after the earthquake and fire. It was not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that legal quotas on immigration from Asia were finally lifted, even though discrimination continued against Chinese and Japanese residents of the city, and anti-Asian violence continues to this day. More than seventy thousand current residents of San Francisco’s Chinatown live and work in the same heart of the city where Lee Yoke Suey and Lily Soo-Hoo were born and where Lew Hing ran his cannery and Ng Poon Chew printed his newspaper, a physical neighborhood entirely rebuilt after the fire, but a strong community unbroken for more than a century and a half.
Many writers and photographers who observed the earthquake and fire and made it possible for others in distant places or later times to also see lived to cover other grand places, historic figures, and pivotal events, but their names would forever be linked to 1906. Photographer Arnold Genthe at first resisted the calls of friends in the East to relocate, signing a five-year lease on a Clay Street cottage near the Presidio—attracted more by the “fine old scrub-oak” in the garden than the space itself—which he refitted as a studio for portrait work. But when his lease expired in 1911, he moved to New York City and established a portrait studio on Fifth Avenue where he became one of the most sought-after portrait photographers of his time with subjects including President Wilson, former president Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan and her troupe, and the actress Greta Garbo. He traveled and photographed throughout South America and Europe and published a memoir, As I Remember. Genthe returned to the city—his adopted hometown—in 1937 and told the Chronicle he had been hospitalized with a serious illness in recent months, but “[s]ince breathing San Francisco air I have improved more in a single week than in all the months they worked over me.” But his health worsened, and while visiting friends in Connecticut in 1942, he died of a coronary occlusion at the age of seventy-three.
Charmian and Jack London continued their adventurous life and literary partnership, traveling the South Seas on their yacht and taking a sailboat around Cape Horn. Jack published more books edited by Charmian, and Charmian published short stories and books documenting their travels. In 1910 Charmian gave birth to their daughter, who died of birthing complications within two days; her subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriages. Their custom-built dream house on their Glen Ellen ranch also burned down just before they could move in. Jack’s drinking grew heavier, his health declined, and he died of kidney failure in 1916. For all his literary accomplishments—including the acclaimed novel The Call of the Wild—he was paid more for his 2,500-word article on the 1906 earthquake and fire than any other work. Charmian lived another thirty-nine years, continued to write—including a biography of Jack London—and was ever a vigilant guardian of his legacy. After a stroke and a broken hip resulting from a fall, she passed at eighty-three in 1955 in their home on the Glen Ellen ranch. Charmian Kittredge London was, in the words of her biographer, “a woman ahead of her time, not afraid to break the rules set for women in her day.”
The very next year, James Hopper also passed. He and his wife had left San Francisco in 1907 for the literary colony in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where friends of his had recently settled, including George Sterling, Mary Austin, and Sinclair Lewis. From there he wrote short stories for McClure’s Magazine and Sunset and published four novels. As he had in the Philippines, Hopper worked during the First World War as a correspondent on the front lines, reporting for Collier’s from the trenches of the Western Front where American soldiers remembered him as the man who had told the story of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, and when he joined them in their first attack on German lines across no-man’s-land under fire, according to George C. Marshall, then a young staff officer, a group of German soldiers surrendered to Hopper who was “embarrassed” because he had only “a pencil with which to receive them.” Hopper returned to Carmel after the war, continued writing—articles, short stories, and another novel—raised a son and three daughters with his wife, and served as a local director of the WPA Federal Writers’ Project. When Hopper passed in Carmel at the age of eighty in 1956, he was remembered as a “lawyer, war correspondent, football coach and teacher,” as a “quarterback of the famous California football team which beat Stanford by the score of 52–0 in 1898” (the margin of victory having grown over the years from the actual score of 22–0), and as one of “California’s authentically great men” who “contributed largely to California’s reputation as a home and an inspiration to famous writers.”
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On April 18 of that year, San Francisco kicked off a five-day “Festival of Progress” to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster, acclaiming the city’s “rise from the ashes” with a ceremony at Lotta’s Fountain, a twenty-four-foot-tall, gold-brown-painted cast-iron drinking fountain and a downtown connection to the city’s first life. It stood then roughly where it does today and has for the past 147 years, on a Market Street pedestrian island across from the Palace Hotel where Kearny and Geary Streets intersect. The fountain was a gift to San Francisco from resident and nationally renowned actress Charlotte “Lotta” Crabtree in 1875 “to the use and benefit of inhabitants of San Francisco, henceforth and for all time.” In its early years it saw the West Coast’s first skyscrapers—the de Young Chronicle Building and the Spreckels Call Building—ascend beside it and across the street. It witnessed the destruction of the city all around it and the rebuilding that followed. It became a rendezvous point for friends and the host for commemorations, protests, political speeches, Days of ’49 celebrations, liberty loan rallies during the First World War, and war bond rallies during the Second. When visitors during the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition asked where one could find a drink of water in the city, the Chronicle answered, “Lotta’s Fountain!” And when world-famous Italian opera soprano Luisa Tetrazzini was in a contract dispute with Oscar Hammerstein, she gave a free public concert on Christmas Eve 1910 from a stage beside the fountain to a crowd of San Franciscans that reportedly numbered a quarter million.
And at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1956, Lotta’s Fountain was again the center of ceremony as a wreath was “placed on the fountain in memory of those who lost their lives” by the South of Market Boys—an organization of men who had grown up in pre-1906 South of Market and had begun formal April 18 commemorations first in 1926 for the twentieth anniversary, then again in 1931 for the twenty-fifth, both at the Civic Auditorium. They subsequently turned these formal events into an annual April 18 gathering and wreath laying at Lotta’s Fountain, a tradition that endures to this day.
And the occasion was not just a look back at the disaster or salute to the city’s resilience but a forward-looking gaze at the dangers attendant to the next big earthquake. A half century of advances in seismology—of elastic rebound and propagation of seismic waves and continental drift theory soon to develop into a fuller understanding of plate tectonics—armed scientists and engineers and city planners with a greater understanding of the threat, and the physical reminders of its inevitability were frequent. Tremors intermittently rolled through the ground beneath San Francisco from earthquakes centered far up north or down south, sensations almost commonplace to residents. As a newspaper reported on the eve of the anniversary, “Californians long ago learned to live with such disturbances.” But the length of the San Andreas Fault that had ripped apart and unleashed so much devastation in 1906 sat eerily quiet for a half century, even as the Pacific and North American Plates continued to move past one another as before, loading the rock masses along the fault with increasing amounts of strain, and experts knew a fracture was inevitable. The California Office of Civil Defense spent the April 18 anniversary hosting an all-day conference on “California’s Next Earthquake.” Dr. Charles Richter himself said “California may go 10 years or more without a San Andreas quake—but one could come tomorrow.”
Tomorrow came less than a year later in March 1957 when a magnitude-5.3 earthquake struck near Daly City where the San Andreas Fault straightens from a slight bend. While the fault is mostly straight where it runs alongside San Francisco, down south as it runs north-northwestward up toward the west side of the Bay Area, it steps left gradually in a restraining bend about sixty miles south of San Francisco, causing the faster-moving Pacific Plate on the left to collide diagonally with the slower North American Plate to the right, resulting in a compression strike-slip fault (where rock masses on each side are both running into and moving past each other), pressure that has over millions of years thrust up the Santa Cruz Mountains. And around Daly City, the fault sidesteps back to the right in a releasing bend where the two plates slowly pull apart as they move past each other. It was there where the fault fractured, collapsing a roadway along Lake Merced, killing one person and injuring forty. The shaking was strong enough in San Francisco to stop the clock on the Ferry Building “for the first time since April 18, 1906,” as the Examiner would report, but although some older residents reportedly said, “[T]he shock seemed just as violent” as 1906, a seismologist studying data from the seismograph station in Berkeley declared it “a far cry from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.”
And the relatively mild shock was quickly forgotten. The clock was repaired within hours and the Ferry Building stood undamaged, still an enduring landmark of the city’s past and an affirming symbol of resilience even as progress dethroned it as the West Coast’s busiest transit terminal. In 1958, twenty-one years after the opening of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and twenty after the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, 108 years of ferry service officially ended. The Ferry Building was converted into commercial space, its grand nave subdivided into offices. And with bus and rail service replacing ferries and an explosion in automobile traffic, the state’s first double-decked freeway—the Cypress Freeway—was opened on the far side of the Bay Bridge in Oakland. And the double-decked Embarcadero Freeway was built in San Francisco, running from the Bay Bridge up the Embarcadero (former East Street) to Broadway (with plans to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge in a future phase). It blocked the iconic Ferry Building, cut off views of the bay from much of downtown, and was—as the Chronicle complained the year it went up—a “hideous monstrosity.”
As the San Francisco skyline changed, progress altered or toppled much of what 1906 had not. The Call Building, the tallest of the former city, was by 1907 restored to its former glory, once again “the handsomest office building in the world.” And with height restrictions on steel-framed structures removed, developers raced to buy more of the sky. By 1922, the Standard Oil Building became the city’s tallest, rising twenty-two stories above Bush Street. In 1925, the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building rose twenty-six stories. Then in 1927, the Russ Building topped them all with thirty-one. In 1937, with more space needed, the shrinking Call Building was “modernized” with an art deco façade and its four-story dome was removed and replaced with seven new floors. As Architectural Digest proclaimed of its unrecognizable new visage, “Economic forces prove stronger than earthquakes.”
In 1955, the 103-year-old Montgomery Block—a century since it was the tallest in the old city—was dedicated as a state historical landmark, and a plaque was affixed to its outer wall: “This, San Francisco’s first fireproof building, erected in 1853 by Henry Wager Halleck, was the headquarters for many outstanding lawyers, financiers, writers, actors, and artists,” closing with “Escaping destruction in the fire of 1906, the building is preserved in memory of those who lived and worked in it.” The plaque was unveiled by eighty-four-year-old Oliver Stidger, still a tenant forty-nine years after he convinced soldiers to spare the building from demolition. But four years later, both met their end—Mr. Stidger to illness and the building to a wrecking ball. A parking lot sat in its place for a decade until the “construction of a towering pyramid of commercial offices for modern day pharaohs of finance and industry,” the Transamerica Pyramid, opened in 1971 as the city’s tallest, a place it would hold for nearly a half century. Two years later, the original plaque from the Montgomery Block was placed in the Transamerica lobby, where it can still be seen today.
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Ever wary of the danger constantly building in the earth’s crust beneath the city, hundreds of emergency officials from more than two dozen federal, state, and local agencies in the Bay Area ran “a practice drill” in August 1989, streamlining communications and logistics in a simulation of “shattered hospitals, wrecked neighborhoods, blocked roads, out-of-commission phone systems and raging fires.” The practice sessions were, in the words of the local FEMA associate director, “the biggest of their kind ever held,” and they modeled scenarios possible with the reality of “a great earthquake,” which experts gave a fifty-fifty chance of striking on either the Hayward or the San Andreas Fault within the next thirty years. And reality took only sixty days to arrive.
It was 5:04 p.m. on Tuesday, October 17, and the Army’s Honor Guard from the Presidio was on the field of Candlestick Park to present the flag for the national anthem to begin Game 3 of the World Series between the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants. “There was a loud noise and we looked up to see the plane going overhead,” a sergeant in the Honor Guard described, and “it was like the plane was causing the shaking—but no, that’s not the plane.” The ground started shaking violently. ABC’s live coverage was interrupted as broadcaster Al Michaels exclaimed, “I tell you what, we’re having an earth—” With a loud roar like a freight train, shockwaves rolled beneath the stadium. The Army sergeant “looked down on the ground to see whether or not there was a crack between my feet that’s how strong it felt.”
The earth’s crust had ruptured sixty miles south of San Francisco where the San Andreas Fault bends gradually through the Santa Cruz Mountains. The epicenter of the magnitude-6.9 earthquake was near the range’s highest peak—Loma Prieta—and surface waves shot through the ground northward up the peninsula through San Francisco for approximately fifteen seconds. The brick wall of a four-story apartment building on 6th Street—along the same South of Market block where so many lodging houses had collapsed eighty-three years before—peeled away and fell, crushing five people to death in their cars and on the sidewalk. Residential buildings in the Marina District—built on made ground of bay mud and clay backfilled in preparation for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition—sank, and as if echoing the past, gas pipes and water mains fractured in the liquefaction. Firefighters rescued survivors from ruins and evacuated residents in range of gas leaks, and when fires erupted, water pressure from even AWSS hydrants was lacking. As goes the quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
There was no repeat of 1906, and the rhyming was lessened by eighty years of preventive measures. The fireboat Phoenix supplied firefighters with sufficient water to keep the blaze in the Marina District contained to a single block. And the Central Fire Alarm Station’s generator power kept more than two thousand fire alarm boxes operating. City Water Department workers closed, isolated, and began repair on valves to broken mains even through a 5.2-magnitude aftershock. And after power to hydropneumatic pumping stations was restored, AWSS operators were able to pump salt water to the Jones Street tank to restore high-pressure water supply to the Marina District within four hours. And while more than fifty people were arrested for looting, the district attorney said he would “ask for the maximum bail and the maximum sentences,” promising due process instead of summary executions.
3,757 people were injured and sixty-three were killed—one motorist after the collapse of a section of the Bay Bridge’s upper lanes (only a week before a scheduled retrofitting) and forty-two over in Oakland, where nearly a mile-long stretch of the Cypress Freeway’s upper deck pancaked onto the lower, crushing more than two dozen cars and their occupants. Damages were measured in the billions of dollars—roughly half in San Francisco. Sixty buildings in the Marina District were destroyed or deemed uninhabitable, and residents were given only fifteen minutes to return and retrieve belongings. And the Embarcadero Freeway was so badly damaged it was eventually demolished, clearing the concrete monstrosity from the downtown landscape, freeing neighborhood streets from its ramps and connecting the city with the Ferry Building and waterfront once again.
Compared by magnitude to 1906, the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 was one-tenth the size and one-thirtieth the strength in energy released. And the rupture was twenty-five miles long, roughly one-twelfth the length of the 1906 rupture. Aside from that relatively short portion—and the even shorter portion that had produced the 1956 Daly City earthquake—the 296-mile stretch of the San Andreas Fault that had torn apart and unleashed so much devastation in 1906 was still locked, with strain on each side still building.
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Six months and a day later, a handful of the “dwindling band of survivors” of 1906 again gathered with other San Franciscans at Lotta’s Fountain to remember the Big One and what they were now calling the previous year’s earthquake, the “Pretty Big One.” Among them was eighty-nine-year-old Cora Luchetti, whose father, Rafaelo Paolinelli, was the fruit merchant Officer Harry Schmidt saw crushed by the falling brick wall in the first moments of the earthquake. Cora had been only five at the time, at home with her mother and brothers, and she recounted for a reporter the moment she found out her father had been killed: “When his horse and buggy came back, somebody else was driving it,” she noted. “My mother knew then that he was dead.”
On April 18, 1996, Cora was among twenty-five survivors to make it back for the ninetieth anniversary. Also attending was Helen Huntington Perrin, one hundred years old, who still carried vivid memories of her late father, Pliny Huntington, taking her and her mother and brother up to the roof of the Fairmont Hotel ninety years before to watch the fires. Because the fire gutted the Fairmont a few hours later, ownership changed, and it denied her father the opportunity to serve as the hotel manager and dashed her dream of staying in the Fairmont (something she later said she could never afford even as an adult). In 1994, the Fairmont Hotel fulfilled her childhood dream by inviting her and her family to celebrate her ninety-ninth birthday in the dining room and stay overnight in a suite at 1907 rates ($10 for the suite, 30 cents for breakfast, 45 cents for lunch, and $1.30 for dinner). In 1997, the Fairmont extended the same courtesy for her 102nd birthday. Helen passed away in 2002 at the age of 106. Cora Luchetti passed at the age of 100 in 2000, just months after attending her last 1906 ceremony at Lotta’s Fountain—an event her family said she never missed. By the centennial ceremony in 2006, only five survivors were present, ranging in age from 101 to 109, and brought to the event by police escort.
With the arrival of April 2006, San Francisco contended with its own incomplete record of the disaster, a century of discounting lives lost and ignoring the ashes it buried beneath its rebuilding. The Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to “set aside the death toll of 478” and amend it to a more accurate number. The resolution was coauthored by Gladys Hansen, who had spent nearly half a century as a librarian and two decades as the city’s archivist with the San Francisco Public Library combing through newspaper archives and voter registration lists and records of the health department, coroner’s office, and funeral homes to count the uncounted dead. By creating a three-by-five card for every name, she had compiled a list of those who died and its total soon passed the original “official” count. She sent bulletins out to historical and genealogical societies throughout the country requesting members who lost family in San Francisco in 1906 to contact her, resulting in “what seemed like thousands of letters.” By 1985, she had reportedly collected “the names of 1,500 persons” who perished in the earthquake and fire, and eventually by her own count the number exceeded three thousand.
After her 1992 retirement, Gladys Hansen worked as curator of her Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco and continued to build on the data she had typed and written onto the hundreds of index cards at the public library, compiling a “1906 List of Dead & Survivors.” Armed with Hansen’s claim to have “tallied more than 3,400 fatalities,” the Board of Supervisors, in setting aside the original death toll, invited “interested members of the public” to “use the resources of the San Francisco History Center of the Public Library, as well as other local history repositories, to establish a certified death count, with the names of all the victims.” And the board requested a “certified death count and list of names be presented to the Board of Supervisors for a vote on amending the toll” prior to April 18, 2006.
But that count and list was never presented. And Gladys sadly passed away in 2017. The index cards completed with such care by her still fill drawers at the San Francisco Public Library, containing more than 600 names and 185 unknowns (“John/Jane Doe”). And her Virtual Museum’s “Integrated List All Deaths” of 1906—last updated in 2010—contains 992 names and 75 unknowns, although—as with the index cards at the library—many are listed multiple times under alternate spellings, and several names are included of individuals who committed suicide, died of natural causes weeks or months after the disaster, or were later determined to have survived. Given the untold numbers of undocumented deaths—especially South of Market and in Chinatown—the exact number of people killed in those three days in San Francisco in 1906 can never be known. To this day there is no “certified death count,” but thanks to Gladys Hansen’s work, the historical record of 1906 is far more complete.
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Also part of the city’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary in 2006 were events in earthquake preparedness planning, the largest of which was a three-day conference organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Seismological Society of America, and California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, and attended by more than 2,500 scientists, engineers, and local, state, and federal emergency response planners. “When the Big One Strikes Again,” a study presented at the conference, predicted that a repeat of a magnitude-7.9 earthquake striking the Bay Area—with a more than tenfold increase in population since 1906—would cause an estimated 800 to 3,400 fatalities and more than $100 billion in damages through four counties. Focused on “seismically vulnerable” buildings as the “primary risk to life safety” in an earthquake, the study recommended more seismic retrofitting of older buildings. “The Bay Area is probably better prepared than most urban areas for a natural disaster,” the conference chairman concluded, “but it’s not prepared enough.”
As certain as tides and irregular as weather, earthquakes shake the ground of California nearly every day, even if most are imperceptible. Since 1906, more than thirty major earthquakes with epicenters in the state have occurred with a moment magnitude of 6.0 or greater, and at least eight of 7.0 or greater. Most of these have struck up north near Cape Mendocino, where the Pacific Plate meets the smaller Gorda Plate as it collides with (or slides beneath) the North American Plate, forming the Mendocino Fracture Zone. Or down south in the “creeping section” of the San Andreas Fault, an eighty-mile stretch from San Juan Bautista down to Parkfield, where the rock masses continuously release the strain between the plates by rupturing at intermittent intervals to accommodate movement averaging nearly one inch per year. But the length of the San Andreas Fault running alongside San Francisco has not ruptured since 1906. And to the east, the seventy-four-mile-long Hayward Fault—which runs through Oakland and Berkeley and crosses five highways, railroads, BART’s Berkeley Hills Tunnel, and cuts directly through the middle of California Memorial Stadium—has not ruptured since 1868, and scientists warn “a large quake there is inevitable.” For well more than a century, the Pacific and North American Plates have continued to move, loading the rock masses on both sides of both faults with increasing amounts of strain. That another big earthquake will strike the Bay Area again is not a question but a certainty.
Since 1868 and 1906 and 1989, San Francisco leaders have grappled with the tension between the benefit and expense of seismic safeguards, or, as one city official put it, the balance between “life safety and socioeconomic impact.” Since 1989, the city has passed ordinances requiring seismic retrofitting of “soft-story” buildings and unreinforced masonry in structures and approved bond issues for landlords and property owners to obtain low-cost loans for retrofit expenses. The soft-story ordinance, as the Chronicle reported in 2019, “has since become a model for other earthquake-prone cities,” such as Oakland, which passed its own in 2018.
To address an aging water main infrastructure and minimize breaks in water transmission and distribution mains in the event of an earthquake, engineers with the San Francisco Public Utility Commission have worked to replace old, brittle cast-iron pipes with ductile iron, which has more tensile strength, and sections are now connected with flexible joints. Additionally, the ninety-million-gallon Sunset Reservoir underwent a seismic upgrade, thirty new emergency water cisterns were added throughout the city, and miles of pipes were added to its AWSS, connected with the Sunset Reservoir, to supply western neighborhoods—the Richmond and Sunset Districts—with an emergency high-pressure water supply for fire suppression and drinking water.
And on October 17, 2019—the thirtieth anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake—a public earthquake early warning system was launched for California after nearly two decades of development. A network of ground motion sensors throughout the state can detect an earthquake’s initial primary waves and transmit data to an earthquake alert center where the location and size of the shock are calculated and an alert is sent through the wireless emergency alert system and the ShakeAlert® app to users’ devices: “Earthquake. Drop, cover, hold on. Shaking expected.” Oregon and Washington were added by 2021, giving the entire West Coast access to advance warning of incoming earthquakes. While predicting where and when an earthquake will strike is impossible, even a few seconds of advance warning can, as was reported on the system’s launch, “grant people enough time to slow down public transit, discontinue surgeries, open firehouse doors, stop elevators, or drop and cover.”
* * *
The annual remembrances of 1906 continued every April 18, attended by mayors, fire chiefs, and the shrinking ranks of 1906 survivors who showed up and told their stories until the last one attended in 2013 and the last one passed in 2016, leaving the city itself as the lone survivor. And parts of its skyline still echo the past. The tall letters “Palace Hotel” shine over Market Street atop the corner of the grand nine-story beaux arts–style hotel, which since rebuilt and reopened in 1909 has occupied the same footprint over the past 113 years as the original Palace did for 31. The Fairmont—its gutted interior restored in time to open on the first anniversary of the earthquake—still stands atop Nob Hill across the street from the only surviving mansion, the James C. Flood Mansion, now home to an elite social club. And the St. Francis with its completed third wing still looms over Union Square and the Dewey Monument. The “Old Mint,” which has not operated as a US mint since 1937 and still stands on 6th and Mission Streets, is both a California and National Historic Landmark now owned by the city. And the Old Post Office on 7th and Mission, restored after 1906 and again after the 1989 earthquake, is still the grand home of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Beneath the shade of century-old trees atop Russian Hill are a few of the houses saved by residents from dynamite and fire; three of them stand side by side on Green Street between Leavenworth and Jones. One at 1045 Green, another at 1055 Green (built in 1860 but redesigned in 1916). And the third at 1067 Green near Leavenworth, where the unmistakable eight-sided roof rises behind a plaque informing visitors they are seeing the “Feusier Octagon House, Built by George Kenney, Circa 1852, Occupied by the Feusier Family for Over 80 Years.” Louis died in the home in 1917 at the age of ninety-one, and his son, Clarence, still lived in it in the summer of 1949 when a Chronicle reporter approached the seventy-eight-year-old and found him tending the garden, more than happy to speak about his family home and the fight to save it back in 1906: “‘The house may not have suffered from the earthquake,’ [Clarence] concluded with a wry shake of his head, ‘but it certainly got an awful shake from that dynamite.’” Clarence died two years later, as his father had, in the home, and his family’s five-generation, eighty-year occupancy ended after his funeral services in “the high-ceilinged front room which overlooks Green Street.”
Fires reached every block of what was rebuilt into the present-day Financial District, and almost none of its buildings predate 1906. Almost. Near where the Transamerica Pyramid ascends to mark the footprint of the old Montgomery Block, a few battered survivors still stand in Jackson Square as monuments to the repeated, three-day fight to save that two-and-a-half-square block of the old city against fires from all four directions. The Ganella Building at 728 Montgomery, built in 1853, still stands, as does the Golden Era Building at 732, built in 1852 on the site of one of the buildings destroyed by the 1851 fire. The Belli Building at 722 Montgomery was built next door the same year, originally serving as a tobacco warehouse, then later as a theater where Lotta Crabtree performed, and eventually it became famed attorney Melvin Belli’s office.
Hotaling & Co. survived the earthquake and fire but not Prohibition, and its old warehouse, the Hotaling Building, still stands on Jackson Street beside the alleyway renamed Hotaling Place. In 1992, a historic marker was dedicated on the outside wall proclaiming the building and its liquor were spared “due to a mile long fire hose laid from Fisherman’s Wharf over Telegraph Hill by the U.S. Navy.” The marker closes with the most popular passage to arise in the disaster’s aftermath, a poem still recited by many San Franciscans:
If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did he burn the churches down
And save Hotaling’s whisky?
It was not yet 4:30 a.m. on April 18, 2022, when I arrived at Lotta’s Fountain for the commemoration of the 116th anniversary of the earthquake and fire, the long-standing annual tradition broken only recently by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had caused the cancellation of the 2020 ceremony and forced a more subdued 2021 event with fewer attendees. When I arrived, the fountain looked as if it was the center of a movie set. Workers stood on stepladders training the bright beams of spotlights atop tall poles onto the fountain, and before it a microphone atop a stand was wired to speakers. Parked along the Market Street side were two SFFD engines and a ladder truck. Police officers with reflective safety vests over their uniforms redirected the occasional car as a growing crowd gathered around the curbed island from all sides, reporters and city officials, chiefs of the fire department and police department in their dress uniforms, and quite a few spectators in 1906-era costume: bustle dresses and feathered hats and folded parasols and corsets and bow ties and top hats and tails and vintage leather firefighter helmets and police custodian helmets.
Within a few minutes, the crowd was at least twelve deep on all sides. A few wore pins with pictures and names on their jackets, honoring relatives or loved ones who were 1906 survivors. Many wore whatever they could throw on at that early hour—sweatshirts, flannels, Giants jackets—and a good number were in formal wear. The lady standing beside me was dressed in a long coat and feathered hat, her hair and makeup were impeccable, and her gloved hand clutched the leash of her small dog beside her. “I never miss this,” she told me. “Glad it’s back this year.” A man on the other side of me in a sweater and jeans had brought his young son: “Woke him up early so he could experience this before school.”
At 4:45 a.m. the master of ceremonies—former 49ers stadium announcer Bob Sarlatte, wearing a SFFD helmet—grabbed the microphone and proclaimed, “Once again you hearty, crazy folks have come together at this ungodly hour to remember and honor the memories of those hearty San Franciscans who survived being tossed from their beds one hundred and sixteen years ago this morning.” After reciting a timeline of events for the three days of the earthquake and fire, he recognized the special guests, including ninety-three-year-old Joe McCaughey, the grandnephew of Eugene Schmitz. And Sarlatte introduced each speaker, including former mayor Willie Brown, the police chief, the sheriff, the executive director of emergency management, and Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson, who assured the crowd, “We are resilient, and the San Francisco Fire Department is ready for anything that comes our way, whether it be fires, medical calls, or earthquakes.” The last speaker was Mayor London Breed, the city’s forty-fifth mayor, dressed for the event in an Edwardian dress and coat and feathered hat, who spoke about how the people of the city came together during the recent COVID-19 shutdown, and “although we may not have anyone still alive from the 1906 earthquake, this is a city that will still remember, remember the past and what makes San Francisco so extraordinary.”
At 5:12 a.m. the crowd observed a moment of silence “to remember those who perished and those who survived to rebuild San Francisco.” After a few seconds of still, solemn quiet, the siren of a fire truck sounded to mark the moment of the earthquake’s impact. The microphone was then handed to Donna Huggins, dressed and in character as Lillie Hitchcock Coit—an early patron of the city’s volunteer firefighters and namesake and benefactor of Coit Tower—and as she has at every annual ceremony since 1976, Huggins led the crowd in singing “San Francisco” from the 1936 film of the same name. And a flowered wreath was tied to the fountain to mark the 116th commemoration of 1906.
From there it was announced that the morning’s tradition of commemorations would move down to 20th and Church Streets in a half hour for “the annual gilding of the fire hydrant that saved the Mission District.” I rode BART from the Montgomery Street Station down to the stop at 16th and Mission and took the remaining eight blocks through the Mission District on foot—south along Valencia Street past the former site of the Valencia Hotel rescue and then along 18th Street where hoses had once been stretched by firefighters and volunteers to save their neighborhood. Every bit of ground I covered by foot and rail from Lotta’s Fountain to that point had all once burned, just eighteen of more than five hundred blocks of the massive “burned district.” I ascended Dolores Street a block, then took a pathway through Dolores Park to Church Street and uphill another block toward the crowd already assembled around the golden hydrant, the “Little Giant,” the hydrant Ernest Edwards had led firefighters to on the third morning of the fire, the hydrant that helped save the Mission District.
Donna Huggins, still in period costume as Lillie Hitchcock Coit, emceed at the microphone, and with a can of gold spray paint in hand, invited people to step onto the sidewalk and gild the hydrant. One by one people stepped from the crowd, took the can and microphone, and dedicated their own moment at the hydrant to specific people. Some spoke in memory of relatives, of recently passed friends “who never missed this event,” or “in thanks for all the first responders who still keep us safe.” One of the fire chiefs stepped forward, Chief of Operations Robert Postel, a fourth-generation firefighter, and he gilded the hydrant on behalf of his father, the former chief of the fire department, both of his grandfathers, and his great-grandfather, who survived the earthquake and fire as a child and died in the line of duty in 1937. And another man walked forward and said, “This is for my great-grandfather Rafaelo Paolinelli, a fruit merchant who was killed when a wall collapsed on him the morning of the earthquake.”
After he stepped back to the street, I met him. Tony was his name, and he introduced me to his brother Terry, who also helped gild the hydrant. They were eager to tell me about their great-grandfather Rafaelo Paolinelli and Rafaelo’s children, including “Babe” Pinelli (“[T]hey shortened the longer Italian name to Pinelli,” one of them explained), who was a Major League Baseball umpire who called Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. And they told me of Rafaelo’s daughter—their grandmother—Cora Luchetti. They shared how she told them she was awoken by the earthquake and knew her father had died when his horse and wagon came home driven by someone else. And here on the 116th anniversary of their great-grandfather’s death, Tony and Terry were carrying on their grandmother’s tradition of never missing an April 18 anniversary.
Behind the crowd and parked against the inclined Church Street curb was a large SFFD fire engine, capable of reaching an alarm three times as fast as the fire engines of 1906, and able to pump with four times the power and battle a blaze with more water in less time. Gathered beside it were a handful of young firefighters, the living heirs of their 1906 predecessors, armed now with far better communications and equipment and technology. As a wreath was placed on the hydrant, shiny with its newest coat of gold paint, the young firefighters stood beside their engine, bareheaded in heavy turnout coats, a few watching the remembrance of the past but all fully ready in the present for the next alarm, prepared to play their part ensuring no firestorm ever again visits the city, no other hydrant is honored as a district’s sole source of water in any future fire, and memorial wreaths laid by future generations of San Franciscans bear no year beyond 1906.
Acknowledgments
FROM MY EARLIEST study of source materials on the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, it was clear this was not a story about houses or tall buildings but of the lives lived in them and lost in too many. Although I began with the goal of chronicling a natural disaster, even my early research highlighted causes for devastation reaching deeper than a study of science or geology or tectonic plates or movements along faults could explain, a loss of human life and property taken not by a natural event but by the actions or inaction of men in charge after too many dire warnings. Thousands of pages of archival materials mapped the narrative back through decades of decisions by individual men—to act, to forget, to neglect, to profit, to warn, to ignore—through destructive earthquakes and six devastating fires until one earth-shattering minute exposed fault lines engineered by city leaders between the favored and the forgotten. And after years of grappling with a growing list of names of the fallen and causes of death or details of their final moments, I scrapped my efforts to estimate a number. Because no matter how many people were killed, they died one by one. Their names matter, the number does not.
My first call was to Gladys Hansen, retired librarian and city archivist. She was most gracious with her time to speak with me, and after each topic we covered, she returned to the man she credited most with saving not just the waterfront but the lives of many evacuees and the city, Lieutenant Frederick Freeman. After her passing, her son Richard Hansen was very kind to speak with me on numerous occasions and helpful in sharing materials and information from the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco he still maintains. As with anyone who conducts research on 1906, I stood on the shoulders of Gladys Hansen’s work and am thankful for the history she gathered and preserved. I am grateful to both Richard and his late mother, Gladys, and I am hopeful the latest, most complete list of names of the 1906 dead compiled by both will one day be made public.
It was an honor to be assisted by the late Charles Fracchia, historian and author and teacher and founder of the San Francisco Historical Society. He told me early on that the story of the earthquake and fire “is a tricky one” to tackle, and his writings and knowledge and guidance and advice and encouragement were essential in not only gaining a fuller understanding of the disaster but also of San Francisco’s lightning-paced half century of history from the gold rush to 1906. I was one of the last of a long line of fortunate individuals who learned from him, and thanks to the work he left us, the learning continues.
My research visits to the city never felt like work, not only for its fascinating history and bottomless opportunities for exploration but especially because of the people. Among those who made my time productive and research rewarding was Susan Goldstein, city archivist at the San Francisco Public Library. Her work in collecting and preserving so much diverse San Francisco history in the library’s San Francisco History Center is monumental, and I am humbled by her personal assistance and guidance. I thank Christina Moretta, photo curator, for making so many unscanned photographs from the library’s 1906 collection available for me, and I also thank the scanning department manager Lisa Palella for scanning them.
Working from the East Coast presents a logistical challenge when most research material is on the West Coast, and between research trips to the city I relied greatly on the assistance of Marisa Louie Lee, a San Francisco researcher who specializes in Asian American history and immigration and naturalization records. I could not have completed the research in the time I did without her help, and I am also grateful to her for sharing with me wonderful publications and sources covering the history of Chinatown.
I thank Frances Kaplan, reference and outreach librarian for the California Historical Society, for assisting me with my many requests for materials and for making my visits there so productive. I also thank Debra Kaufman, the society’s rights and reproductions coordinator, for her assistance. I am grateful to Brienne Wong and Palma You of the Chinese Historical Society of America for being so patient in answering my questions and assisting me with their collections. I thank Lauren Menzies of the Society of California Pioneers for her assistance. And I am grateful to Stephanie Bayless, director of the National Archives at San Francisco in San Bruno, and her staff for their hard work, especially Charles Miller, research archivist, who was able to locate documents I requested even with his reduced staff during the COVID-19 shutdown, and John Seamans, archives technician, whose assistance scanning documents and sending them while the building was still closed to the public helped me immensely.
The 1906 earthquake and fire was an intersectional event of geology and physics and emergency response and city planning and engineering, and its full story cannot be understood or told without consulting with experts and professionals in many diverse fields. I first thank Dr. David Russ, geologist and former regional executive for the US Geological Survey, for allowing me to interview him and taking the time to very patiently answer my many questions about tectonic plates and strike-slip faults and compression faults and subduction zones and elastic rebound and primary waves and secondary waves and surface waves and seismic creep and moment magnitude. And I thank him for reviewing portions of the manuscript and correcting my many mistakes. He was and is a deep source of knowledge, and for me his expertise was matched by his patience as a teacher. I also thank geologist Tim Elam for giving me a walking tour of streets and sidewalks on fill land in South of Market and the Financial District. I appreciate him explaining so much about the propagation of seismic waves through alluvial soil and old bay clay, and especially for answering my many questions about the soil or mud or clay or bedrock beneath each building we visited.
I am very grateful to Bill Koenig, who retired from the San Francisco Fire Department as a lieutenant after thirty years of service, including service during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I have never worked as a firefighter and had no previous understanding of anything involved in firefighting—I did not know how a fire engine works, how hydrants work, had no grasp of pressure or gallons per minute or friction through hose lines, and I certainly knew nothing about turn-of-the-century steam pump engines. So I appreciate Bill sharing his knowledge gained from a career of experience and from his many years of gathering and writing so much of the department’s history. I thank him for his patience in my many interviews and answering hundreds of questions by phone and email. And I thank the volunteers at the SFFD Museum and Guardians of the City Museum, including retired captain James Lee. I also thank Lieutenant Jonathan Baxter, the department’s public information officer, for connecting me with other members of the department.
I appreciate the courtesy extended to me by Dr. Stephen Tobriner, architectural engineer and professor of architectural history at the University of California. When I read his exceptionally detailed book Bracing for Disaster, I discovered just how little I knew about the materials and construction methods in use between 1850 and 1906, and I appreciate him taking the time to speak with me and answer my many questions and review the manuscript. His expertise in structural engineering and knowledge of architectural history are bottomless, and his comments and guidance were indispensable.
While I am a lifelong fan of trains, something I inherited from my grandfather and passed on to one of my two sons, I knew very little about cable cars or electric streetcars. So I appreciate Emiliano Echeverria, the San Francisco (and world) expert on cable cars and author of many books on the city’s cable car history, which were invaluable sources, for taking the time to answer my many questions. I also thank Joe Thompson, the “cable car guy,” for sharing so much of his knowledge with me and for the vast amount of information on his webpage.
I thank Anne Evers Hitz, whose books on the Ferry Building and the Emporium were wonderful sources of information, for sharing so much history with me about the Ferry Building. I thank antique clock repairman Dorian Clair, who maintains the Ferry Building clock, for answering my questions about the tower’s original 1898 clock, which he restored to working condition. I am thankful for the valuable input of Nick Wright, creator and administrator of very informative San Francisco history Facebook groups, who has collected thousands of digital images of the city and assembled digital panoramas from the earliest gold rush years to 1906, and through his years of work has managed to build a database of the history of individual buildings and houses on specific streets. I am grateful to Joyce Kurtz of San Francisco City Guides, Cate Mills of History San José Research Library, and Joe Adkins of the Board of Supervisors Clerk’s Office.
* * *
Researching an event from more than a century ago can be a lonely endeavor, and the company I kept was voices of the past. The story is not mine to tell; it is theirs, and I have worked to build the narrative with their words. Reading letters and diaries and interviews and testimony and reports and memoirs connected me with the personalities of individuals far beyond the physical reach of the present. So the most rewarding contacts were with members of their families. Richard Torney, great-grandson of Dr. George Torney, was most kind to share information about his great-grandfather as well as photographs taken by Richard’s grandfather—Dr. Torney’s son, Ned—on his drive through the city the first day of the earthquake and the days following. And Grant Gildroy was very gracious to speak with me about his family’s history in the city, their connection with Hotaling & Co., and show me his family photographs of Hotaling’s whiskey being saved in barrels rolled from the warehouse. I thank them both immensely.
I thank Robert Postel, SFFD chief of operations and fourth-generation San Francisco firefighter, for taking the time to share with me about his great-grandfathers’, two grandfathers’, and father’s service, as well as his own reasons for becoming a firefighter (“I grew up in firehouses in the city and from as long as I can remember it was the only profession I ever considered”). And I thank Terry and Tony Bosque, whom I met at the gilding of the hydrant in the Mission on April 18, 2022, for sharing their family’s stories of their great-grandfather Rafaelo Paolinelli, as well as their own memories of their grandmother Cora Luchetti. And I thank Donna Huggins, whom I met the same morning while she was in character as Lillie Hitchcock Coit, for allowing me to assist in gilding the hydrant. It was an honor I will carry with me always.
I thank Jennifer Allen and her sister Melissa Gunderson for sharing the 1906 letters of their great-grandparents David Henry and Josephine “Josie” Seawall. And I thank Nancy Cedeño for sharing information about her family and the death of her great-grandfather Hiram Daniels. I also thank the following individuals for taking the time to respond to my messages about their family members: Lynda Briggs, whose late father-in-law was the son of Raymond Briggs; Carolyn Walton, the grandniece of James Stetson; and Sarah Finkenstaedt, second great-granddaughter of Grace Roberts Moore.
Historic recognition is owed to mankind’s earliest inhabitants of the land that became Yerba Buena and San Francisco. To that end, I acknowledge that the research and outlining and writing and editing of this book was completed on the traditional homelands of indigenous peoples and nations, including the Ramaytush Ohlone, Muwekma Ohlone, Miwok, Munsee Lenape, Lumbee, Skaruhreh/Tuscarora, and Pamlico peoples, who stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what are now portions of Northern California, New York City, and Eastern North Carolina.
* * *
I am grateful to my agent, Sam Fleishman of Literary Artists Representatives, for believing in this project from the first time I suggested it to him, for using his enthusiasm to help it find a home, and for always giving sound advice rooted in a confidence far more unwavering than my own. I thank Daniel Huffman for his work using period Corps of Engineering maps of San Francisco to render a map of the city as it was in 1906. And I thank my editor, Pete Wolverton, who saw the potential in the telling of this true story from the first time I mentioned it to him in New York City in 2016. His faith in the importance of a nonfiction work like this was matched with a critical eye and literary judgment that guided my work continuously along the way to translate the early idea into reality.
I owe a special thanks to my high school friend Eric Holwell, who lives with his family in the Bay Area and has highlighted each of my visits with great local beer and greater company. And I extend my deepest gratitude for family. I thank my parents for encouraging me with this book as they did with the first, and for instilling within me an interest in the past and an unwavering attention to detail. I am grateful to my brother-in-law, Blair Ross, as wise a student of history as I have ever had the good fortune to know, for his own guidance and advice in countless conversations over smooth bourbon and delicious Scotch.
And of course my greatest debt is owed to my sons, Watson and Keegan, and my wife, Jessica. In the spirit of saving the best for last, they are the best and the last.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS USED
To Cite Select Sources
MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS
MANUSCRIPTS AND PAPERS
COURT TRANSCRIPTS
NEWSPAPERS & PERIODICALS
PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES
OFFICIAL REPORTS & PUBLICATIONS
DIGITAL AND ONLINE SOURCES
Prologue
Temperatures had reached seventy degrees…: The highest temperature reported in city newspapers between January 1, 1906, and April 17, 1906, was 68 degrees on April 14, “The Coast Record,” SFC, April 15, 1906, p. 29. Five inches of rain fell in March, per daily reports in SFC, and Professor McAdie of the Weather Bureau quoted in “Better Weather Promised,” SFC, April 1, 1906, p. 39. In that same issue, .48 inches of rain were reported for the previous day, March 31, 1906, “The Coast Report,” SFC, April 1, 1906, p. 55, and .01 inches were reported for April 1, 1906, SFE, April 2, 1906, p. 15. Every subsequent issue reported “.00” inches of rain for San Francisco through April 18, 1906.
“One nickel”…: Weekday issues of SFC, SFCh, and SFE cost 5 cents each.
“enough money to get a bed”…: Quoted from a report of an unhoused man being arrested after entering a Market Street business and saying, “I want enough money to get a bed” with a threat of violence before being arrested. SFE, February 27, 1905, p. 16.
thirteen hundred lodging houses…: SFDirectory, pp. 2177–2184.
“snappiest hat of the season”…: Lyndstrom’s Hat Parlors ad, “Get One for Easter,” SFC, April 14, 1906, p. 2.
custodian helmets…: In 1895, SFPD began requiring patrol officers to wear “Monitor helmets” like those worn at the time by the NYPD, which were a type of custodian (or bobby) helmet. “The Police Force Will Soon Wear New Caps and Helmets,” SFE, May 5, 1895, p. 12.
Postal Telegraph or Western Union…: SFDirectory, p. 2290.
fifty banks…: Ibid., p. 2015.
“amusements”…: “Amusements,” SFCh, April 16, 1906, p. 7; SFC, April 18, 1906, p. 9.
sixty-six foundries…: “Brass Founders,” SFDirectory, p. 2032; “Iron Foundries,” SFDirectory, pp. 2153–2154.
Recreation Park…: SFC, April 18, 1906, p. 9.
“Queen City of the Pacific”…: “German-Americans Sound Praises of Crocker,” SFCh, October 29, 1903, p. 9; “Fraternal Woe Touches Court,” SFC, January 26, 1905, p. 7. Another nickname for the city was “Paris of the Pacific.” SFC, October 5, 1905, p. 1; SFC, November 21, 1905, p. 5; Evening Bulletin (Honolulu, Hawaii), December 12, 1901, p. 8.
twice the size…: The respective populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1900 federal census were 102,479 and 342,780. Twelfth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1900, Vol. I (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901) pp. 430, 432. In 1906, the population of San Francisco was estimated at above 400,000 while that of Los Angeles was estimated to have doubled to roughly 230,000. “Population is Past 230,000,” LAH, April 15, 1906, p. 5. By the 1910 federal census, the population of Los Angeles had increased to 319,198 while San Francisco—due in large part to the 1906 disaster—was 416,912. Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910, Vol. II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 139.
“[f]ire and earthquake proof”…: The Palace Hotel was advertised as “Fire and earthquake proof.” SFE, January 30, 1890, p. 4.
eighty-six carriage and wagon sellers…: “Carriage and Wagon Makers,” SFDirectory, pp. 2050–2051.
twenty-six dealers…: “Automobiles,” ibid., p. 2011.
5-cent cigars…: United Cigar Stores advertised “a 5-cent cigar that every cigar smoker in the United States is bound to recognize as a matchless-value.” SFE, April 8, 1906, p. 68.
two dimes, one for the beer…: Willie Figari, a young tug pilot in 1906, later recalled the dance halls of the Barbary Coast before the earthquake and fire, specifically Purcell’s on Pacific Street (current-day Pacific Avenue), where a beer cost 20 cents—“the house would get 10 and girl dancing would get 10.” “William Figari: San Francisco Bay and Waterfront,” interview by Ruth Teiser in 1968, Oral History Center, BL.
“cribs”…: The small rooms of sex workers within brothels were commonly referred to as “cribs.” See e.g., “Supreme Court Kills Pon Injunction,” SFCh, July 11, 1905, p. 14, reporting litigation over the “thirty-three ‘cribs’” of a Dupont Street brothel, or “Police Are Closely Shadowed,” SFCh, January 20, 1905, p. 16, reporting about police paybacks to protect “over 100 cribs” of the brothel at 620 Jackson Street.
Double-decker steam ferries…: Passenger ferries with regular Ferry Building service at the time were double-ended, double-decker, coal-burning, and paddle-wheel-propelled. Some carried train cars on the main deck and passengers on the cabin deck. Ferries for the Southern Pacific Railroad, South Pacific Coast Railroad, California Northwestern Railway, Santa Fe Railway, North Shore Railroad, Oakland Harbor, and Mt. Tamalpais Railway arrived and departed the Ferry Building’s seven slips daily, with hours only differing on Sundays. “Railway Travel,” SFC, April 2, 1906, p. 4.
nine-hundred-pound swinging weight…: Author interview with clock master Dorian Clair, who has been maintaining the Ferry Building’s clock since 2000, on January 29, 2021, and February 3, 2021.
police sergeant Jesse Cook…: Biographical information about Jesse Cook and details of his experiences on April 18, 1906, were obtained primarily from “Jesse Brown Cook Scrapbooks Documenting San Francisco History and Law Enforcement, ca. 1895–1936,” BL, and his own recollections in JCook1, JCook2.
harbor district…: The “harbor district” was a downtown district designated by the police department as Battery Street east to the waterfront. It is part of what is currently the city’s larger Financial District, which includes what was then known as the banking district and the harbor district. See e.g., “Harbor District is Enlarged,” SFC, July 2, 1902.
“fill-land”…: Details about where Yerba Buena Cove was filled and when were obtained primarily from Soulé; Maps of San Francisco, Calif., 1847 and 1853, Yale University Library; and Charles A. Fracchia, When the Water Came Up to Montgomery Street (Virginia: The Donning Company sponsored by San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, 2009).
“was all filled in land…”: JCook1.
“What’s the matter with your…”:… JCook1.
“The whole street was undulating”…: JCook2, p. 4.
eight-inch iron water main…: Dimensions and locations of water transmission mains and distribution mains throughout the city were obtained from WaterSupply and SanbornMap.
“gaping trench”…: JCook2, p. 4.
“felt like it was slipping…”: JCook1.
a few seconds past 5:12 a.m.…: Bruce A. Bolt, Earthquakes, Fifth Edition (New York: W.H. Freeman & Company, 2003), p. 4; Philip L. Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 52; Emmet Condon and Gladys Hansen, Denial of Disaster (San Francisco: Cameron + Company, 1989), p. 13.
“Extra!” editions…: By 1:00 p.m. San Francisco time, newspapers in other cities were sharing details of the earthquake and fire. The four o’clock edition of The Standard Union in Brooklyn, NY, headlined “EARTHQUAKE WRECKS SAN FRANCISCO; FLAMES SWEEPING CITY; MANY DEAD,” with news of “No water to fight the conflagration” and “Troops on Guard.” Four O’Clock Edition, The Standard Union, April 18, 1906, p. 1. The five o’clock edition of The Buffalo Enquirer in Buffalo, NY, headlined “SAN FRANCISCO IS VISITED BY AN APPALLING EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE!” Five O’Clock Edition, The Buffalo Enquirer, April 18, 1906, p. 1. An afternoon extra edition of The Oklahoma City Times-Journal headlined “LATE REPORTS GROW WORSE” with news of “Thousands Killed—The Entire City of San Francisco in Flames—Terror Striken [sic] Inhabitants Flee in Terror.” Extra Edition, The Oklahoma City Times-Journal, April 18, 1906, p. 1. The disaster also monopolized all evening editions in other towns and cities. See e.g., The Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 18, 1906, p. 1; EB, April 18, 1906, p. 1; and Boston Evening Transcript (Boston, MA), April 18, 1906, p. 1.
city filled with professional photographers…: For further reading on photography in the city during and following the disaster, see Among the Ruins: Arnold Genthe’s Photographs of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Firestorm (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: Cameron + Company, 2021) by Victoria Binder, James A. Ganz, Carolin Görgen, Colleen Terry, Richard Misrach, and Karin Breuer (editor).
all three cathedrals…: These were St. Mary’s Cathedral, Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, and Cathedral Mission of the Good Samaritan (Episcopal). SFDirectory, pp. 42–45.
five of the seven synagogues…: These were the synagogues for the Congregation Beth-Israel, Congregation Chebra Thilim, Congregation Emanu-El, Congregation Keneseth Israel, and Congregation Shaari Zedek. The sanctuary for Congregation Sherith Israel on the corner of California and Webster Streets, completed in 1905, survived with little damage and is still the congregation’s sanctuary today (and as an unreinforced masonry structure, underwent a required seismic retrofit completed in 2017). And the synagogue for the Congregation Ohabai Shalome on the south side of Bush Street between Octavia and Laguna survived and still stands today as a State Landmark, the Bush Street Temple at 1881 Bush Street, an assisted living home as of 2023. SFDirectory, p. 43; SanbornMap.
four lodging houses…: These were the Brunswick House at 148 6th Street, Ohio House at 142 6th Street, Lormor House at 136 6th Street, and Nevada House at 132 6th Street, discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3. SFDirectory, SanbornMap.
“GREAT BUILDINGS ARE TO RISE…”:SFCh, April 25, 1906, p. 1.
478…: In 1907, the Board of Supervisors adopted a “General History of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906” and ordered it published in the municipal reports. It declared, “The loss of life attending the great disaster is officially recorded at 478.” San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1905–6, Ending June 30, 1906, and Fiscal Year 1906–7, Ending June 30, 1907 (San Francisco: Neal Publishing, 1908), p. 703.
“SAN FRANCISCO WILL CELEBRATE…”:SFCh, April 18, 1907, p. 1.
“SAN FRANCISCO’S REBUILDING…”:SFE, April 18, 1908, p. 1.
“HOME AGAIN AFTER THREE YEARS”…:SFC, April 18, 1909, p. 1.
“the rebuilding which has obliterated…”: “San Francisco Celebrating,” Long Beach Daily Telegram, April 17, 1915.
its last known member…: This was William Del Monte, who was three months old on April 18, 1906, and passed in January 2016, eleven days before his 110th birthday. “WA. Del Monte, 109, 1906 Quake Survivor,” NYT, January 13, 2016, Section B, p. 13.
296 miles…: Data regarding the April 18, 1906, earthquake was primarily obtained from ReportSEIC; SanAndreas; and “The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake,” USGS, US Department of the Interior, earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/18april/.
estimated moment magnitude of 7.9…: The moment magnitude (expressed as Mw), the current and most reliable quantitative measure of an earthquake’s relative size, was developed in 1979 and differs from the Richter scale (expressed as ML) devised in 1935. And both of these logarithmic scales differ from the linear Rossi-Forel scale (I-X) and Modified Mercalli scale (I-XII) in use in 1906. The intensity was estimated to range between VIII and IX on the Modified Mercalli scale. Schultz, S., and R. Wallace, The San Andreas Fault, USGS (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1989), p. 5. Using the Rossi-Forel scale, Dr. Harry O. Wood, a seismologist with the State Earthquake Investigation Commission, determined the intensity in San Francisco between VII on solid ground to X on alluvial fill land. ReportSEIC, p. 340. The magnitude on the Richter scale was estimated as high as 8.25 or 8.3. SanAndreas, p. 161; “1–2 Jolt Worst in Valley Since 1906,” SFE, April 10, 1961, p.1; “A Big Quake on the Calaveras,” SFE, August 12, 1979, p. 5; “Relationship Between Earthquake Magnitude and Energy,” SFE, April 25, 1977, p. 8. These have been determined an overestimate, and the moment magnitude has been widely estimated at 7.9 Mw. Wald, D. J., Kanamori, H., Helmbeger, D. V., and Heaton, T. H., Source Study of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 83 (4), 1993, p. 989.
more than twenty-eight thousand structures…: The number of structures destroyed was counted as 28,188 covering 4.7 square miles. “The Story of Statistics,” SFE, April 19, 1906. 490 blocks were completely destroyed and 32 blocks partially destroyed, totaling 2,593 acres. Structures, p. 61.
Approximately a quarter million residents…: The number of SF residents rendered homeless by the disaster has been commonly estimated between 225,000 and 300,000 people. See Point Paper—US Army Activities in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, SFPL, estimating the total at 300,000; “Preparing to House the City’s Homeless,” SFC, June 17, 1906, p. 5, reporting on housing for the remainders of “the 225,000 rendered homeless by the fire”; “Great Fire Stopped at City Front,” SFC, April 22, 1906, p. 1, reporting “over 250,000 people homeless”; A Study of Earthquake Losses in the San Francisco Bay Area—Data and Analysis, NOAA, US Department of Commerce, A Report Prepared For The Office Of Emergency Preparedness, 1972, p. 205, calculating “225,000 left homeless”; and “Civic Rites to Mark Anniversary Today of City’s Destruction,” SFE, April 18, 1956, p. 2, estimating “265,000 homeless.”
more than three thousand people…: The death total estimated by Gladys Hansen is discussed in greater detail in the afterword.
thirty-six-year-old Sarah Corbus…: Sarah “Sadie” Corbus was killed in her residence at the corner of Jackson and Jones Streets by bricks from a falling chimney. SFC, April 29, 1906; Arg., April 21, 1906 (listed as “Sarah Corbett”). She lived at 1511 Jones Street (near the corner of Jackson St.) and was born February 1870 per the 1900 census. She died at thirty-six on April 18, 1906. Death Index, p. 2197.
forty-year-old Margaret Fundenberg…: Margaret E. Fundenberg’s card in Gladys Hansen’s Death Records in SFPL lists her cause of death as “burned to death,” citing Coroner’s Book C, p. 116. She died at 38 and he died at 14, both on April 18, 1906. DeathIndex, p. 3710.
“three persons”…: “Substantiates ‘Examiner’s Report,” SFE, May 21, 1906, p. 13.
1.
the Yelamu…: Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1978); Charles Wollenberg, Golden Gate Metropolis: Perspectives on Bay Area History (Berkeley, CA: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, 1985); John Alioto, Before the Gold: A History of San Francisco Before the Gold Rush, 1769–1847 (San Francisco: Norfolk Press, 2020); and the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone website, ramaytush.org.
“proselytize”…: Alioto, Before the Gold, p. 22.
“civilize”…:Ibid., p. 27.
barely two hundred residents…: H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), p. 249.
Yerba Buena was renamed…: Information about the early history of Yerba Buena and San Francisco was obtained primarily from Soulé; Fracchia, When the Water Came Up to Montgomery Street; and Brands, The Age of Gold.
“abundance of gold in that territory…”: James K. Polk, James K. Polk Papers: Series 5: Messages and Speeches, 1833–1849; 1848; Dec. 5, fourth annual message; 2 of 6, Manuscript/Mixed Material retrieved from LOC, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss365090107/.
fewer than two thousand residents…: Estimates of population increase in the city during 1849 were obtained from Soulé, pp. 243–244; and Rand Richards, Historic San Francisco (San Francisco: Heritage House Publishers, 2011), p. 62.
Martin Roberts…: Moore.
“San Francisco seemed to have…”: Bayard Taylor, El Dorado, or, Adventures in the Path of Empire: Comprising a Voyage to California, Via Panama; Life in San Francisco and Monterey; Pictures of the Gold Region, and Experiences of Mexican Travel, Vol. II (New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), p. 38.
On Christmas Eve 1849…: Facts about the six major fires in the city between 1849–51 were gathered primarily from Soulé, pp. 241–347; John S. Hittell, A history of the city of San Francisco and incidentally of the state of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1878), pp. 133–170; “Appalling and Destructive Conflagration!!” Tri-Weekly Alta California, December 26, 1849; and Rev. Albert Williams, A Pioneer Pastorate and Times, Embodying Contemporary Local Transactions and Events (San Francisco: Wallace & Hassett, 1879), Pdf retrieved from LOC, https://www.loc.gov/item/06038070/.
City leaders called a special…: Establishment of a fire department began informally in December 1849 and was formally approved in the summer of 1850 after elections under the new city charter. “Fire Department,” Tri-Weekly Alta California, December 28, 1849; Soulé, pp. 616–617.
“Scarcely were the ashes cold…”: Soulé, pp. 241–242.
“These, like those that had…”:Ibid., p. 242.
“over one thousand homes enveloped…”: Letter from Benjamin Cowell to his wife, May 7, 1851, BL.
“worked all night”…: Moore.
Montgomery Block…: Soulé, p. 483.
new city building code…: Stephen Tobriner, Bracing for Disaster (Berkeley: University of California, 2006), pp. 31–33.
Martin Roberts, busy working…: Moore.
“A copper coin was a strange sight”…: Soulé, p. 253.
“thoroughly fireproof”…:Ibid., p. 526.
“You are the oldest native Californian…”: Moore.
Domenico “Domingo” Ghirardelli…: Alex Bevk, “Tracing the Totally Sweet History of the Ghirardelli Empire,” Curbed SF, October 28, 2014; “About Ghirardelli,” https://www.ghirardelli.com/about-ghirardelli.
James Folger…: Ruth Waldo Newhall, The Folger Way—Coffee Pioneering Since 1850 (San Francisco: J.A. Folger & Company, 1970).
Levi Strauss…: Lynn Downey, Levi Strauss: A Short Biography (Levi Strauss & Co., 2008); Levi Strauss & Co.—Company History, https://www.levistrauss.com/levis-history/.
topping 100,000 residents…: San Francisco’s population was 56,802 in the 1860 federal census and increased swiftly during the Civil War, likely topping 100,000 in the first two years of the war. The city’s population was 149,473 by the 1870 federal census. Population by Counties, Table II—State of California, Ninth Census—Volume I, The Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872), p. 15.
Spring Valley Water Works…: Information about the Spring Valley Water Works Company was obtained primarily from WaterSupply; Testimony of Hermann Schussler, WCvAL; and Hermann Schussler, The Past, Present and Future Water Supply of San Francisco (San Francisco: C.A. Murdoch & Co., 1908).
After the fires of 1849–51…: Order 1752-To Define the Fire Limits of the City and County of San Francisco, and Making Regulations Concerning the Erection and Use of Buildings in Said City and County, General Orders of the Board of Supervisors Providing Regulations for the Government of the City and County of San Francisco (San Francisco: B.J. Thomas, Printer, 1884), pp. 120–169.
In 1866…: Assembly Bill No. 182 in the California House of Representatives provided for a “paid fire department for the city and county of San Francisco.” “Letter from the Capital,” SFE, February 12, 1866, p. 3. It was passed after amendments in the Senate. “Letter from the Capital,” SFE, March 6, 1866, p. 3.
“endless-chain, stationary-engine, uphill railroad”…: “Subsidy Hallidie,” SFCh, August 30, 1873.
“aristocratic thoroughfare”…: “On California Street,” SFE, December 30, 1889, p. 6.
“nabobs of Nob Hill”…: “Views on the Convention,” SFE, April 18, 1878.
The cable car transformed…: Information about the cable car was obtained primarily from San Francisco’s Powell Street Cable Cars and San Francisco’s California Street Cable Cars, both by Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria; the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco; and author interviews with Joe Thompson (writer and administrator of “The Cable Car Guy,” www.cable-car-guy.com) and with author and cable car historian Emiliano Echeverria.
“metropolis of California”…:SB, September 25, 1872.
At noon on February 22, 1872…: “The Corner-Stone,” SFE, February 22, 1872, p. 3.
“municipal palace”…: “Washington’s Birthday,” SFCh, February 22, 1872, p. 3.
In 1874, a new US Mint…: “Mint Statistics,” SFE, October 5, 1874, p. 1.
755 guest rooms…: “The Great Caravansary of the Western World,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 9, 1875.
233,959…: Table V: Population by Race and by Counties; Statistics of the Population of the United States at the 10th Census (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882), p. 382.
“Latin Quarter”…: The Latin Quarter was also referred to as the “Italian Quarter” and the “Italian residence quarter.” “In the Latin Quarter,” SFE, March 9, 1889, p. 4; “Shrove Tuesday Observed in the Latin Quarter,” SFCh, March 6, 1889, p. 5.
“Little Italy”…: “A Cosmopolitan Thoroughfare,” SFC, March 15, 1996, p. 17; see also “Italian Life at North Beach,” proclaiming “Every one knows that Telegraph Hill and North Beach form in many respects a little Italy.” SFC, August 13, 1893, p. 17; and “Little Italy, a Typical Colony of Altruria in Our Midst,” SFC, September 9, 1903, p. 21.
“Colored”…: Table IV, Population by Race, Sex, and Nativity and by States and Territories, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880)(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882).
William Leidesdorff…: Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 9–11; Jan Batiste Adkins, African Americans of San Francisco (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
“the town has lost its most valuable resident”…: Obituary, The California Star, May 20, 1848, p. 3.
When gold fever spread…: Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California; Adkins, African Americans of San Francisco.
1,176…: This and the 1,330, 1,628, and 21,790 numbers following were obtained from Table V: Population by Race and by Counties: 1880, 1870, 1860, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880)(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882), p. 382.
“There were hordes of long…”: Soulé, p. 257.
“the Chinese problem”…:See e.g., “California’s Blight—The Great Chinese Problem and Its Solution,” SFCh, June 16, 1873, p. 3; “The Chinese Problem,” SFE, June 17, 1873, p. 2; “A Solution of the Chinese Problem,” SFE, June 7, 1873, p. 2. For information on the legal exclusion and violent treatment of Chinese Americans in California during this period, I relied heavily on Jean Pfaelzer’s book Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and Erika Lee’s book At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
“The Chinese Must Go!”…:SFCh, January 11, 1878.
Workingmen’s Party…: Stephanie S. Pincetl, Transforming California: A Political History of Land Use and Development (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
“provided, no native of China…”: Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of California, ratified May 7, 1879, Statutes of California passed at the Twenty-Third Session of the Legislature, 1880 (Sacramento: State Office, J. D. Young, Supt. State Printing, 1880), p. xxiv.
“any Chinese or Mongolian”…: Article XIX, Section 2, ibid., p. xii.
“includes the children born, within…”: United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649 (1898) at 693.
“scared to death of them”…: Siegel.
approached 300,000…: San Francisco’s population totaled 298,997 in the 1890 census, per comparative tables in 1900 Census, p. 139.
“municipal purposes”…: When George Ensign’s corporation was formed by the California Legislature in 1853 with the exclusive right to provide pure, fresh water to the city and county of San Francisco, this included “furnishing to the city, free of charge, water for all municipal purposes.” The California Supreme Court ruled, after interpreting the enabling act and subsequent transferred duties of the competing San Francisco City Water Works, this was limited to cases “of fire or other great necessity.” The City and County of San Francisco v. The Spring Valley Water Works, 48 Cal. 493 (Cal. 1874).
“extortionate”…: “Down With Gas And Water Rates” and “The Examiner Petitions,” SFE, January 29, 1897, p. 9.
“handicapped by the lack of water…”: “Bigger Mains Demanded—Chief Sullivan’s Scathing Report on the City’s Lack of Water,” SFC, July 10, 1895, p. 9.
“the lengthened shadow of one man”…: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (New York: John B. Alden, 1886), p. 17.
“wonderful physique”…: Blake Evarts, ed., San Francisco and its Municipal Administration 1902 (San Francisco: Pacific Publishing Company, 1902), p. 210.
“extraordinary adaptability to the work”…: Sullivan had been selected as the first assistant chief on the passing of the previous chief engineer, even though Sullivan was the youngest of the three considered. When Chief Scannell passed, Sullivan, although younger than District Engineer Dougherty, was appointed chief engineer. “The Two White Hats—Sullivan for Chief and Dougherty for Assistant,” SFE, April 4, 1893, p. 4.
“Chief Sullivan arrived in less…”: “A Great Blaze,” SFC, February 27, 1894, p. 10.
“scarcity of hydrants”…: “After the Fire,” SFC, February 28, 1894, p. 3.
“hydrants were too far away…”: “Died On Duty,” SFCh, June 8, 1893, p. 5. In December, the Examiner editorial staff reported “hydrants are so few that it is a common occurrence for buildings to burn to the ground for want of water” and urged supervisors to not “close their eyes” to the problem, especially in light of Chief Sullivan’s repeated protests. “No Excuse For The Neglect,” SFE, December 26, 1893.
“weak streams”…: “Bigger Mains Demanded,” SFC, July 10, 1895, p. 9.
“alarming increase in the number…”: “The Fire Department. Recommendations of Chief Sullivan to the Supervisors,” SFC, August 29, 1893, p. 3.
“scathing report on the city’s lack of water”…: “Bigger Mains Demanded,” SFC, July 10, 1895, p. 9.
especially true South of Market…: SanbornMap; WaterSupply.
James Phelan…: Information about James Phelan was obtained primarily through contemporaneous reporting of Bay Area newspapers and Legacy of a Native Son—James Duval Phelan & Villa Montalve (New Mexico: Forbes Mill Press, 1993) by James P. Walsh and Timothy J. O’Keefe.
“He was immune to the temptations…”: Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco, p. 8.
“full paid” professional fire department…: SFC, July 22, 1898, p. 9.
“large sums collected…”: SFC, January 23, 1898.
rusting ironwork and falling…: SFC, January 19, 1899.
“a dark and dismal pile…”: SFC, March 28, 1899.
more than $5.7 million…: SFC, April 18, 1909.
The threat of earthquakes…: Information on tectonic plates and the geology of the portion of the San Andreas Fault running through and alongside northern and central California and specific data on earthquakes there, including 1906, was obtained from Bruce Bolt’s book Earthquakes (Fifth Edition) (New York: W. H. Freeman & Co., 2004); Robert S. Yeats, Kerry Sieh, and Clarence R. Allen, The Geology of Earthquakes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); D. J. Wald, H. Kanamori, D. V. Helmbeger, and T. H. Heaton, Source Study of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 83, no. 4 (1993); SanAndreas; and author interviews with Dr. David P. Russ, former regional director for the Northeast Region for the US Geological Survey (USGS) and former deputy chief of the Office of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Engineering in Reston, VA.
“slight” to “violent”…: “Slight” shocks occurred on May 17, 1851, January 9, 1854, January 2, 1855, October 18, 1856, September 24, 1859, November 19, 1859, December 6, 1859, etc. And a “violent” earthquake struck on November 26, 1858. San Francisco Earthquake History 1769–1879, 1880–1914, VMSF. The Examiner reported the 1868 Hayward earthquake as “a violent shock,” SFE, October 27, 1868, p. 1.
“the heaviest earthquake shock”…: Mark Twain, “Earthquake at San Francisco,” Montana Post, October 1865.
“Never was a solemn solitude…”: Mark Twain, Roughing It (Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co., 1891), p. 434.
“big”…: Putnam.
“the great earthquake”…: “The Earthquake,” SFCh, October 22, 1868, p. 2; “Great Earthquake in San Francisco,” The Guardian (San Bernardino, Cali.), October 31, 1868, p. 1; “The Earthquake,” Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, October 31, 1868, p. 1. Even in 1905, it was still referred to as “the great earthquake of 1868.” SFC, January 26, 1905, p. 8.
“totally demolished”…:SFC, October 22, 1868.
six in the city…: SFE, October 23, 1868.
“providing against the effects…”:SFCh, December 9, 1868.
Even without a public report…: In his book Bracing for Disaster, Dr. Stephen Tobriner makes the point that the report might not have been fully completed, and whether it was completed and subsequently not published made little difference because “the message had penetrated public consciousness” and builders and planners “had a new awareness of seismic danger and of earthquake-resistant retrofit and design.” Tobriner, Bracing for Disaster, pp. 57–58.
“earthquake proof”…: The Palace Hotel was advertised as “Fire and earthquake proof” in SFE, January 30, 1890, p. 4.
“long rolling”…: Gladys Hansen, Richard Hansen, and Dr. William Blaisdell, Earthquake, Fire, and Epidemic—Personal Accounts of the 1906 Disaster (Untreed Reads Publishing, 2013), p. 7. This was the description by seismologist George Davidson referring to a March 26, 1872, earthquake.
“sharp, undulating shock”…:Ibid. This was George Davidson’s description of an April 19, 1892, earthquake, which the Call reported was “the severest one felt here since the big earthquake of 1868.” “The Earth Swayed,” SFC, April 20, 1892, p. 8.
“like the snapping of a whip”…: This was a description of an April 1898 earthquake: “Tall buildings shook like the snapping of a whip and drove tourists out into the streets in their night clothes.” Hansen, Earthquake, Fire, and Epidemic, p. 19.
“the company declines”…: Hermann Schussler, in a March 4, 1901, letter responding to another of Chief Sullivan’s recommendations for additional hydrants—by that point the list had grown to 498—wrote it would result in an added expense. “Therefore, in reference to your communication, we beg to say that the Spring Valley Water Works positively declines this proposition, not only because the general allowances are entirely inadequate, but also as an approval by the Spring Valley Water Works of the above contingent offer might be construed as an acceptance of the ordinance, which the company declines.” San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1900–1901 (San Francisco: The Hinton Printing Co., 1901), pp. 178–179.
“to ensure a sufficient supply…”: D. T. Sullivan, 1903 Recommendations of the Chief, SFFD Fire Museum, guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/chiefs/dt_sullivan_yearly_recommendations.html. Note: this is corrected from the original spelling “to insure…”
“light-draught, high-power”…: D. T. Sullivan, 1904 Recommendations of the Chief, SFFD Fire Museum, guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/chiefs/dt_sullivan_yearly_recommendations.html. Note that Chief Sullivan began requesting this in his 1897 Recommendations of the Chief.
“the small and inadequate”…: D. T. Sullivan, 1905 Recommendations of the Chief, SFFD Fire Museum, guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/chiefs/dt_sullivan_yearly_recommendations.html.
political boss Abe Ruef…: Walton Bean, “Boss Ruef, the Union Labor Party, and the Graft Prosecution in San Francisco, 1901–1911,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (November 1948); Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco—The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952); “Hon. A. Ruef, Attorney for the Mayor’s Office,” in San Francisco and its Municipal Administration 1902, ed. Blake Evarts (San Francisco: Pacific Publishing Company, 1902), pp. 32–33; Abraham Ruef, “The Road I Traveled: An Autobiographic Account of My Career from University to Prison, With an Intimate Recital of the Corrupt Alliance between Big Business and Politics in San Francisco,” San Francisco Bulletin, May 21, 1912–September 5, 1912.
“the power behind the throne”…: Dunne, p. 12. Ruef himself wrote, “Behind that throne, I saw myself its power, local, state—national…” Ruef, “The Road I Traveled,” SFB, May 21, 1912; Boss Ruef’s San Francisco, p. 27.
“a commanding figure of a man”…:Boss Ruef’s San Francisco, p. 20.
“legal advisor”…: Blake Evarts, ed., San Francisco and its Municipal Administration 1902 (San Francisco: Pacific Publishing Company, 1902), p. 29.
“attorney’s fees”…:Boss Ruef’s San Francisco, p. 30.
“for advice in matters of municipal law”…:Ibid., p. 29.
“share his fees”…: Bean, “Boss Ruef, the Union Labor Party, and the Graft Prosecution in San Francisco, 1901–1911,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (November 1948): p. 446.
“Ruef-Schmitz”…:OT, October 1, 1904; EB, October 5, 1904; SFCh, July 31, 1904; LAH, September 28, 1905; SFC, November 4, 1905.
93 percent of its structures…: As of 1901, there were 3,881 brick structures and 50,494 frame structures in San Francisco, according to the 1901 Report of the Board of Fire Commissioners, San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1900–1901 (San Francisco: The Hinton Printing Co., 1901), p. 124.
“very little frame construction”…:Report of National Board of Fire Underwriters: By Its Committee Of Twenty on the City of New York, N.Y., Brooklyn and Queens (New York City: The Board, 1906), p. 69.
44 percent wooden…: 1901 Report of the Board of Fire Commissioners, San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1900–1901, Ending June 30, 1901 (San Francisco: The Hinton Printing Co., 1901), p. 124.
updated building ordinance in 1903…: Bill No. 465, Ordinance No. 645, Building Ordinances—City and County of San Francisco, Adopted February 6th, 1903 (San Francisco: Daily Pacific Builder, 1903), pp. 6–84.
584full-time firefighters…: “Report of the Fire Department,” San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1905–6, Ending June 30, 1906, and Fiscal Year 1906–7, Ending June 30, 1907 (San Francisco: Neal Publishing, 1908), p. 719.
“light”…:Report of National Board of Fire Underwriters: By Its Committee Of Twenty on the City of New York, N.Y., Brooklyn and Queens (New York City: The Board, 1906), p. 209.
“alarmingly severe”…: Grove Karl Gilbert, Joseph Holmes, John Sewell, and Frank Soulé, The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of April 18, 1906, and Their Effects on Structures and Structural Materials (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907), p. 64.
2.2 percent of buildings…: In the “fire limits,” the board found water pressure “too low for automatic sprinkler equipments, standpipes, etc.,” and the “fire hydrants were of an old style, and many water mains were too small.” They also found “the building laws were not enforced thoroughly and impartially.” Within the “congested-value” portion (.49 square miles) of the “fire limits” (1.6 square miles total), the board found 29.5 percent of its 2,086 buildings were wood-frame, 68.3 percent were wood-joisted brick, and only 2.2 percent were fireproof. Ibid., p. 139.
“unmanageable from a fire-fighting standpoint”…:Ibid., p. 51.
“San Francisco has violated all…”: Ibid., p. 140.
2.
Eight-year-old William Dunne…: William J. Dunne (12/09/1897–12/25/1980) grew up on 22nd and Guerrero Streets. His Irish immigrant father, William, worked as a salesman for a liquor distribution company until 1905 and then as a gardener in Golden Gate Park. His mother, Florence, a California native, was a practical nurse. Most information on William’s life and experiences in San Francisco before, during, and after the earthquake and fire was obtained from Dunne, SFDirectory, and census and voter registration records on Ancestry.com.
“pride and identity”…: Dunne.
“new city”…: Resident photographer Arnold Genthe later wrote, “I wanted to stay, to see the new city which would rise out of the ruins,” in Genthe, p. 97; another resident, Sylvan Lisberger, wrote “a new city was to rise on the ashes of the old” in Chapter VI: 1906–1915 of his memoir “The Family,” BL; the Chronicle headlined “THE NEW CITY BEGINS TODAY” on page 1 of its April 20, 1906, issue; and the Call headlined “NEW CITY TO DEFY FLAMES” on page 1 of its April 4, 1906, issue.
morning issue ofL’Italia…: Page 1 of the April 18, 1906, issue headlined “PENSATE ALLE VITTIME DEL VESUVIO” (“THINK ABOUT THE VICTIMS OF VESUVIUS”), and donors and amounts raised were listed on page 4.
“cleated like the gangplanks…”: “Little Italy, a Typical Colony of Altruria in Our Midst,” SFC, September 9, 1903, p. 21.
forty-three-year-old Melissa Carnahan…: Carnahan.
“tired, but well”…: “Long-Overdue Ship Elisa in the Harbor After Months of Gales in the South Seas,” SFCh, April 18, 1906, p. 15; “Italian Ship Has Close Call,” SFC, April 18, 1906, p. 11.
“confronted by a confusion of tracks”…: “Demands Market Street for Trolley,” SFCh, April 15, 1906, p. 53.
“unsightly”…: The petition circulated among Market Street business owners read, in part, “We believe the construction of an overhead trolley system to be unsightly, dangerous and not in keeping with the endeavors of the citizens of San Francisco,” as reported in “Poles Favored By New Body,” SFC, April 6, 1906, p. 9.
“many wooden blocks”…: “High Praise for the Fire Department of this City,” SFC, April 18, 1906, p. 9.
twelve-year-old Marion Baldwin…: Baldwin.
In Chinatown…: Details about life in Chinatown during that period were obtained primarily from John Kuo Wei Tchen (selections and text), Arnold Genthe (photographs), Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown (New York: Dover Publications, 1984); Philip P. Choy, San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide to Its History & Architecture (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2012); Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943; Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans; and Yung and the Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Melissa and William Carnahan…: Carnahan.
“BRILLIANT ASSEMBLAGE CROWDS GRAND…”: SFC, April 17, 1906, p. 1.
Tickets for balcony seats…: Dennis Smith, San Francisco Is Burning—The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires (New York: Viking, 2005), p. 12.
“the dresses seemed more beautiful…”: “Brilliant Audience Greets New Carmen,” SFCh, April 18, 1906, p. 5.
“[A]ll of San Francisco and…”: John Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926), p. 55.
“ringing tenor woke up the…”: “Caruso Superb in Role of Don Jose,” SFCh, April 18, 1906, p. 5.
“a brilliant company”…: Philip Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 46.
“the goods”…: Letter from Laurence M. Klauber to his sister Alice, May 1, 1906, CHS.
“Surely, what I have felt…”: Hopper.
“string of carriages”…: Letter from Laurence M. Klauber to his sister Alice, May 1, 1906, CHS.
“with the music ofCarmen…”: Genthe, p. 87.
“ashamed and guilty”…: Baldwin.
Hugh Kwong Liang…: The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906 (Brisbane, CA: Sing Tao Newspaper Ltd., 2006), p. 18.
Lily Soo-Hoo…: Interview of Lily Sung, by Connie Young Yu, at Lily’s Palo Alto home, March 27, 1980; taped recording transcribed by Yu, January 26, 2006; The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906, p. 16.
“delightful”…: Account of Gregory Lighthouse, 1919, RSS.
“Mission boy”…: Dunne.
switchboard operator James Kelly…: JKelly.
“a man could stand on…”: Testimony of Charles F. Daley, WCvAL.
“FIRE ALARM STATION”…: A 1906-era firebox is on display at the SFFD Fire Museum on Presidio Avenue.
handle of any street box…: Information about the fire alarm system and procedures of the switchboard operators and the 10–1, 10–2, and 10–3 signals for first, second, and third alarms was obtained primarily from JKelly and the sworn testimony of Charles F. Daley, WCvAL.
burning at the Central California Canneries warehouse…:SFC, April 18, 1906, p. 2.
When the bell rang on…: GBrown. Information about the training and procedures of the San Francisco Fire Department’s engine, chemical, and truck companies to a first, second, or third alarm was obtained from author interviews with Bill Koenig, retired SFFD lieutenant and founding member of Guardians of the City; his book, Everything Took Time—The Actions of the San Francisco Fire Department During the 1906 Great Earthquake and Fire (Evansville, IN: M. T. Publishing Company, 2020); the History of SFFD series by Battalion Chief Frederick J. Bowlen, which ran in SFCh in 1939; and the SFFD Fire Museum.
“12 seconds”…: “Hoses Hitched, Set in 7½ Seconds,” SFCh, June 10, 1939, p. 7.
tapped out the second alarm…: JKelly.
“big and bulging”…: Charles Keeler, San Francisco and Thereabout (San Francisco: The Stanley-Taylor Co., 1902), p. 45.
“basket-work of iron enclosed in brick”…: “The Work Goes Bravely On,” SFE, November 23, 1874, p. 3.
“happy”…: Caruso.
“as particularly peaceful”…: Hopper.
around 3:00 a.m.…: GBrown, JKelly.
$50,000 in damages…: “Almost Lose Life in Fire,” SFC, April 18, 1906, p. 2.
Charles Daley tapped out a signal…: Testimony of Charles F. Daley, WCvAL.
“spread its brightness on the…”: Charles Morris, The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire (Washington, DC: W. E. Scull, 1906), p. 67.
“bright and inviting”…: Account of Frank Louis Ames, Arg., November 6, 1926.
“within a stone’s throw”…: Hewitt.
police officer Harry Schmidt spoke…: Account of Harry C. Schmidt, Arg., May 1, 1906.
Sergeant Jesse Cook spoke with…: JCook1, JCook2.
3.
Thomas Chase’s morning walk…: Chase.
“North of the slot were…”: Jack London, “South of the Slot,” Saturday Evening Post, May 22, 1909.
“clear and bright”…: Chase.
thick sedimentary layer of old bay clay…: This “old bay clay” consists of glacial deposits from millions of years ago and reaches great depths particularly in the South of Market district. Beginning in 2013, foundation piles for the Salesforce Tower were driven through the fill land and clay to depths of more than 250 feet in some places to reach bedrock. See e.g., Ron Klemencic, Michael T. Valley, and John D. Hooper, “Salesforce Tower: New Benchmarks in High-Rise Seismic Safety,” Structure (magazine), June 2017, pp. 44–48. See also any story on the leaning Millennium Tower high-rise in South of Market, constructed in the same alluvial soil and clay on friction piles not driven to bedrock.
Hillenbrand Hotel…: The Hillenbrand, the original name of the four-story wood-frame hotel at 718, 719, and 720 Valencia Street, was sold at auction in October 1890. See “Notice of Sale,” SFE, October 20, 1890, p. 7; SFCh, October 27, 1890, p. 5.
“[e]verything was peaceful and orderly”…: Account of Lt. H. N. Powell, Arg., October 9, 1926.
At that moment, seven miles…: Information about the earthquake of April 18, 1906, including its timing, focus, epicenter, and magnitude, was obtained primarily from ReportSEIC; “The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake,” US Geological Survey, earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/18april/; and D. J. Wald, H. Kanamori, D. V. Helmbeger, and T. H. Heaton, Source Study of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 83, no. 4 (1993).
Clarence Judson, a thirty-six-year-old…: 1900Census, SFDirectory, and DeathIndex.
“a breaker larger than usual…”: Hansen, Denial of Disaster, pp. 29–30.
“dashed to the ground”…: Letter from Ernest H. Adams to Messrs. Reed & Barton, April 23, 1906, VMSF.
“bed sliding about on its castors”…: Letter from William Stephenson, Maj., US Army, May 31, 1906, BL.
“unwonted stir”…: Eugenia C. Murrell Poston, Personal Experiences from Apr. 18 to June 10, 1906: signed and amended typescript, BL.
“awakened from a sound sleep”…: ConlonJr.
“thought it was time to get up”…: Letter from Catherine to Elise, April 22, 1906, Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Eyewitnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
Twenty-four-year-old William Carr…: William Carr died April 18, 1906, at his residence, 1547 Ellis Street, by asphyxiation by suffocation, was buried temporarily in a lot at Bay and Powell Streets, was disinterred on April 24, 1906, and was reburied in Laurel Hill Cemetery. SFB, April 25, 1906; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL. The April 19, 1906, issue of the Houston Post reported his death, under the name Willie Carr. DeathIndex lists the death of only one William Carr, 24, in May 1906, in Surnames A-E, p. 1648.
twenty-one-year-old Henry Magill…: Henry Magill Jr. was born in 1885 in New Zealand and died April 18, 1906, at 1021 Van Ness Avenue of a fracture of the skull from a falling chimney. Coroner’s Book C, p. 42, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; 1900Census. The SFDirectory lists him as a clerk living at 422 Post Street. DeathIndex lists his death at twenty-one years old on April 18, 1906, and he is buried in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, CA, under the same headstone as his father, who passed in 1922.
sixty-year-old maid Annie Whelan’s…: Annie Whelan died at sixty years old on April 18, 1906, at 2722 Sacramento Street by asphyxia by suffocation. Coroner’s Book A, p. 44, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex; SFE, April 25, 1906, p. 2. She was killed in her bed according to the Houston Post, April 19, 1906, p. 1.
“killed while asleep”…: Annie was reportedly “killed while asleep, at 2782 Sacramento Street, by fall of chimney.” The Boston Post, April 19, 1906, p. 1.
“could hear the creaking and the roaring…”: Baldwin.
“The shock came”…: Burke.
Forty-four-year-old Margaret Bullard…: Margaret J. Bullard of 1836 Lombard Street died of heart failure on April 18, 1906. SFC, May 18, 1906; SFE, May 19, 1906; Coroner’s Book C, p. 43, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; SFDirectory. She was buried in Olivet Memorial Park.
fifteen-year-old Ottilie Kettner…: Ottilie Kettner was born 1891 in California to George Kettner and Caroline Winsdorfer and died at fifteen on April 18, 1906, at 3034 Pierce Street of “Shock caused by earthquake.” Coroner’s Book C, p. 80, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; W. P. Peterson & Co. Funeral Records, San Francisco; 1900Census; DeathIndex.
“‘Oh papa, I am dying’”…: The April 19, 1906, issue of The Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo, CO) reported “Otto Setner, 16 years old, 324 Pierce St, rushed into the room of his father when the awful shock came and shouted: ‘Oh papa, I am dying.’ The child fell dead in his father’s arms.” This is listed under “Setter, Otto” in Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL, but is referring to Ottilie Kettner.
“I had gotten as far as…”: Dewitt Baldwin, “Memories of the Earthquake,” as related to Ana Maria P. de Jesus, September 19, 1988, VMSF.
“when the house started rocking”…: Account of Gregory Lighthouse, 1919, RSS.
“hurry [his] paces”…: Account of Lt. H. N. Powell, Arg., October 9, 1926.
“very severe shock”…: Stetson1.
“[I]t felt like this was…”: Harold L. Zellerbach, excerpt from “Art, Business and Public Life in San Francisco,” Oral History Transcript, BL.
“thrown prone”…: Hewitt.
“a slight trembling”…: Account of Edward J. Plume, Arg., September 18, 1926.
“stuffy” and “oppressive”…: Account of Sgt. Stephen V. Bunner, Arg., August 14, 1926.
“had scarcely been asleep”…: Genthe, p. 87.
“pictures falling”…: Letter from L. M. Simpson to George, April 27, 1906, Phillips-Jones.
“caught the china cabinet as…”: Letter from Sarah Phillips to George, April 18, 1906, ibid.
“glad to have it to hold…”: Letter from L. M. Simpson to George, April 27, 1906, ibid.
“like rats in a trap”…: Letter from Ada Higgins, April 1906, SFPL.
Thirty-six-year-old Sarah Corbus…: Sarah “Sadie” Corbus was thirty-six years old and lived at 1511 Jones Street (near Jackson). She was listed at this address in the 1903 San Francisco City Directory, and listed as residing at this address with her father, Andrew T. Corbus, in 1900Census. She was killed from shock due to injuries from falling bricks in the earthquake, according to the Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL, and the April 29, 1906, issue of SFC. Note the April 21, 1906, issue of Argonaut reported a Mrs. Corbett, her young child, and her Japanese servant, all living at the corner of Jones/Jackson, killed by a brick chimney falling into their bedrooms. This was likely a misspelling of Corbus, as no record of any Corbett living near Jones/Jackson Streets or dying on this day can be found. Sarah is listed as two separate people in VMSF’s Register of Dead: “Miss Sadie Corbus” and “Sarah C. Corbus.” See also note for Sarah Corbus from prologue, supra.
“in an avalanche of brick”…:SFC, April 29, 1906.
school principal Jean Parker…: Jean Parker resided at 1320 Jones Street and was the principal of S.F. State Normal School. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
“Miss Jean Parker”…: “Miss Jean Parker, one of the best-known teachers ever taught in S.F. schools, was killed at her home on Jones Street near Jackson.” SFB, April 26, 1906, p. 2.
“could not stand steadily”…: Wing.
“house in motion”…: Account of Peter J. Mullins, RSS.
Edward and Anna Butler…: Anna (Mrs. Edward Butler) was a Salvation Army officer who died April 19, 1906, at 913 Natoma Street of injuries from falling at her home. OH, April 27, 1906. According to Coroner’s Book C, p. 143 rear fly leaf, she died at Dr. Simon’s Sanitarium at 2344 Sutter Street, and her husband, Edward, was injured. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL. DeathIndex only lists one Anna N. Butler, dying May 1906, in Surnames A-E, p. 1456.
Mary Donovan…: Mary resided at 915 Natoma Street and died at fifty-five years old on April 19, 1906, of internal injuries sustained from a falling building. SFDirectory; DeathIndex; SFC and SFCh, April 24, 1906.
Hermann Meyer…: Hermann M. Meyer was thirty-eight years old, injured at 1422 Mission Street, and died at Mount Zion Hospital from shock following injuries to his head, chest, and right leg. Coroner’s Book C, p. 81, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex; and SFDirectory. Note: Hermann is listed in a duplicate as Meyer Hermann in the Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
“a chimney crashed through the…”: “Mr. Meyer, who was sleeping in a front room, got up and rushed to see if his wife was safe … a chimney crashed through the roof and buried him beneath falling brick.… He was conveyed to a hospital and died the next night.” SFC, p. 7.
“cheap mantraps”…: Roger W. Lotchin, ed., Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (Allentown, PA: The Lakeside Press, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 2011), p. 251.
Fifteen-year-old Myrtle Muge…: Myrtle Muge died at fifteen years old on April 18, 1906, at 158 Langston Street from asphyxiation by suffocation. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex; SFCh, April 27, 1906; OH, April 27, 1906, p. 3.
Twenty-four-year-old Cecilia O’Toole…: The coroner’s office received a Cecil A. O’Toole, who was listed as being crushed by a falling building on 9th Street between Bryant and Brannan. SFFD Captain J. T. Murphy of Engine 29 reported, “We received word that a building situated on 9th between Bryant & Brannan, had also been shaken down and on our arrival we rescued a family named O’Toole.” Murphy. And DeathIndex lists a Cecil A. O’Toole dying April 18, 1906, at twenty-four years old. This was later determined to be Cecilia O’Toole, the wife of Michael O’ Toole, confirmed by a December 15, 1984, letter from Barbara E. Huth: “I lost an aunt in the quake … she was killed because a large picture over the bed fell on her breaking or crushing her nose and she suffocated. My uncle dragged her body around for several days before she was finally buried.” Cecilia was buried in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, CA. Coroner’s Book C, p. 69, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
Adolph Schwinn, a grocer…: Adolph Schwinn died at thirty-one years old on April 18, 1906, at 1741 Howard Street, crushed by the collapse of a building. Coroner’s Book A, p. 48, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex. His wife, Emily, twenty-nine, died with him. Coroner’s Book A, p. 49, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex. They are buried together in Mountain View, CA.
John Judge, a locomotive engineer…: John Judge died at thirty-four years old April 18, 1906, from heart trouble aggravated by the overexertion of kicking down a door of his home to rescue family members during the earthquake. Oakland Enquirer, April 18, 1906, extra edition, p. 1; DeathIndex. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Oakland, and his headstone bears a date of death of April 21, 1906.
eighteen-year-old Edna Ketring…: Edna was born July 1887, per 1900Census when she lived with her parents in San Bernardino. Her account of surviving the earthquake in the Brunswick Hotel and losing her fiancé, Thomas Bowes, was reported in the April 24, 1906, issues of LAH and the Los Angeles Sun and the May 3, 1906, issue of SFCh. There was a Thomas Bowes in the SFDirectory, listed as a sash maker living on Clara Street, and he does not appear in the 1907 city directory.
“The walls were cracking open…”: Los Angeles Sun, April 24, 1906.
“jumped out of bed and…”: James Madison Jacobs was in his eighth day staying in room 56 on the third floor of the Brunswick Hotel, and his account was published in Arg., October 9, 1926.
“to jump out of the…”: William F. Stehr was a baker at Vienna Model Bakery at 222 Sutter Street and was staying on the top floor of the Nevada Hotel. He got off work around 1:00 a.m., got in bed around 2:00 a.m., and was awakened by the earthquake. His account was published in Arg., October 2, 1926, and October 9, 1926.
“intensely dark”…:Los Angeles Sun, April 24, 1906.
“felt paralyzed as the building…”: Account of James Jacobs, Arg., October 9, 1926.
“faster and tighter”…: Account of William Stehr, Arg., October 9, 1926.
“collapsed like card houses”…: Account of William Stehr, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“flat”…:Denial of Disaster, p. 24.
“bright and inviting”…: Account of Frank Louis Ames, Arg., November 6, 1926.
“in a ship on the ocean”…: Caruso.
“and halfway across the room”…: Recollection of Egbert Gould, Denial of Disaster, p. 28.
“turned on its axis”…: Recollection of Cora Older, wife of Bulletin editor Fremont Older, ibid., p. 27.
“like the top of a tree…”: Way.
“tremendous and indescribable”…: James W. Byrne, Recollections of the Fire—San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake and Fire (San Francisco: privately printed, 1927), p. 11.
“the roaring and cracking of…”: Way.
“breaking glass”…: Recollection of Henry Hahn, visiting from Portland, Denial of Disaster, pp. 27–28.
“the rumbling of the earth”…: Goerlitz.
“as if they were mad”…: This was Egbert H. Gould, Denial of Disaster, p. 28.
A salesman from Detroit…: This was George P. Way, founding owner of Artificial Eardrum Company in Detroit, MI, staying in room 612 of the Palace Hotel. His story was told in several articles in the Detroit Free Press (in the April 19, 24, 25, and 27, 1906, issues) and The Evening Record (Windsor, Ontario) (in the April 27, 1906, issue).
“on a ship in a gale…”: Carnahan.
“from south to north like…”: “BUSCH DESCRIBES IT ALL; The St. Louis Brewer Tells of His Adventures in San Francisco,” NYT, April 21, 1906, p. 2.
“would tip over”…: Recollection of Dr. W. Edward Hibbard, Denial of Disaster, p. 33.
“that the ten stories above…”: Recollection of J. C. Gill, ibid.
“required all my strength to…”: Recollection of W. R. Harriman, ibid.
“Then the big twist came…”: Account of Edward J. Wiskotchill, Arg., June 5, 1926.
“woken up very rudely”…: Interview of Lily Sung, by Connie Young Yu at Lily’s Palo Alto home, March 27, 1980; taped recording transcribed by Yu, January 26, 2006, The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906, p. 16.
“became so severe”…: JKelly.
“a mass of glass”…: Charles F. Daley, WCvAL.
“It sounded like thunder outside”…: Account of Harry C. Schmidt, Arg., May 1, 1906.
“like the waves of an ocean…”: JCook1.
“At that moment I believe…”: Account of Thomas Burns, Arg., May 22, 1926.
“It’ll be over in a minute!”…: Account of Alex Paladini, Arg., August 7, 1926.
“a low distant rumble”…: Chase.
“distant thunder”…: Joseph Harper, Observations of the San Francisco Earthquake, delivered before the Montana Society of Engineers, January 11, 1908, VMSF.
“a thousand violins playing off key”…:Denial of Disaster, p. 36.
“cracking bricks”…: Dr. Wilber M. Swett, letter, May 27, 1906, BL.
“crying of the children”…: Letter from Charles to Flora, May 8, 1906, SFPL.
“a horrible chorus of human…”: Morris, The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire, p. 68.
“indescribable sound”…: Letter from Henry Atkins to art dealership partner Frederic Cheever Torrey, April 26, 1906, BL.
“huddled up in bed”…: Letter from Agnes Ehrenberg, April 19, 1906, CHS.
“jumping up and down a…”: Leach, p. 313.
“feeling something shaking me like…”: Ivan S. Rankin, Recollections of the Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco, April 18, 19, 20, and 21, 1906, CHS.
“sprang out of bed and…”: Atherton, p. 394.
“rosy dawn”…: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 29, 1906, CHS.
“like a cyclone”…: Morrow.
“sickening onrush of motion”…: CLondon, p. 100.
“the noise of the falling buildings”…: Letter from Laurence M. Klauber to his sister Alice, May 1, 1906, CHS.
“lift clear off the ground, and then the other”…: Letter from Anna Poston to Papa, April 20, 1906, Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Eyewitnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
“violent agitation”…:KCS, April 18, 1906.
“Will it never stop?…”: Miller.
“hideous minute and a quarter”…: Hopper.
“It seemed a quarter of an hour…”: Morris, The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire, p. 67.
“not more than 25 seconds”…: Letter from Silas W. Mack to Clara W. Mack, April 20, 1906, the Gilder Lehrman Collection, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
“about 30 seconds”…: Einstein.
“kept up without stop for…”: Letter from Tom Davis to mother in England, 1906, CHS.
“seemed five or six minutes”…: DBrown.
“about forty seconds duration”…: Testimony of Professor Alexander G. McAdie, WCvAL.
“a most violent earthquake shock…”: Morrow.
“the shock lasted forty-eight seconds”…:CCE.
“I am told that the shake…”: W. E. Alexander, Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“from every damaged area as…”: ReportSEIC.
“strong shaking”…: US Geological Survey, “The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake,” earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/18april/.
“incredulity at the mere length…”: Hopper.
“how long it lasted God…”: Walter C. Scott, letter to his aunt, April 20, 1906, CHS.
4.
“Then I noted the great silence”…: Hopper.
“ominous quiet”…: Genthe, p. 87.
“noticed the quietness that people…”: Account of Gregory Lighthouse, 1919, RSS.
“shaken up pretty lively with…”: Letter from James Warren to his son Pete, April 21, 1906, CHS.
“It’s an earthquake”…: Dunne.
“sound asleep until awakened by…”: Account of Alex J. Young, December 6, 1919, RSS.
“did not even feel the earthquake”…: Account of Anna Meakin, RSS.
“the fallen furniture and debris”…: Account of William M. Ross, Arg., May 15, 1906.
Hiram Daniels’s…: Hiram M. Daniels, born June 10, 1839, in Vermont, died April 18, 1906, at his residence, 519 McAllister Street, when the earthquake caused the folding bed to close and break his neck. Coroner’s Book C, p. 78, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; SFC, May 18 and 19, 1906; SFE, May 19, 1906. He was sixty-six years old, was buried in Cloverdale Cemetery, and his spouse was Charlotte, who was in the Murphy bed with him and nearly suffocated before their houseguests lowered it. Author interview with their great-granddaughter Nancy Cedeño (the granddaughter of Hiram and Charlotte’s youngest daughter—of nine children—Nellie), July 27 and August 4, 2019.
“like a dollhouse”…: Chase.
“and saw that the streets…”: W. E. Alexander, Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“raised the shades, and looked out”…: Sinsheimer.
“quietness of everyone”…: Fisher, p. 86.
“I did not think there…”: Account of Michael Maher, December 1, 1906, SFPL.
“seemed to grow in the street…”: Letter from “Aunt Bertha” to Elsa Ellerbeck, May 13, 1906, BL.
“The streets presented a weird…”: Genthe, p. 88.
“a stitch of clothes on”…: Siegel.
“in her nightclothes”…: Burke.
“piled up on the sidewalk…”: Stetson1.
“I do not remember a…”: Leithead.
“You know when you build…”: Siegel.
“Everyone is killed!”…: Walsh and O’Keefe, Legacy of a Native Son, p. 94.
“the street was like a river”…: Diary of Mary Murphy, 1898–1909, BL.
“shake off and topple over”…: Accounts of James R. Welch and Frank J. Tautenberg, Arg., September 11, 1926.
Reportedly, after hearing Margaret’s “cries”…:Ibid. and WCook.
“completely wrecked”…: Cullen.
“saw the smoke of an…”: JKelly.
“three columns of smoke”…: Testimony of Charles Daley, WCvAL.
“five additional fires starting”…: JKelly.
“blazed up like tinder”…:Arg., August 6, 1927.
“crushed and instantly killed”…: “Tremendous Battle Against 1906 Fire Told,” by Frederick J. Bowlen, then SFFD battalion chief and former member of Engine 4, SFCh, June 28, 1939, p. 26.
“ran out into the street”…: Letter from Jean Ramsey Voigts, March 12, 1970, CHS.
Hearing “yelling” from inside…: Testimony of Charles R. Murray, WCvAL.
“[I]t soon got away from us”…:SFCh, June 28, 1939, p. 26.
“drugs, chemicals, and fancy goods”…: Testimony of Adolph Mack, owner and proprietor of Mack & Company Drug Wholesaler, WCvAL.
“heard several explosions”…: Testimony of George Kessack, WCvAL.
“began smoking and banging…”: Account of Harry F. Walsh, Arg., May 15, 1926.
“mass of flames”…: Testimony of Jeremiah Sullivan, WCvAL.
“immediately after the earthquake”…: Testimony of Henry Muller, WCvAL.
“Immediately after the quake”…: Leithead.
“within five seconds of the…”: Bennett.
“columns of smoke”…: Cameron.
“large columns of smoke”…: Dryer.
“growing larger”…: Letter from Dr. Wilber M. Swett, May 27, 1906, BL.
fifty-three-year-old Patrick Shaughnessy…: Testimony of Patrick H. Shaughnessy, WCvAL.
“gave out after a few minutes”…: Report of Second Assistant Chief Patrick H. Shaughnessy, September 13, 1906, SFFD Fire Museum, Guardians of the City, https://www.guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/fires/great_fires/1906/Shaughnessy.html.
“After a long search”…: Boden.
“several columns of smoke rising…”: Testimony of Patrick H. Shaughnessy, WCvAL.
“smoke or fire arising from…”: Testimony of Charles Towe, WCvAL.
“The lack of water”…: Goerlitz.
“every receptacle we had with water”…: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“speechless”…: Letter from Rose Barreda to nephew Frederick Barreda, May 15, 1906, with cover letter by Frederick, October 1963, CHS.
“went about and took all…”: Austin, p. 344.
“and then it just stopped by itself”…: Baldwin.
almost total failure…:WaterSupply; Testimony of Hermann Schussler, WCvAL.
“thrown from its trestle onto…”: Perry.
“bowl of mud”…: Testimony of Hermann Schussler, WCvAL.
More than three hundred street mains…: Spring Valley Water Company chief engineer Hermann Schussler testified in 1907: “I made an accurate count of the repaired breaks in the main pipe system … and they amounted to a little over 300.… In the service pipes, the pipes that supplies the houses, we had by that time found in the neighborhood of 23,200 breaks.” Testimony of Hermann Schussler, ibid.
4,213 hydrants…:WaterSupply.
5.
“to check it from going easterly”…: Testimony of Frank Tracy, WCvAL.
“I guess I must have fainted”…: “Miss Edna Ketring,” The San Bernardino County Sun, April 24, 1906, p. 6.
“burrowed toward the daylight”…: Account of James M. Jacobs, Arg., October 9, 1926.
“held up blankets and comfortables…”: Mahoney.
Frank Keefe…: Frank Keefe, aged forty-six, and his wife, Florence Keefe, aged thirty-seven, and their son, Leo Keefe, aged twelve, all died on April 18, 1906, in the collapse of the Brunswick Hotel. SFB, May 24, 1906, p. 8; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
Abraham Lichtenstein…: Abraham Lichtenstein “burned to death” April 18, 1906, at Brunswick House. Coroner’s Book C, p. 115, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL. He was born February 1854 in Russia and is buried in Salem Memorial Park and Garden. His wife, Johanna (born July 1860); daughter, Esther (born July 1891); and son, Morris (born July 1885), all died with him. 1900Census; SFC, June 6, 1906, p. 11.
Maud Johnson and Mary Irwin…: Letter from Mrs. D. McDonald to Coroner Walsh, May 28, 1906. SFE, May 30, 1906, p. 14.
“Wilson sisters”…: “Brunswick Hotel Death List,” SFC, June 26, 1906, p. 12.
And in the Nevada House…: Frank Lee, son of the Nevada House proprietor, told the reporter “that but thirteen out of thirty-six lodgers were brought from the ruins alive.” SFC, May 11, 1906, p. 8.
“were working with rageful energy…”: Hopper.
“was split open about six to eight feet”…: Perry.
“like a river”…: Diary of Mary Murphy, 1898–1909, BL.
“[B]y pulling up floors and…”: Arg., October 26, 1906.
“The sights there were very distressing”…: Account of Henry Powell, ibid.
Annie Conway…: Annie L. Conway died at twenty-seven years old on April 18, 1906, in the Valencia Hotel collapse. Coroner’s Book C, p. 72, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; SFC, April 24, 1906; SFE, May 4, 1906; DeathIndex, Surnames A-E, p. 2147.
Patrick Broderick…: Patrick Broderick died at fifty-nine years old on April 18, 1906, by “asphyxiation by suffocation” in the Valencia Hotel collapse. Coroner’s Book A, p. 58, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; SFCh, April 30, 1906; SFC, May 18, 1906; DeathIndex, Surnames A-E, p. 1216.
Lorenze Goetz…: Lorenze Goetz died at sixty-four years old on April 18, 1906, at St. Francis Hospital after being fatally injured in the Valencia Hotel collapse. DeathIndex, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
William Krone…: William R. Krone died at forty on April 18, 1906, in the Valencia Hotel collapse. Department of Public Health death registry, SFPL; DeathIndex, Surnames A-E, p. 5950; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL. He was listed as “Crone” in the SFDirectory as a carpenter living at 2222 Grove Street, but it says “See Krone.” Note there is a separate card in the Gladys Hansen Death Index for “William R. Crone,” but they are the same individual.
the Johnson family…: Nathan, thirty-two; May, thirty-one; and Harold, two, along with Nathan’s brother, Edward, forty-three, were all killed in the Valencia Hotel collapse on April 18, 1906. DeathIndex, Surnames F-L, p. 5439. Nathan died of a skull fracture. Coroner’s Book A, p. 62. May died of hemorrhage, shock, and a compound fracture of both legs. Coroner’s Book A, p. 63. Harold of asphyxiation by suffocation. Coroner’s Book A, p. 64. Edward died of a skull fracture. Coroner’s Book A, p. 65. They were buried in temporary graves in a lot at Bay and Powell Streets, disinterred on April 24, 1906, and reburied in Cypress Lawn in Colma, CA. SFB, April 25, 1906; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
Annie Bock…: William P. Bock and his son, William H. Bock, died April 18, 1906, in the collapse of the Valencia Hotel. SFC, April 24, 1906; Coroner’s Book C, p. 74; Arg., October 16, 1926; and DeathIndex, p. 972. They are buried side by side in Cypress Memorial Park in Colma, CA. Annie died in 1915 and is buried with them.
“cloud of deep dust hung…”: Hewitt.
“dome was stripped clean off…”: Leithead.
“Earthquakes uncover strange secrets”…: Mary Edith Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, edited by Roger W. Lotchin (The Lakeside Press, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 2011), p. 74.
“stood now like a lie exposed”…: Fisher, p. 88.
“in perfect darkness”…: Account of Officer Plume, Arg., September 18, 1926.
“It was black dark and smothering”…: Account of Officer E. F. Parquet, Arg., September 25, 1926.
“forcibly opened”…: Account of Dr. Tilton E. Tillman, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“masked carnival”…: The April 16, 1906, issue of SFCh and signs on the Larkin Street sidewalk of Mechanics’ Pavilion (still visible on the morning of April 18, 1906) advertised the “masked carnival.”
“operating tables, cots, medicine chests…”: Account of Officer Ed F. Parquet, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“terrible state of ruin”…: Account of Sgt. Stephen V. Bunner, Arg., August 14, 1926.
“littered all about”…: Account of Officer Wiskotchill, Arg., June 12, 1926.
“looked as calm as if…”: Account of Officer Behan, Arg., June 19, 1926.
“Hercules of the police department”…: Duke, p. 168.
“terribly crushed and battered”…: Account of Officer Behan, supra.
“crashed down the shaft”…:SFCh, April 28, 1906, p. 4.
“saw fires in every direction”…: WCook.
“tired and worn out”…: Nichols.
“standing in their doorways in…”: Recollections of Cora and Fremont Older, Denial of Disaster, p. 28.
“The proud boast that the Palace…”: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 72.
“blocked two floors deep with…”: Account of William Cushing, Arg., November 6, 1926.
“preparing coffee and rolls for the help”…: Account of James W. Byrne, Arg., November 27, 1926.
“delicious dishes of coffee and hot rolls”…: Hollister, p. 156.
“in a frantic state”…: Account of Josephine Jacoby, Arg., November 13, 1926.
“To Enrico Caruso”…: Caruso.
“tried to wash, but only…”: Goerlitz.
“like herds of sheep”…: Recollection of Zebedee R. Winslow, Denial of Disaster, p. 29.
“spitting blue flames and writhing…”: Account of Frank Louis Ames, Arg., November 6, 1926.
“peculiar smell”…: Letter from John to Lucy R. Schaeffer, May 15, 1906, SFPL.
“sort of a bluish yellow”…: “Eyewitnesses Tell of Frisco Horrors,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 21, 1906, p. 8.
“strewn with debris”…: Goerlitz.
“automobiles, wagons, vehicles of all…”: Way.
“filled with an excited throng”…: Recollection of Ella Ransom, Denial of Disaster, p. 33.
“gorgeously dressed and bespangled with jewels”…: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 29, 1906, CHS.
“no occasion for hurry”…: Carnahan.
“filled with people—hardly a…”: Sinsheimer.
“in a state of terror—children…”: Letter from Dr. Wilber M. Swett, May 27, 1906, BL.
“a man in pink pajamas…”: Hopper.
“like an eggshell”…: Recollection of Arthur C. Poore, Arg., Spring 1990.
“swarming with rescuers”…: Hopper.
“was very rickety and dangerous”…: Recollection of Officer E. W. Meredith, Arg., July 3, 1926.
“over piles of plaster and laths”…: Hopper.
“a mound of bricks with…”: Ibid. Note: this may have been Jane Burge, whose husband, Frank J. Burge, died at seventy-six on April 18, 1906, at 239 Geary with Jane, proprietor for the Geary Hotel. SFDirectory; DeathIndex, Surnames A-E, p. 1386.
“had been broken away from…”: Account of Officer E. W. Meredith, Arg., July 3, 1926.
“A stairway gave out”…: GBrown.
Ida Heaslip…: Ida O. Heaslip (born 11/19/1857 per 1900Census) died April 18, 1906, at 239 Geary Street from falling walls and asphyxiation by suffocation. DeathIndex; Houston Post, April 19, 1906. Her body was temporarily buried in Portsmouth Square and was disinterred on April 25, 1906, identified by her son, and shipped to Live Oak Cemetery in Harrison County, Mississippi, for burial. SFCh, April 26, 1906, p. 2. Her son, Francis Jr., died in 1914 and is buried beside her.
“incipient blaze”…: GBrown.
“chaotic”…: Account of Dr. Tilton E. Tillman, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“a ghastly sight”…: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“strewn with mattresses”…: Fisher, p. 87.
“filled with dead, dying, and injured”…:CCE.
“carried in on the doors or shutters…”: Account of Dr. Tilton E. Tillman, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“horribly mangled”…:CCE.
“much as a field dressing…”: Account of Dr. Tilton E. Tillman, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“well-equipped”…: Fisher, p. 87.
“a dead body [being] carried…”: Mahoney.
“so as not to distress the injured”…: Account of Dr. Tilton E. Tillman, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“piled in the corner to make room”…: Letter from Charles to Flora, May 8, 1906, SFPL.
6.
“entirely improper”…: “Roosevelt Tells Funston to Quit Talking So Much,” St. Louis Republic, April 24, 1902.
“beautiful clear morning”…: Funston.
“fully armed”…: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
two men with the city attorney’s…: Myrtile Cerf and John T. Williams, Arg., January 15, 1927. The route taken by their car was obtained from Testimony of Eugene Schmitz, LSvTF.
“immediately got up and dressed”…: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 15, 1927.
“I must go at once”…: Account of John T. Williams, supra.
“City Hall”…: Account of Eugene Schmitz, supra.
“the Mayor was deeply grieved”…: Account of John T. Williams, supra.
seventy-seven prisoners…: San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1905–6, Ending June 30, 1906, and Fiscal Year 1906–7, Ending June 30, 1907 (San Francisco: Neal Publishing, 1908), p. 52.
“a few hasty instructions”…: Funston.
“execute the laws”…: 18 U.S.C. § 1385 (1878).
“waiting for particulars”…: Telegram from Taft to Funston, April 18, 1906, Box 87, Record Group 107: Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, NA.
officer successfully sent a dispatch…: This was Major Carroll Devol, who sent a telegram to the quartermaster general requesting relief. Erwin N. Thompson, Defender of the Gate: Presidio of San Francisco, CA 1900–1904 (Denver, CO: National Park Service, 1997).
“paralyzed”…: Account of Frederick Funston, Arg., February 12, 1927.
“to aid the police and…”: Funston.
“martial law”…:CCE.
“marched the troops into the…”: Letter from Gen. Funston, Presidio of San Francisco, Cal., July 2, 1906, Arg., July 7, 1906.
“take all proper measures for…”: Charter of the City and County of San Francisco, 1900, Article IV, Chapter I, Sec. 2.
“necessary to augment the police…”: Testimony of Eugene Schmitz, LSvTF.
“had practically burned itself out”…: Testimony of William R. Whittier, WCvAL.
“had gutted the buildings”…: Testimony of Clarence W. Coburn, WCvAL.
“If one of the boys…”: Testimony of August Fahlberg, WCvAL.
“got the best of it”…: Account of M.T. Lestrange, Arg., August 28, 1926.
“was blazing furiously”…: Account of Cpt. Gillig, Arg., July 30, 1927.
“only the base of one…”: Hopper.
“raging around”…: Cullen.
“[T]he fire had ceased to…”: Reminiscences of Charles de Y. Elkus of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire (dictated some time in 1956), CHS.
“several lines from different directions”…: Schmidt.
“noticed that smoke was coming…”: JCook2.
“fire and smoke filled the street”…: Testimony of James Stetson, WCvAL.
“carrying out books and other articles”…: Account of F. Ernest Edward, Arg., October 23, 1926.
“big cracks”…: Testimony of John Dougherty, WCvAL.
“all available explosives, with a…”: Account of Frederick Funston, Arg., February 5, 1927; Report to the Adjutant, Presidio of San Francisco, May 2, 1906, VMSF; and Devol2, p. 63.
“The whole of the lower…”: Account of F. Ernest Edward, supra.
“Look at the fires; the…”: Miller.
“an endless cavalcade”…: Account of Officer Wiskotchill, Arg., June 12, 1926.
“laid out on benches”…:Arg., August 14, 1926.
“being rifled of valuables”…: Account of Officer Wiskotchill, supra.
“evidently by some thief”…: Duke, p. 165.
“Close up every saloon at once”…: Account of John T. Williams, supra.
“2,000 men in uniform [with badges]…”: Account of Thornwell Mullally, Arg., August 28, 1926.
“[h]unt up”…: Account of John T. Williams, supra.
“As it has come to my…”: Duke, p. 165.
“The proclamation was issued with…”: Testimony of Eugene Schmitz, LSvTF.
“were busy conveying the wounded”…: Duke, p. 165.
“had no time to arrest thieves”…: Account of Officer Wiskotchill, supra.
“red as blood”…: Way.
“[T]he sun showed bloodshot through…”: Austin, p. 250.
“literally packed with hundreds of…”: JKelly.
“was full of excited, anxious…”: Funston.
“over the city”…: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 15, 1927.
“Do you really stand for…”: This was Colonel Morris, quoted by Schmitz, ibid.
“realize the magnitude of the calamity”…:Legacy of a Native Son, p. 95.
“the people below darting into…”: Letter from Charles Fisk to his mother in England, April 22, 1906, CHS.
“the tops of the buildings…”: J. B. Levison, “Memories for my Family,” BL.
“did not know which way…”: Account of Harry C. Schmidt, Arg., May 8, 1926.
“jerky, ugly shock”…: Letter from Rose Barreda to her nephew Frederick Barreda, May 15, 1906, with cover letter by Frederick, October 1963, CHS.
“violent shock”…: Miller.
This aftershock struck at 8:14 a.m.…: Information about the 8:14 a.m. aftershock was obtained from Testimony of Professor McAdie of the US Weather Bureau, LSvT; ReportSEIC, p. 410; Aron J. Meltzner and David J. Wald, “Felt Reports and Intensity Assignments for Aftershocks and Triggered Events of the Great 1906 California Earthquake” (Department of the Interior, USGS, 2002), Table 1, p. 12.
“of particular severity, a sharp twister”…: Testimony of Professor McAdie, WCvAL.
“heavy shock”…: Myrtle Robertson, “An Eye Witness—Miss Myrtle Robertson’s Eyewitness Account Given Substantially in Her Own Words,” CHS.
“startled afresh the excited crowd”…: Carnahan.
“jewels and small bag of necessaries”…: Emma Eames, Some Memories and Reflections (New York: Appleton & Company, 1927), pp. 259–260.
“terrorized” him with “a fear…”: Account of George R. Douglas, RSS.
“so severe”…: Funston.
“started to run out of the building”…: Fisher, p. 90.
7.
It had been twenty-seven years…: This was the California Electric Light Company. Although an exhibition of battery-powered electric lights was held on the roof of St. Ignatius College in 1874 and at Mechanics’ Pavilion and on Market Street after that (Katie Dowd, “140 years ago, the lights were turned on in San Francisco for the first time,” SFGate, July 4, 2016), the first to furnish electric lighting to customers was the California Electric Light Company, which formed in San Francisco in June 1879. See the February 8, 1890, issue of Western Electrician, vol. 6, p. 73.
“one of utter demoralization”…: Testimony of George P. Low, WCvAL.
Gerald Kirkpatrick…: Gerald Stanley Kirkpatrick, twenty-one, died at Station C on Jessie Street of a skull fracture. Coroner’s Book A, p. 120; SFCh, May 1, 1906, p. 9; DeathIndex.
“cables on 7th between Mission…”: Testimony of Louis E. Reynolds, WCvAL.
“the trolley wires, the telephone…”: Account of Harry C. Schmidt, Arg., May 8, 1906.
“quite extensive”…: Testimony of John J. Kelley, WCvAL.
more than four hundred places…: Specific data on damage and repairs to the city’s gas system was obtained from the 1907 testimony of John J. Kelley, superintendent of distribution of gas for the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company, WCvAL.
“several huge holes in various…”: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“manhole cover [that] blew straight up…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“the cobblestones on the street…”: Recollection of James J. O’Brien, Denial of Disaster, p. 31.
Marie Paris…: Marie Paris, a widow, died at sixty-two on April 23, 1906, at City & County Hospital from a skull fracture suffered during a gas explosion. Gantner Brothers Funeral Home Records, Provo, UT, www.ancestry.com; DeathIndex; SFB, April 24, 1906, p. 9, and April 25, 1906, p. 5.
“I burned all that was in…”: Nankervis.
“had plenty of coffee, milk…”: Goerlitz.
“[T]he dining room of the…”: Letter from James R. Tapscott to his mother, Mrs. I. J. Tapscott, April 22, 1906, BL.
“where they served hot coffee…”: Mahoney.
“secured a large basket of bread…”: Cameron.
“crackers was my first meal…”: Letter from John Walter to his parents, April 18, 1906, published in To His Parents (San Francisco: privately printed, 1935), BL.
“about sold out”…: Letter from Ada Higgins, April 1906, SFPL.
“crackers, sardines, malted milk”…: J. B. Levison, “Memories for my Family,” BL. This was at Goldberg, Bowen & Co. on the southwest corner of Haight and Masonic Avenues.
“glass show-windows broken…”: Letter from Dr. Wilber M. Swett, May 27, 1906, BL.
“I saw everything on the floor…”: Baldwin.
“a small muddy stream of water…”: Way. This was probably at Powell and Market Streets, where a crowd was observed drinking from a muddy pool formed by water gushing up through the paving stones.
thirteen-year-old girl…: This was Florence de Andreis (Kenney) of 6 Vandewater Street, who wrote she and her family of five “were compelled to buy some at the very exorbitant price of ten and even twenty-five cents a glass.” Florence de Andreis, Account of the April 1906 Earthquake and Fire, written July 1909, SCP.
“so I drank milk”…: Angove.
“was crowded”…: Livingston.
“lighting a fire in a defective…”: Conlon.
“warn everybody not to light…”: Conniff.
“We took a few bricks…”: Burke.
“the brick chimney had fallen…”: Charles de Y. Elkus, Reminiscences of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire (dictated sometime in 1956), CHS.
“a crude stove at the curb…”: Herbert F. Bauer, Reminiscences of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“having his children collect all…”: Baldwin. The neighbor was Angelo E. Bruni, a shirtmaker who lived at 1856 McAllister Street.
“confined to the building”…: “Blaze Started 399 Hayes Street,” SFE, May 23, 1906, p. 3.
“heavy volumes of smoke”…: Hopper.
“The fire department was all…”: Laurence Joseph Kennedy, The Progress of the Fire in San Francisco, April 18th to 21st, as Shown by an Analysis of Original Documents (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1908), BL.
“tried to obtain water from…”: Cullen.
“with lines of hose, patiently…”: Account of Paul Springer, Santa Cruz Sentinel, May 9, 1906.
“were unable to obtain…”: Boden.
“Ham and Egg Fire”…: “HAM AND EGGS FIRE WAS NOT CAUSED BY TEMBLOR,” SFE, May 23, 1906, p. 3.
fourteen men and five women…: According to SFDirectory and census and voter records of household members: In the corner liquor store at 399 Hayes was Charles Bechtel and his wife, Elizabeth, and above them in 397 Hayes was the Reich family—Henry; his wife, Clara; and their fourteen-year-old twin daughters, Alma and Irene. Clara’s mother, Johanna Doncks, was listed as living with them but passed away in October 1905. Next door at 393 Hayes was a barbershop owned by Julius Heilfronn, and Levi T. Snow was listed as a resident. Upstairs in 391 Hayes was California L. Lee, a widow. Next door in 387 Hayes was a picture-framing business owned by Charles Brunke, who resided either there or in the upstairs flat. In the next building—which was three stories tall—downstairs in the back was a candy store owned by John D. Tryforos, who lived there, and in the front of 383 Hayes was a barbershop owned by George Stump, who lived upstairs in the second- and third-floor flat of 385 Hayes with Charles Pomeroy, William T. Goines, and Carlos Caine. And in the fifth building from the corner, a cigar shop occupied 377 Hayes, where brothers Philip Posner, Joseph Posner, and Benjamin Posner resided. And upstairs in the second- and third-floor flat at 379 Hayes lived Jesse Johnson and Emil Scheinert (or Schiner).
another contemporaneous account…: A photograph of a young boy standing among men watching the start of the fire on the rooftops of 377–379 and 383–385 Hayes Street is captioned: “Posner, Philip. [Boy facing camera] Posner Cigar Store, 377 Hayes St. (basement), building on fire. Credited with started Ham and Eggs Fire, 1906. Donor, Mrs. Paul Gottlieb, reports, 1955, that the fire started in the building next door at right in photograph.” [Call Number: FN-01078], BL. This was also mentioned by eyewitness Charles Levy (“Some say that it started in Posner’s cigar store”) in “Blaze Started 399 Hayes Street,” SFE, May 23, 1906, p. 3.
“all remembrance of the earthquake…”: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“It was a terrible sight…”: Amelia M. Peretz, interviewed by Frederick M. Wirt, August 1, 1977, SGC.
“we sat and watched the…”: Bernadette McKittrick and Tessie Dowd, Told at Open House for Senior Citizens Mission Neighborhood Centers, Inc., Mission Adult Center, 1966, CHS.
“I took what money and…”: Miller.
“it proved more than we…”: Nankervis.
“the smart idea that we…”: Harold L. Zellerbach, excerpt from “Art, Business and Public Life in San Francisco,” Oral History Transcript, BL.
“digging vast holes in the yard”…: Nankervis.
“with our silver, cut glass…”: Luzerne Smith Dean, Selection from “San Francisco, the City I Love,” typescript 1956, BL.
“deep trenches into which we…”: Letter from Charles Page to his son, a student at MIT in MA, April 21, 1906, CHS.
“found that every available horse…”: James W. Byrne, Recollections of the Fire—San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake and Fire (San Francisco: privately printed, 1927), p. 22.
“[N]ot one man in one thousand…”: W. E. Alexander, Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“filled up pretty well with trunks…”: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“Ambulances, patrol wagons, fire-engines…”: Letter from Bert Tuttle to Mary Butler, 1:00 p.m. April 18, 1906, SFPL.
“vehicles of all sorts were…”: William F. Nichols, “The Story” from A Father’s Story of the Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco, April 18, 19, 20, 1906 (privately printed, 1923).
Frank Nunan…: Frank P. Nunan (bookkeeper at Hibernia Brewery residing at 422 Oak St. per the 1903 city directory) died April 18, 1906, at City & County Hospital at thirty-one from internal injuries after being thrown from and run over by a brewery wagon. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex.
“Every possible contrivance was used…”: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“I was suddenly snatched from…”: Account of Eleanor Perry, 1919, RSS.
“Even pianos were being pulled…”: Angove.
“an old lady carrying a…”: Genthe, p. 88.
“a great many comical sights…”: Bacigalupi.
“a young lady on a bicycle…”: Perry.
“the odd articles the refugees…”: Account of Alex Young, RSS.
“dragged along with a kind…”: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“The constant rasping of trunks…”: Ivan S. Rankin, Recollections of the Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco, April 18, 19, 20, and 21, 1906, CHS.
“The use of this powder…”: Briggs, p. 229.
“could get all they wanted…”: Account of Jeremiah Deneen, Arg., February 5, 1927.
“so far under the influence…”: Report of Cpt. Le Vert Coleman, US Army Artillery Corps, to the Adjutant at the Presidio, May 2, 1906, VMSF.
Schmitz ordered…: Information on the movements of dynamite under Lt. Briggs and the caissons of powder sent to eventually fall under the control of Lt. Pulis was obtained from Briggs and Testimony of Charles Pulis and John F. Davis, LSvTF.
“asked if there was not…”: Testimony of Charles Pulis, LSvTF.
dribbled a “train”…: Account of Sgt. John Lainsbury, Arg., August 13, 1927.
“blinded by the blood that…”: Ibid.
“probably fatally injured”…: Buffalo Times, April 19, 1906, and Detroit Journal, April 19, 1906. Pulis survived, continued to serve in the Army, was promoted to the rank of colonel during the First World War, passed of pneumonia March 14, 1919, and is buried in San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio. Note: although he survived, Charles Pulis is listed as an earthquake and fire death in the Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
“full of splinters”…: Account of Dr. Tilton E. Tillman, Arg., October 2, 1926.
“The sparks were flying”…: Testimony of Alfred Goddard, Arg., July 10, 1926.
“The outside portion of the…”: Account of A. W. King, Arg., November 6, 1926.
Beyond its sturdy construction…: Specific data on the 1875–1906 Palace Hotel was gathered from SanbornMap and “The Great Caravansary of the Western World,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 9, 1875.
“leaped from block to block…”: Hammill.
“cordon of police and soldiers”…: Byrne, Recollections of the Fire—San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake and Fire, p. 22.
“fire brigade of bellboys”…: Ibid., p. 23.
“at times terrific”…: Ibid., p. 26.
“was now assuming alarming proportions”…: Hollister, p. 156.
“It was necessary to climb…”: Eastwood.
“no longer ‘only a fire’”…: Letter from Amy Kahn to Mr. Coop, April 23–24, 1906, BL.
“The street was like looking…”: Chase.
“the crackling and roar…”: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 29, 1906, CHS.
“For God’s sake help me”…: This was Frank Corali, buried beneath the basement floor of the burning lodging house, according to Daily News: Extra Edition, April 18, 1906.
the Hansen family…: Daniel Clifford Hansen, twenty-seven, was a boatswain with the US Navy (and, per 1900Census, was stationed as quartermaster aboard the USS Paragua in the Philippines) and the son of Danish immigrants; his wife, Sarah, twenty-three, and their son, William C., one, all died (“burned to death”) at 7th and Natoma Streets on April 18, 1906. DeathIndex; U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Registries, 1814–1992, vol. 2, 1906, p. 84. “Bodies of Daniel Clifford Hansen and his wife, Sarah Hansen, and his son, William Hansen, were found at Seventh & Howard Sts.” All three were buried in the Naval Cemetery at Yerba Buena. SFCh, April 27, 1906, p. 7.
the Stamblers…: Louis Stambler, thirty-five; his wife, Celia, thirty; and daughter, Rosie, ten, all died April 18, 1906. H. F. Suhr & Funeral Co. records, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL. Louis “burnt to death” per Coroner’s Book C, p. 138, which added: “Human bones supposed to be Louis Stambler” were found by his sister Sadie Stambler of Los Angeles, who “searched ruins for some time … and this afternoon, May 29, came across bones which she says are those of her relatives.” The Eau Claire Leader (Wisconsin) reported on May 31, 1906: “Five bodies were taken out of the ruins of the Kingsbury House. The first four were those of Louis Stambler, a tailor, thirty-four years of age, his wife Celia, their daughter Rosie, ten years of age, and Stambler’s niece, Miss Fannie Weiner, twenty-three years of age…” Fannie Weiner, their niece, twenty-three, died with them, “burnt to death.” Coroner’s Book C, p. 139; SFC, May 30, 1906, p. 3; SFCh, May 30, 1906, p. 2.
Michele Canepa…: Michele died on April 18, 1906, at forty-six, killed by the falling of the building. Coroner’s Book C, p. 131, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex, Surnames A-E, p. 1574. His wife, Maddalena, died the same day at the same address, “burnt to death.” Department of Public Health Records, SFPL; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex, Surnames A-E, p. 1574.
“to do their best to help…”: Hammill.
“unmoved, inscrutable as a sphinx”…: Hopper.
“At every cross-street, streams of people…”: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 73.
“miserable and crushed”…: Hopper.
8.
“had all backed out into the clear”…: Chase.
“began to take water and in…”: The Independent (Santa Barbara, CA), April 25, 1906, p. 1.
“as though they were but matchwood”…: Account of Roland M. Roche, Arg., January 1, 1927.
“were pressing down to the ferries”…: Arg., May 8, 1906.
“as a sort of a barrier”…: Account of Harry Walsh, Arg., May 15, 1926.
“an old Italian”…: JCook2.
“burned by rooms, as it…”: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“The one thought uppermost in my mind”…: Genthe, p. 89.
No. 3A, B2, Folding Pocket Kodak…: Genthe later wrote he grabbed “a 3A Kodak Special,” ibid., but as Victoria Binder notes in her essay, “Arnold Genthe and his Camera” in Among the Ruins, “This is chronologically impossible, as the No. 3A Kodak Special was not available until 1910. It is more likely that Genthe chose the model No. 3A, B2, Folding Pocket Kodak, manufactured between 1904 and 1906.” Among the Ruins, p. 49.
“waded through plaster”…: Letter from Ernest H. Adams to Messrs. Reed and Barton, April 23, 1906, VMSF.
“raging”…: W. E. Alexander, Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“It was a gesture of kindness”…: Kendrick.
“a blood red ball”…: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 29, 1906, CHS.
“an intense vibration of the whole vessel”…: Pond.
“all available surgeons and nurses”…: Freeman; Pond.
“The Kid”…: Army and Navy Journal, vol. XXXII 1894–1895 (New York: Publication Office Bennett Building, 1895), p. 603; US Naval Academy Alumni Association, The United States Naval Academy Graduates’ Association (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1904), p. 132.
“a born leader of men…”: Pond.
“under full boiler power”…: Freeman.
“As we approached the waterfront…”: Pond.
“expressed his appreciation of the…”: Freeman.
“had several lines of hose laid out”…: Pond.
“sightseers”…: Freeman.
“able-bodied men”…: Pond.
“that the heavens above the…”: Leach.
“in less time than it takes…”: “Ham and Eggs Fire Was Not Caused by Tremblor,” SFE, May 23, 1906, p. 3.
“A shower of burning embers…”: Friar John Frieden, “Some Personal Reminiscences of the Earthquake of San Francisco,” ca. 1910, Manuscript Collection, University of San Francisco.
“subdued but startling whisper”…: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“shingles were smoking in several…”: Account of E. J. Plume, Arg., September 25, 1926.
“in a low excited voice”…: Fisher.
“The place is afire, we…”: Mahoney.
“Fires were by this time…”: Account of E. J. Plume, supra.
“Never in my experience have…”: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“I believe I was the last…”: Account of E. J. Plume, Arg., September 25, 1926.
“a wild retreat after a lost battle”…: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“burning with explosive violence”…: Hopper.
nineteen different operas…: Goerlitz.
“took the line of hose up”…: Account of Patrick Shaughnessy, Arg., January 15, 1927.
“burst into flame gradually beginning…”: Letter from Henry Atkins to art dealership partner Frederic Cheever Torrey, April 26, 1906, BL.
“the whole interior alight, flames…”: Letter from Tom Davis to his mother in England, 1906, CHS.
“was glowing like a phosphorescent worm”…: Hopper.
“seething bonfire”…: Arg., April 30, 1927.
“weeping bitterly because he and…”: Byrne, Recollections of the Fire—San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake and Fire, p. 29.
“was smoking but was still…”: Hopper.
“It became in fifteen minutes…”: Arg., December 11, 1926.
“there was a line of men…”: Eastwood.
“uncontrollable demon of a blaze”…: Leach.
“a fierce heat that was…”: Hammill.
“[T]he charges often had to be…”: Report of Cpt. Le Vert Coleman, US Army Artillery Corps, to the Adjutant at the Presidio, May 2, 1906, VMSF.
“accelerated rather than retarded…”: Arg., August 13, 1927.
“at a speed that was…”: Account of William Harvey, Arg., March 12, 1927.
“gave out high explosives to…”: Testimony of John F. Davis, LSvT.
“like the report of heavy…”: Letter from Charles to Flora, May 8, 1906, SFPL.
“the sound of explosions”…: Letter from Major William Stephenson, US Army, May 31, 1906, BL.
“At first we did not…”: Nankervis.
“every time they set off…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“in order to keep the…”: Chase.
“very soon”…: Dr. George Blumer’s Eyewitness Account of the Disaster, VMSF.
“ignited and in a short…”: Chase.
“as many of his men…”: Arg., August 13, 1927.
“was completely exhausted”…: Freeman.
“Sock it to ’em!”…: Pond.
9.
“Central”…: Morrow.
“the telephone wires were broken”…: J. B. Levison, “Memories for my Family,” BL.
“were completely destroyed”…: Col. Milton B. Halsey Jr., “Point Paper: U.S. Army Activities in the 1906 Earthquakes and Fire,” SFPL.
The Navy had recently established…: “Wireless Comes of Age on the West Coast,” AWA Review, vol. 24 (2011): pp. 242–250.
“Earthquake. Town on fire. Send…”: Marshall Everett, Complete Story of the San Francisco Earthquake (Chicago: Henry Neil, 1906), p. 78.
“at full speed”…: Commander Charles J. Badger, US Navy, “Services Performed by the Flagship Chicago During Conflagration in San Francisco, California, And Operations of the Navy in Control of the Sixth District (Water Front) of the City,” April 19 to May 10, 1906, NA, Record Group 45.
“directly”…: Letter from Sarah Phillips to George, April 27, 1906, Phillips-Jones.
“Lost everything, am safe. Thank God”…: Way.
“after a rapid sprint”…: Account of Paul Dowles, Arg., April 9, 1927.
“A terrific earthquake struck…”: Chicago Live Stock World, April 18, 1906.
The time was roughly 6:40 a.m.…: While Chicago papers reported they received the first bulletins around 9:00 a.m. (CST, which would be 7:00 a.m. San Francisco time), there were more specific reports from New York that Postal Telegraph had communication with its San Francisco office briefly at 9:40 a.m. EST (6:40 a.m. San Francisco time) “but lost the connection again almost immediately.” SLT, April 18, 1906.
“the story of the earthquake…”: Account of Paul Dowles, Arg., April 9, 1927.
“almost immediately”…: SLT, April 18, 1906.
“Am appalled and overwhelmed by…”: CCE.
“rumors of great disaster”…: “President Roosevelt Offers Aid,” Boston Evening Transcript, April 19, 1906, p. 3.
“subject to indefinite delay”…: BE, April 18, 1906.
“Mayor Mott, Oakland. Send fire engines…”: This telegram was first reported found by Judge Tyrell among his papers in Oakland on page 10 of the Oakland Tribune, April 19, 1949. He said it was received in Oakland around 8:00 a.m. It was confirmed authentic by William A. Galvin, who was the assistant manager of Postal Telegraph on April 18, 1906, and confirmed he sent it that morning after arriving at the office that first morning after 7:00 a.m. in article “Telegrapher of 1906 Disaster Gives Interesting Details” in the May 1, 1949, issue of SFE.
“climbed the telegraph poles at intervals”…: Account of Harry J. Jeffs, Arg., April 9, 1927.
“All well and safe”…: Telegram from Isabelle Prentiss to Miss M. Prentiss, April 26, 1906, BL.
“Lost everything, am safe. Thank God”…: Way.
“like hurried missives desperately flung…”: Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906, p. 84.
“a total wreck”…: EB, April 18, 1906.
“EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE WRECK…”: Ibid.
“SAN FRANCISCO IS VISITED BY…”:BE, April 18, 1906.
“Flames rage unchecked”…: KCS, April 18, 1906.
“All the water pressure is gone”…: Ibid.
“Fire department is practically helpless”…: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX), April 18, 1906.
“buildings being blown up”…: 10:15 a.m. byline, Daily Hanford Journal (CA), April 18, 1906, p. 1.
“The city is now under martial law”…: 10:45 a.m. byline in “Extra!! Third Edition” of Reno Gazette-Journal, April 18, 1906, p. 5.
“Soldiers will shoot on sight…”: 4:30 o’clock in Last Edition of The Sacramento Bee, April 18, 1906, p. 1.
“5,000 dead have been found”…: Pine Bluff Daily Graphic (Pine Bluff, AK), April 18, 1906. Sacramento’s Evening Bee that afternoon declared, “Loss of life so far estimated to be at least 5,000 human beings.” Not to be outdone, the same day’s late issue of The Neodesha Daily Sun (Neodesha, KS) claimed, “5,000 dead bodies had already been gathered and placed in temporary morgues.”
“dead will probably number 20,000”…: Lawrence Daily World (Lawrence, KS), April 18, 1906. The same day’s late issue of The Neodesha Daily Sun also declared, after claiming 5,000 bodies had been taken to the morgue, that “a rough estimate places the dead at no less than 20,000.”
“a mighty column of smoke…”: CLondon, pp. 100–101.
“10:30 a.m.”…: Letter from Nellie to Pa, April 18, 1906, One of Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Witnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
“[t]he Cliff House had fallen…”: Myrtle Robertson, “An Eye Witness—Miss Myrtle Robertson’s Eyewitness Account Given Substantially in Her Own Words,” CHS.
“Chicago had been levelled…”: Letter from Mary A. Briggs to Rhoda, Anna, Mary, and Minnie, April 23, 1906, BL.
“Chicago was under seven feet…”: Myrtle Robertson, “An Eye Witness—Miss Myrtle Robertson’s Eyewitness Account Given Substantially in Her Own Words,” CHS.
“not seriously hurt”…: Account of Ernest Simpson, Arg., April 23, 1927.
“three or four tons of…”: Account of Fred Ewald, Arg., April 23, 1927.
“agreed to try to publish…”: Account of Ernest Simpson, supra.
“penny paper”…: Milly Bennett, On Her Own: Journalistic Adventures from San Francisco to the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1927 (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), p. 13.
“the littlest, scrappiest newspaper…”: Ibid.
“to the old-time plan of…”: Account of William B. Wasson, Arg., April 16, 1927.
“HUNDREDS DEAD!”…: San Francisco Daily News, April 18, 1906.
Schmitz asked an attorney…: This was Garrett W. McEnerney, a prominent San Francisco attorney who testified under oath on November 27, 1906, that he drafted the mayor’s proclamation. SFC, November 28, 1906.
“soldiers outside the shop stopped…”: Sunset: The Magazine of the Pacific and of all the Far West, vol. XVII, May to October 1906, p. 204.
“The Federal Troops, the members…”: Proclamation of Mayor E. E. Schmitz, CHS.
“the streets were policed by…”: Dr. George Blumer’s Eyewitness Account of the Disaster, VMSF.
“already patrolled by the soldiers…”: Leithead.
“at full gallop a company…”: Cameron.
“to clean out and close…”: Account of Harry C. Schmidt, Arg., May 8, 1906.
“every ounce of liquor in…”: Duke, p. 168.
“the soldiers entered each one…”: Letter from Sarah Phillips to George, May 1, 1906, Phillips-Jones.
“Liquor of any kind found…”: Leithead.
“into a place where they…”: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“was caught while he was…”: Duke, p. 166.
“there is no well-authenticated case…”: Funston.
“so thoroughly cowed were the…”: Account of Frank Hittell, Arg., March 19, 1927.
“The crowd was most orderly…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“ate soda crackers and cured ham”…: Angove.
“sprinkling cart”…: Account of De Witt J. Lipe, Arg., July 10, 1926. Laurence Klauber also mentioned these in typed annotations on transcript of his 1906 letter, CHS: “I think we got such water as we had from sprinkling carts that were parked at different corners.”
“twenty cents worth of cookies…”: Account of De Witt J. Lipe, ibid.
“[T]he stores were all thrown open”…: Bauer.
“shove the contents into the street…”: Sinsheimer.
“If they are all right, come back…”: JCook1.
“standing all right”…: Account of Harry C. Schmidt, Arg., May 8, 1906.
“not a dollar’s worth of damage…”: JCook2.
“was well on fire”…: Stetson1.
“every window from top to bottom…”: Letter from James R. Tapscott to his mother, Mrs. I. J. Tapscott, April 22, 1906, BL.
“where already hundreds of homeless…”: Unidentified Account in letter, filed in Putnam.
“gigantic fires”…: Perrin, p. 29.
“the smoke was almost obscuring…”: Letter from Ada Higgins, April 1906, SFPL.
“Solid blocks along Market Street…”: Letter from Bert Tuttle to Mary Butler, 1:00 p.m. April 18, 1906, SFPL.
“as those of a barricaded…”: Hopper.
“almost invisible through the smoke”…: Letter from “Aunt Bertha” to Elsa Billerbeck, May 13, 1906, BL.
“dense, spreading white cloud”…: Letter from Rose Barreda to nephew Frederick Barreda, May 15, 1906, with cover letter by Frederick, October 1963, CHS.
“Toward mid-day the sky became…”: Account of Kaufman L. Coney, RSS.
“close and humid”…: Nankervis.
“spanking breeze”…: Hopper.
“sifting in through doors and windows”…: Nankervis.
“nibbled a little bit on the hay”…: Baldwin.
“to solve the problems”…: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 15, 1927.
“see the flames for the first time”…: Livingston.
“now a veritable inferno”…: Kendrick.
“City practically ruined by fire”…: Anderson, “The Story of the Bulletins,” The Pacific Monthly, vol. XV, p. 744; SFE, April 19, 1964.
“typewriters and all”…: SFE, May 1, 1949.
“[T]he three of us took…”: Kendrick.
“50 representative citizens…”: CCE.
“three boys had looted a store”…: Testimony of Eugene Schmitz, LSvT.
“Let it also be understood…”: CCE.
“endorsed the action I had taken”…: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 22, 1927.
“provoked great indignation”…: CCE.
“shaky roof”…: Hammill.
“almost dark as night by…”: Leach.
“preservation in shape of over…”: Hammill.
“sparks and cinders”…: Leach.
“the red-hot copper surface”…: Hammill.
revenue cutter sailors…: Information on the work of the US Revenue Cutter Service in the earthquake and fire was obtained from “Always ready—the Revenue Cutter Service and the great San Francisco earthquake,” The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, vol. XVII, no. 4, (October 2007): pp. 22–39.
“with wet cloths and improvised mops”…: Rand Careaga, The United States Customhouse in San Francisco, An Illustrated History (Washington, DC: General Services Administration, 2011), p. 15.
“to protect the Custom House…”: Testimony of Cpt. Orrin R. Wolfe, US Army, during hearings by the Inspector General, February 2, 1907, VMSF.
“as soon as ignition occurred…”: The United States Customhouse in San Francisco, supra.
narrow, twenty-two-foot-wide alley…: This was Jones Alley, and acting under the orders of SFFD Battalion Chief McCluskey were SFFD Engine 20 and Oakland FD Engines 1 and 4.
“[W]hen the woodwork in the…”: Account of Edward Lind, Arg., July 17, 1926.
“used the water sparingly”…: McCluskey.
“the old stone structure of…”: Account of Edward Lind, supra.
“was in immediate danger”…: McCluskey.
“There on the grass of…”: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“left to their fate or…”: Account of Eugene Schmitz, supra.
“became too intense”…: Arg., June 26, 1926.
“not to wait for any…”: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 22, 1927.
“That meant we had to dig…”: Account of Sgt. Maurice Behan, Arg., June 9, 1926.
Rafaelo Paolinelli…: Rafaelo Paolinelli died at forty-four at the produce market at Washington and Front Streets, killed by a falling wall on April 18, 1906, DeathIndex. He was an Italian immigrant, married to Ermida, and was father to four children: Orlando, Rinaldo, Cora, and Fiori.
Ida Heaslip…: Ida O. Heaslip (born 11/19/1857 per 1900Census) died April 18, 1906, at 239 Geary Street from falling walls and asphyxiation by suffocation. See further biographical information in note for p. 93, supra.
John Day…: John Day was thirty-five, injured at 235 Geary Street, and died that same day of a leg amputation. DeathIndex, p. 2576; Coroner’s Book A, p. 134. He was buried in Portsmouth Square. SFE, April 22, 1906. His body was disinterred on April 25, 1906. SFCh, April 26, 1906.
Nathan Kornfield…: Nathan Kornfield died at 939½ Folsom Street of asphyxiation by suffocation. Death certificate for “John Doe Kornfield,” www.ancestry.com; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL. He was the son of Hungarian immigrants Adolf and Giza, the second of four children, and was eleven. 1900Census.
William Vail…: William Cameron Vail was the son of William Henry Vail and Emma Vail and died at three years old on April 18, 1906, at his home, 260 Stevenson Street. Coroner’s Book A, p. 138. He was buried in a temporary grave in Portsmouth Square and disinterred on April 25 after his body was identified by his father. SFCh, April 26, 1906. He was buried in Olivet Cemetery in Colma, CA. His father was buried beside him in 1912.
“Unknown Japanese”…: Record of Interments in Laurel Hill Cemetery, removed “fro. Portsmouth Square,” reburied in Laurel Hill on April 25, 1906, p. 88, BL.
“Unknown Chinaman”…: Ibid., pp. 88–89.
“What have you got there?”…: JCook2.
“full of human bodies”…: Account of Thomas A. Burns, Arg., May 29, 1926.
“a most pitiful sight”…: Florence de Andreis, Account of the April 1906 Earthquake and Fire, written July 1909, SCP.
“saw the morgue and undertakers’…”: Miller.
“became so hot”…: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 22, 1927.
“across the street, setting fire…”: Account of Battalion Chief O’Brien, Arg., February 5, 1927.
“The fire rapidly surrounded the square”…: Duke, p. 168.
“with a rattle of eagerness”…: Hopper.
“the great and ghastly spectacle”…: Kendrick.
10.
“The fight was won”…: Leach.
“the change that had taken…”:Ibid.
“a most depressing scene of…”:Ibid.
“Because of the pall of…”: Kendrick.
“in beds on the street…”: Letter from Dr. Wilber M. Swett, May 27, 1906, BL.
“It was disgustingly hot”…: Letter from member of Armer Family, 5:00 p.m., April 20, 1906, SFPL.
“was coming up the city…”: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“rush of the grand army…”: Millard.
“Never have I tasted anything…”: Letter from Amy Kahn to Mr. Coop, April 23–24, 1906, BL.
“From the boat, the burning…”: Letter from Dr. Wilber M. Swett, May 27, 1906, BL.
“could see the ships, sailing…”: Letter from John to Lucy R. Schaeffer, May 14, 1906, SFPL.
“I watched the vast conflagration…”: JLondon.
“walls of flame, extending the…”: Account of J. C. Havely, Arg., April 2, 1927.
“light enough to read a book”…: Dr. George Blumer’s Eyewitness Account of the Disaster, VMSF.
“flame lighted sky”…: Irene Jensen Stark, excerpt from “Come Walk With Me in My Beautiful Garden of Memory,” 1979–1980, BL.
“[T]he flames lit up the place…”: Account of Sgt. James Cottle, Arg., August 21, 1926.
“a shift and slight increase…”: Pond.
“and doubled up with their lines”…: Conniff.
“nozzle-men stood fearlessly at…”: Pond.
“caught fire several times”…: Kindelon.
“piteously crying for water”…: Freeman.
“made it impossible to keep…”: Murphy.
“by its use the Southern Pacific…”: Freeman.
“the flames from the burning…”: Leach.
“to a vantage point on…”: Ivan S. Rankin, Recollections of the Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco, April 18, 19, 20, and 21, 1906, CHS.
“could see to read fine print…”: Letter from Kate C. Woods to Nance Kynaston, April 22, 1906, CHS.
“the whole southern heavens were…”: Morrow.
“the flaming sky over the mountains…”: Ellsworth Francis Quinlan, Selection from “Under the Artichoke Bush: Reminiscence About Half Moon Bay, California,” BL.
“That night the north sky…”: Letter from Herman C. Grunsky to his brother C. Ewald Grunsky, May 5, 1906, BL.
“the grave, sad merchants of…”: Louise Herrick Wall, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, edited by Roger W. Lotchin (The Lakeside Press, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 2011), p. 272.
“We would let them sleep…”: Account of Sgt. Maurice Behan, Arg., June 19, 1926.
“Throngs of Chinese were now…”: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“every man in that particular…”: Stephen V. Bunner, Arg., August 14, 1926.
Lee Yoke Suey…: “Chinatown, 1906: The End and the Beginning,” by Connie Young Yu, The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906, pp. 14–15.
“[d]espite the urgency of the evacuation”…: Ibid., p. 14.
“It was here that I saw…”: Letter from John to Lucy R. Schaeffer, May 14, 1906, SFPL.
“He was born in San Francisco…”: “Chinatown, 1906: The End and the Beginning,” by Connie Young Yu, The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906, p. 15.
“in keeping order and in…”: Account of Frederick Funston, Arg., February 5, 1927.
“doing all possible to…”: This telegram was “Received 2:50 a.m.” from Oakland, the first one drafted but the second received. Taft, p. 5.
estimated 100,000 to be homeless…: This telegram was “Received 11:40 p.m.” at the War Department in Washington, DC. Ibid.
“returned to primitive conditions”…: Devol1, p. 176.
“that this hospital was open…”: Torney, p. 209.
By 1:00 p.m. they had seventy-five…: Ibid.
“Since the earthquake there had…”: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“The sidewalks at night were…”: Letter from Mary A. Briggs to Rhoda, Anna, Mary, and Minnie, April 23, 1906, BL.
“inverted four-posters”…: Herrick Wall, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 278.
“had to wake every once…”: Winifred S. Thompson, interviewed by Frederick M. Wirt, August 16, 1977, Selections from Growing Up in the Cities: Oral History Transcripts of Tape-Recorded Interviews, BL.
“no one could sleep under…”: Moore.
“became uneasy and decided to…”: Eastwood.
“a man asked my father if…”: Account of Lillian Peacock, December 5, 1919, RSS.
“[t]here were now 14 of us…”: Perrin.
“and thirteen of us stayed…”: Postcard from Jane to Robert H. Grant, April 20, 1906, SCP.
“halfway off its foundations and…”: Account of Edith Cook, RSS.
“chocolate in unlimited quantities”…: Eugenia C. Murrell Poston, Personal Experiences from Apr. 18 to June 10, 1906: signed and amended typescript, BL.
“the military would very threateningly…”: Letter from Lloyd R. Burns to California Historical Society, May 1978, CHS.
“the soldiers would shoot right…”: Letter from Mrs. Thomas J. (Hulda) Blight, April 24, 1906, CHS.
“the militia, which would shoot…”: Herbert F. Bauer, Reminiscences of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“No lights to be lit!”…: Dora Landgrebe, 1966 Interview at Open House for Senior Citizens, Mission Neighborhood Centers, Mission Adult Center, BL.
“with bayonet”…: Account of Alex J. Young, December 6, 1919, RSS.
“Those who were not afraid…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“All night long the fire…”: Account of Roland M. Roche, Arg., January 8, 1927.
“crowded with people and their…”: Letter from Laurence M. Klauber to his sister Alice, May 1, 1906, CHS.
“completely covered by mattresses, blankets…”: Letter from Rose Barreda to her nephew Frederick Barreda, May 15, 1906, with cover letter by Frederick, October 1963, CHS.
“steamer rags, blankets, and cushions…”: Miller.
“by the thousands”…: J. B. Levison, “Memories for my Family,” BL.
“People crowded the sidewalks around…”: Livingston.
“left burning homes and terrified…”: James J. Hudson, “The California National Guard: In the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906,” California Historical Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 2 (Summer 1976): p. 138.
“by the glare of the fire”…: Letter from Elmer Enewold to his father in Omaha, May 3, 1906, CHS.
“there wasn’t hardly a square inch…”: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“Time to get out, boys”…: Letter from Charles Fisk to his mother in England, April 22, 1906, CHS.
“It was a strange scene…”: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“was packed with refugees…”: JLondon.
“resembled a battlefield”…: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 29, 1906, CHS.
“the crowd was perfectly quiet”…: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 76.
“the carelessness of soldiers”…: 38th Annual Report of the Insurance Commissioner for the State of California (Sacramento: W. W. Shannon, Superintendent State Printing, 1907), p. 14.
“The flames crept nearer and…”: Landfield, p. 3.
“was walled by flames, and…”: Letter from Henry Atkins to his art dealership partner Frederic Cheever Torrey, April 26, 1906, BL.
“Chinatown was catching everywhere”…: Letter from John to Lucy R. Schaeffer, May 14, 1906, SFPL.
“was now intensified a hundredfold”…: Letter from Tom Davis to his mother in England, 1906, CHS.
“the size of my hand”…: Letter from Dr. Charles Cross to his brother in Texas, Dallas Morning News, May 1, 1906.
“They sounded just like thunder”…: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“the pulse of the great city in its agony”…: Hopper.
“[S]uddenly a great shower of live…”: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“half burnt”…: Unidentified Account in letter, filed in Putnam.
“steeple-chased up Geary, Post…”: Hopper.
“out in the middle of the…”: Laveaga.
“were cleared off the scene…”: Letter from Henry Atkins to his art dealership partner Frederic Cheever Torrey, April 26, 1906, BL.
“watched with others the dynamiting…”: Genthe, p. 92.
“muffled detonations of dynamite”…: CLondon, p. 102.
“A rain of ashes was falling”…: JLondon.
“the most terrible sight in…”: Lafler, p. 8.
“I’ll never write a word…”: CLondon, p. 102.
11.
“succeeded in saving a few…”: Cullen.
“The final stand was made…”: Russell.
“Sparks and large cinders were…”: Putnam.
“one could almost read by…”: Letter from John to Lucy R. Schaeffer, May 14, 1906, SFPL.
“[I]t has seemed a paradise…”: Letter from Henry Atkins to his art dealership partner Frederic Cheever Torrey, April 26, 1906, BL.
“Shelter for Refugees”…: Letter from Charles Fisk to his mother in England, April 22, 1906, CHS.
“had only coats to cover them”…: “People Sleeping in City Plaza,” OT, April 19, 1906.
“we had to take our mattresses…”: Vera Votta, interviewed June 27, 1977, Growing Up in the Cities: Oral History Transcripts of Tape-Recorded Interviews, BL.
“I had to wait for more…”: Letter from Charles Fisk to his mother in England, April 22, 1906, CHS.
“It is the only building…”: Leach.
“to go home and get…”: Einstein.
“That was the first time…”: Account of Michael Maher, December 1, 1906, SFPL.
“There was not much loud…”: Einstein.
“stumbled over cobblestones in…”: Letter from Ernest Winton Cleary to Irene Neasham, April 14, 1971, CHS.
“clapped as we passed”…: Einstein.
“to destroy the stock of any…”: Letter from Ernest Winton Cleary to Irene Neasham, April 14, 1971, CHS.
“The fire was then on…”: Account of Anna Holshouser, Arg., May 14, 1927.
“burning merrily in the middle…”: JLondon.
“there is no such thing…”: Devol2, p. 64.
“driven out”…: Mitchell.
“in an attempt to get…”: Letter from John to Lucy R. Schaeffer, May 14, 1906, SFPL.
“ignited like kindling wood”…: Myrtle Robertson, “An Eye Witness—Miss Myrtle Robertson’s Eyewitness Account Given Substantially in Her Own Words,” CHS.
“Chinatown was all ablaze, and…”: Account of Sgt. Maurice Behan, Arg., June 19, 1926.
“All the murderers and hard…”: Letter from Elmer Enewold to his father in Omaha, May 3, 1906, CHS.
“sweeping through Chinatown, up…”: Freeman.
“Mama was convinced that the…”: DBrown.
“under the protecting branches…”: Burke.
“carrying on their backs or…”: W. E. Alexander, Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“was so sad”…: Baldwin.
“cheerful spirit”…: Genthe, p. 92.
“sleeping the sleep of exhaustion”…: Burke.
Dennis Grady…: Dennis Grady, a hostler, died of exposure in Golden Gate Park on the night of April 18–19, 1906. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; OH, April 25, 1906.
“Mrs. Grady awoke”…: OH, April 25, 1906.
Henry Mayer…: Forty-five-year-old Henry Mayer, husband of Celia, father of Claire and Etta, died the night of April 18–19, 1906, from exhaustion. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; SFC, April 21, 1906; SFC, May 4, 1906, p. 7.
“exhaustion resulting from effort…”: “VAST CAMP IN GOLDEN GATE PARK,” SFC, April 21, 1906, p. 5.
“Lights were twinkling from many…”: Fisher, p. 93.
“Patients were being brought in…”: Ibid., p. 94.
“had a deep gash on…”: Ibid., p. 95.
Bernice Holmes…: “Bernice Holmes Victim,” LAH, April 21, 1906.
“Use your own judgment”…: Fisher, p. 94.
“vacated and established as wards”…: Torney.
Edward Manville…: SFCh, April 24, 1906. Note: the newspaper lists him as a steward and by his last name. He is listed in the 1905 city directory as Edward H. Manville, assistant steward, Emergency Hospital.
Agnes Lawless…: SFC, May 21, 1906, p. 8. Note: the paper referenced Captain Lawless and Mrs. Lawless. Robert T. Lawless was listed in 1900Census as a sea captain living with his wife, Agnes Lawless, both residents of Alameda. SFDirectory lists him as still residing in Alameda.
“If she’d been General Funston’s…”: “Says Patients At Presidio Were All Well Treated,” SFC, May 21, 1906, p. 8.
“The noise of explosions, the…”: Letters from employer of William Duggan, April 24, 1906, and May 5, 1906, SFPL.
“watched for the new day…”: Account of Lillian Peacock, December 5, 1919, RSS.
12.
Mark Hopkins purchased a lot…: Hopkins purchased the lot at the northeast corner of Pine and Mason Streets for $45,000, SFE, January 18, 1875.
“had difficulty settling on one style”…: “The Tacky Robber Baron Palaces of Nob Hill,” SFGate, April 17, 2016.
“both love and money”…: In the September 23, 1891, article “A FIGHT FOR MILLIONS—Remarkable Testimony of Mr. Searles,” the SFCh reported, “In reply to a question, [the] witness said he married Mrs. Hopkins for all she had, both love and money, but should never have married her for money alone.” SFCh, September 23, 1891, p. 1.
“instruction in and illustration of…”: Historical marker for “Site of the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art,” California Registered Historical Landmark No. 754.
“preposterous palaces”…: “A Critic of Architecture,” SFC, October 4, 1905, p. 8.
“pretension rules the crest while…”: “The City of St. Francis,” SFE, January 28, 1894, p. 60.
“intact and uninjured”…: Report from the director of the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art to the president and board of directors on the destruction of the Mark Hopkins mansion, May 10, 1906, published in “The Mark Hopkins Mansion” by Becky Alexander, Obits of Known and Unknown Objects (University of California, Berkeley Art Museum—Pacific Film Archive), p. 19.
“walls uninjured”…: Wing.
“because of their distance”…: Report from the director of the Mark Hopkins Art Institute, May 10, 1906, supra.
“drove the fire toward us…”: Wing.
“spent the next couple of…”: Kendrick.
“the fire had crept up…”: Account of Eugene Schmitz, Arg., January 22, 1927.
“[i]t was put out in…”: Wing.
“to encourage us in our…”: Cpt. Thomas Magner, Engine 3, quoted in Laurence Joseph Kennedy, The Progress of the Fire in San Francisco, April 18th to 21st, as Shown by an Analysis of Original Documents (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1908), BL.
“Houses seemed to melt away…”: Unsigned manuscript letter addressed to Uncle Wales (Wales L. Knox), BL.
“continued working until the fire…”: Cpt. Thomas Magner, Engine 3, quoted in Kennedy, The Progress of the Fire in San Francisco, April 18th to 21st, as Shown by an Analysis of Original Documents.
“suddenly blazed at the turrets…”: Report from the director of the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art to the president and board of directors on the destruction of the Mark Hopkins mansion, May 10, 1906, published in “The Mark Hopkins Mansion” by Becky Alexander, Obits of Known and Unknown Objects, p. 19.
“in flame”…: Wing.
a two-story house on the corner…: 1100 Sacramento Street, the home of George Perine, five blocks from his business, Renters’ Loan & Trust Company, located in the Safe Deposit Building at the corner of California and Montgomery Streets.
“a sickly light was creeping…”: JLondon.
“It was a luxurious interior…”: CLondon, p. 103.
“Nob Hill, the Fairmont, the…”: Hopper.
“The sun came up bright…”: Letter from James R. Tapscott to his mother, Mrs. I. J. Tapscott, April 22, 1906, BL.
“red as wine”…: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 78.
“blood-red, and showing quarter…”: JLondon.
“a red wafer behind clouds…”: Hopper.
“about an inch of ash”…: Bauer.
“The streets were filled with…”: Morrow.
“waste of smoking ruins”…: JLondon.
“chilled to the marrow in…”: Emma Eames, Some Memories and Reflections (New York: Appleton & Company, 1927), p. 270.
“all but mad”…: DBrown.
“men, women and children on…”: Carnahan.
“lost faith in the story…”: Miller.
“In our walk from the…”: Letter from Sara Tomlinson to her aunt, April 18, 1906, CHS.
“left them regretfully, two weary…”: Perry.
“buildings in ruins, and everywhere…”: Caruso.
“thousands of people were camped…”: Letter from James R. Tapscott to his mother, Mrs. I. J. Tapscott, April 22, 1906, BL.
“were almost blistered by the…”: Eames, Some Memories and Reflections, p. 270.
“While on the boat we…”: Letter from James A. Warren to his son Pete, April 21, 1906, CHS.
“The greatest good fortune during…”: Goerlitz.
“Mr. Crowley was quite a…”: “William J. McGillivray: Tugboats and Boatmen of California 1906–1970,” interview by Ruth Teiser in 1969 and 1970, Oral History Center, BL.
“big shots”…: “William Figari: San Francisco Bay and Waterfront,” interview by Ruth Teiser in 1968, Oral History Center, BL.
“San Francisco, Thursday…”: CCE.
“every now and then suffocating…”: Leach.
“Water was now more precious…”: Burke.
“not to drink any water…”: Livingston.
“everybody being urged to be…”: Untitled Earthquake Narrative, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“at all times of the day…”: Kendrick.
“We lined up in single file…”: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“we were given hardtack”…: Letter from Lloyd R. Burns to California Historical Society, May 1978, CHS.
“adding that it would probably…”: Putnam.
“set out on a foraging trip”…: Letter from William D. Alexander to his sister Mary C. Alexander, May 16, 1906, BL.
“bargains were offered, as the…”: Putnam.
“Bread was getting scarce”…: Letter from “Aunt Bertha” to Elsa Billerbeck, May 13, 1906, BL.
“the contents of all grocery…”: Duke, p. 167.
“doomed”…: Letter from Tom Davis to his mother in England, 1906, CHS.
“fine hams and sides of bacon”…: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“We cooked on the streets”…: Jessie Stewart Harris, interviewed by Suzanne B. Reiss, January 10, 1978, “Selections from Memories of Girlhood and the University,” Oral History Transcript and related materials, BL.
“Firewood was not difficult to…”: Laurence Klauber, typed annotations on transcript of his 1906 letter, 1958, CHS.
“Some were preparing pots of…”: Letter from Ada Higgins, April 1906, SFPL.
“do everything possible to assist…”: Telegram sent 4:00 a.m., April 19, 1906, Washington, DC, Taft, p. 5.
“All available hospital, wall, and…”: Telegram sent 4:55 a.m., April 19, 1906, Washington, DC, Taft, p. 5.
“City practically destroyed”…: Telegram sent 9:11 a.m., April 19, 1906, San Francisco, Taft, p. 7.
“all available canvas”…: Telegram sent April 19, 1906, Taft, p. 7.
“to express their sympathy and…”: “The Appeal Issued by the President,” Washington Post, April 20, 1906, p. 2.
“direction and discretion”…: S.J.R. 18, Joint Resolution for the relief of sufferers from earthquake and conflagration on the Pacific Coast, Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December, 1905, to March, 1907, Part 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907), p. 827.
“obsolete”…: Devol1, p. 176.
“that a large quantity of…”: Ibid., p. 177.
“Committee of Fifty”…: The “citizens’ committee,” or “Committee of Fifty” as it came to be known, eventually had nearly one hundred members in twenty-two subcommittees. There were eighty-nine members reported present on April 26, 1906. Arg., January 22, 1927.
“rose humbly in a shabby…”: Herrick Wall, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 276.
13.
Forty-three-year-old Ernest Edwards…: Francis Ernest Edwards was born September 20, 1862, and lived at 1326 Guerrero Street with his mother, Ellen, and aunt Emily. 1900Census. Ernest and Emma were married in 1901; their sons, Francis C. and John E., were born in 1902 and 1903, per the 1910 census; and they resided at 1326 Guerrero Street in 1905 and 1906. SFDirectory, p. 637; and his account in the October 23, 1926, issue of the Argonaut.
“and told him I was ready…”: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., October 23, 1926.
“filled with dirt”…: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., October 30, 1926.
“could not find any available supply”…: Conlon.
“Ernest, the Bible says the…”: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., October 30, 1926.
“his scabbard rattling at his side”…: Hollister, p. 157. Note: this was Dr. John Hollister, who evacuated first to the home of George Eastman at 532 Valencia Street but moved to the home of George’s brother Edward at 456 Guerrero Street in the middle of the night.
“densely crowded”…: Ibid., p. 158.
“fine furniture, carpets, bedding, lace…”: “Pattosien Company,” SFDirectory, p. 1462.
“and almost immediately took fire”…: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., October 30, 1926.
“dammed the water that was…”: Cullen.
“making a cistern”…: Conlon.
California Street Cable Railroad…: Information about the California Street Cable Railroad was obtained primarily from San Francisco’s California Street Cable Cars by Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria, with Michael Dolgushkin; Stetson1; Stetson2; and author interviews with Joe Thompson and Emiliano Echeverria.
“even with the roof”…: Stetson1.
“no fire near us”…: Account of Sgt. William M. Ross, Arg., May 22, 1926.
“day dawned but the fire…”: Laveaga.
“The fire was swallowing a…”: Herrick Wall, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 269.
“in keeping order and in…”: Devol2.
“all the regular troops that…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“the Mayor desired”…: Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of California for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1906 (Sacramento: W. W. Shannon, Superintendent State Printing, 1907), p. 44.
“the Mayor desired all the…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“the necessary dynamite would be provided”…: Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of California for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1906, p. 44.
“Matters about this time began…”: Stetson1.
“was filled with people…”: Stetson2, p. 14.
“the flames were continuous”…: Stetson1.
“the cable was subjected to…”: SFCh, June 15, 1906.
“about seventy men responded”…: Laveaga.
“back-fire”…: Report of Lt. William F. Otto, Truck 5, Stationed 1819 Post Street, BL.
“[F]lames came roaring down, gaining…”: Account of Frank Hittell, Arg., March 19, 1927.
“volunteer fire fighters”…: Laveaga.
“house after house took fire…”: Stetson1.
“saw the flames leap the…”: Letter from Major William Stephenson, US Army, May 31, 1906, BL.
“[F]rom rumors which reached me…”: Freeman.
“was beginning to prime badly…”: Pond.
“approved”…: Freeman.
“[T]here must have been two…”: Account of Frank Hittell, supra.
“We caught four or five…”: Account of Alex Paladini, Arg., August 7, 1926.
“behaving in a drunken manner”…: Account of Andrea Sbarboro, Arg., June 4, 1927.
“a man of large physique”…: Testimony of Andrea Sbarboro, “Denicke’s Accuser Tells Dramatically of Tragedy, but Testimony Conflicts With Sbarboro’s,” SFC, July 16, 1906.
“turned toward me”…: Duke, p. 176.
“moaning but unconscious”…: Arg., June 4, 1927.
“and had it thrown in the bay”…: This was Sgt. Charles Herring of the 22nd Infantry Regiment. Ibid.
“To all Civil and Military…”: Pass signed by Mayor Eugene Schmitz, April 22, 1906, SFPL.
“was in his shirt sleeves sweating”…: Letter from Dr. Charles V. Cross to his brother in Texas, Dallas Morning News, May 1, 1906.
“To the Officer in Charge…”: Arg., January 29, 1927.
“had enough troops”…: Account of Mayor Eugene Schmitz, Arg., February 5, 1927.
“to proceed to this city…”: Account of General Frederick Funston, supra.
“disposal”…: General Funston initially told the police chief and Mayor Schmitz the troops were being “placed at his disposal.” Arg., January 29, 1927.
“it was finally settled that…”: Nichols.
“upshoots of burning timbers…”: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“The explosions of dynamite were…”: Stetson1.
“the booming of artillery fire”…: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 81.
“like tremendous bombs, as if…”: Letter from May A. Briggs to Rhoda, Anna, Mary, and Minnie, April 23, 1906, BL.
“heroic efforts”…: Laveaga.
“the brave man as he stood…”: SFC, September 23, 1906, p. 37. The man was reportedly James Lang, a thirty-year-old resident volunteer, and the priest was Reverend Father Charles Ramm.
“little by little the flames…”: Laveaga.
14.
The Bank of Italy…: Information about A. P. Giannini, the Bank of Italy, and the subsequent Bank of America were obtained primarily from Marquis James and Bessie R. James, Biography of a Bank—The Story of Bank of America, NT & SA (New York: Harper & Row, 1954); and Francesca Valente, A. P. Giannini—The People’s Banker (Temple City, CA: Barbera Foundation, 2017).
three pouches filled with $80,000…: Biography of a Bank, pp. 23–26.
The employees of nearby Hotaling…: Information in this paragraph obtained from account of Edward M. Lind, Arg., July 17, 1926.
“the large stock of whisky…”: Ibid.
“observations of the progress…”: Freeman.
“the most powerful available”…: Pond, p. 989.
“the skeleton of its cupola crumble…”: Ibid., p. 990.
“terrific heat from the blazing mass…”: Ibid., p. 989.
“a height of about two and…”: Freeman.
“carrying out the lamps…”: Account of Edward M. Lind, Arg., July 24, 1926.
“the longest distance that any…”: Freeman.
“after what seemed an interminable time”…: Account of Edward M. Lind, supra.
“The best work”…: Freeman.
“awed by the almost incredible panorama”…: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“At this time”…: Unsigned manuscript letter addressed to Uncle Wales (Wales L. Knox), BL.
“expecting every minute to see…”: Stetson2, p. 18.
“so hot that I could not…”: Stetson1.
“We had no idea the fire…”: Letter from Carrie A. Duncan to Mrs. Noitchey, May 23, 1906, CHS.
“sweeping down over the hill…”: Letter from John Walter to his parents, April 26, 1906, published in John I. Walter, To His Parents, April 18, 1906 (San Francisco: privately printed, 1935), BL.
“far enough ahead of the fire…”: Report of Cpt. Le Vert Coleman, US Army Artillery Corps, to the Adjutant at the Presidio, May 2, 1906, VMSF.
“began to pack”…: Letter from Edith Bonnell to Mabel Symmes, undated, CHS.
“outflanked my small party time…”: Report of Cpt. Le Vert Coleman, supra.
“just like a huge glowing volcano”…: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“watched the deep red glare…”: Unsigned manuscript letter addressed to Uncle Wales (Wales L. Knox), BL.
“Bob, it looks like the…”: Austin, pp. 235–236.
“over broad cracks and sunken…”: Carnahan.
“over the hot pavement”…: Unidentified Account in letter, filed in Putnam.
“through a dead city, not…”: Hopper.
“the smoking ruins”…: Millard.
“tiny tents made of rugs…”: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 31, 1906, CHS.
“onto trucks well-guarded by soldiers”…: Letter from Laurence M. Klauber to his sister Alice, May 1, 1906, CHS.
“crowding and pushing of people…”: Letter from a member of the Armer Family, 5:00 p.m., April 20, 1906, SFPL.
“People packed like sardines into…”: Sinsheimer.
“No tickets had to be bought”…: Letter from Charles Page to his son, a student at MIT, April 21, 1906, CHS.
“From the ferry toward the…”: Sinsheimer.
“The view of the burning…”: Letter from Charles Page to his son, supra.
“swarms of grasshoppers”…: Goerlitz.
Mary McIntyre…: Mary Dillon McIntyre was born in Ireland December 22, 1837, was married to John B. McIntyre, a bookbinder and book manufacturer, and died of a stroke aboard the Newark at the Southern Pacific Mole, on April 19, 1906. 1900Census; SFDirectory; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex.
“dropped dead of heart attack”…: Oakland Inquirer, April 21, 1906, p. 2.
“At Oakland it was hard…”: Letter from Charles Fisk to his mother in England, April 22, 1906, CHS.
“been running relief trains since…”: Letter, Legislative Dept., City of Oakland, April 20, 1906, George C. Pardee Papers, BL.
“sleep very little”…: Caruso.
145 new patients admitted…: Torney, p. 209.
“a long piece of wood”…: “Brave Doctor Loses an Eye,” SFCh, April 22, 1906, p. 1.
“I was taken to the surgical…”: Account of J. R. Aten, Arg., March 26, 1927.
“drifted in the second day…”: Letter from William Stephenson, Maj., US Army, May 31, 1906, BL.
“eatables” in baskets…: Letter from Omira B. Dodge to her son, April 22, 1906, SFPL.
“slept in peace, wrapped in…”: Mahoney.
“There were crowds of people…”: Account of Anna Holshouser, Arg., May 14, 1927.
“managed to keep, at least…”: Miller.
“mattresses spread upon the grassy…”: Hollister, p. 158.
“During the early part of…”: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“had a very hard fight”…: Cullen.
“It seemed to burn up…”: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“as far as I could see”…: Dewitt Baldwin, “Memories of the Earthquake,” as related to Ana Maria P. de Jesus, September 19, 1988, VMSF.
“new kitchen stove”…: Account of H. C. Schmidt, Arg., May 8, 1926.
“opening every hydrant I passed…”: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., October 30, 1926.
“from Dolores to Mission St.”…: Russell. Note: “st.” in original corrected to “St.”
“Doors were torn from houses”…: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., November 6, 1926.
“drowning it with water”…: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“after fighting every inch of…”: Cullen.
“Three cheers for the San Francisco…”: Account of F. Ernest Edwards, Arg., November 6, 1926.
15.
“like a grain field on fire”…: Unidentified Account in letter, filed in Putnam.
Commercial Hotel…: Abe Ruef’s properties were the subject of much discussion during his subsequent graft prosecution, and his interest in the Commercial Hotel was reported in the front-page story “RUEF SET FREE ON BAIL BONDS OF $1,560,000” in the July 7, 1908, issue of SFC.
“to do all they could”…: Account of Edward M. Lind, Arg., July 24, 1926.
“The Leading Italian Restaurant” sign…: Catherine A. Accardi, San Francisco’s North Beach and Telegraph Hill (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010), p. 32.
“owing to the dilapidated condition…”: Freeman.
“smaller and smaller until it…”: Pond, p. 990.
“the intense heat”…: McCluskey.
“relay teams”…: Pond, p. 990.
“decided to retreat and save…”: Freeman.
“the fire was spreading north…”: Report of Second Assistant Chief Patrick H. Shaughnessy, September 13, 1906, SFFD Fire Museum, Guardians of the City, https://www.guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/fires/great_fires/1906/Shaughnessy.html.
“octagonal house”…: The house at 1051 Green Street was built in 1858, and an eight-sided octagonal cupola was added in 1900.
Feusier’s physician son-in-law…: This was Dr. John Pincz, who resided in the home. Lewis Feusier’s son, Clarence Feusier, in an interview many years later, credited his brother-in-law with stopping the dynamiters. “A Midsummer Story—Concluded,” by Robert O’Brien, SFCh, August 3, 1949, p. 16.
“firm resistance”…: Ibid.
“Outbuildings and fences of all…”: “Block Saved on Russian Hill,” SFCh, April 24, 1906, p. 1.
“from the westward over Telegraph Hill”…: Pond, p. 991; Freeman.
“Not Passable By [Horse] Teams”…: SanbornMap.
“huddled hundreds + thousands…”: Unidentified Account in letter, filed in Putnam.
“[A]ll we were permitted to…”: Florence de Andreis, Account of the April 1906 Earthquake and Fire, written July 1909, SCP.
“One side was the water…”: Letter from Amy Kahn to Mr. Coop, April 23–24, 1906, BL.
“hoarded a few buckets of…”: Lafler, p. 8.
“swept up the slopes”…: “Wine Used to Fight Flames,” SFCh, April 22, 1906, p. 1.
“the lee of Telegraph Hill”…: Freeman.
“It came on like a Fourth…”: Putnam.
“nothing effective was being done…”: Landfield, p. 6.
“Look out for bricks”…: Letter from William D. Alexander to his sister Mary C. Alexander, May 16, 1906, BL.
“an endless procession of smaller…”: Putnam.
“The post was nearly buried…”: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“coming up all sides of…”: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 80.
“The air was filled with…”: Report of Commander Charles J. Badger, US Navy, Commanding Flagship USS Chicago, to Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Squadron, May 31, 1906, NA, Record Group 45.
“The morning awakening was to…”: Mahoney.
“had fairly good sleep and rest”…: Nichols, “The Story,” supra.
“a little sheet-iron pocket…”: Hollister, p. 158.
“What a sight on Dolores St.!”…: Dewitt Baldwin, “Memories of the Earthquake,” as related to Ana Maria P. de Jesus, September 19, 1988, VMSF.
“simple breakfast”…: Dr. George Blumer’s Eyewitness Account of the Disaster, VMSF.
“water many blocks”…: Letter from Edith Bonnel to Mabel Symmes, undated, CHS.
“to get something to take…”: Letter from Edith Bonnel to Mabel Symmes, undated, CHS.
“set out on a tour to…”: Einstein.
“greatest urgency”…: Telegram from Commissary-General Sharpe to Commissary, Vancouver Barracks, Wash., 1:00 a.m., April 19, 1906, Taft, p. 25.
“immediate shipment of 300,000 rations”…: Telegram from Commissary-General Sharpe to Commissary, Seattle, Wash., 11:00 p.m., April 19, 1906, Taft, p. 26.
“sadly inadequate to the amount…”: Devol1, p. 177.
“We were somewhat early and…”: Unsigned manuscript letter addressed to Uncle Wales (Wales L. Knox), BL.
“cup of coffee and one…”: Account of Michael Maher, December 1, 1906, SFPL.
“joined the line we saw forming”…: Nankervis.
“and tore through what was…”: Account of Ernest Simpson, city editor of SFCh, Arg., April 23, 1927.
“300,000 ARE HOMELESS, HUNGRY…”: SFE, April 20, 1906, p. 1.
“FLAMES COURSE AT LAST CHECKED”…: SFCh, April 20, 1906, p. 1.
“wiping out at one sweep…”: Ibid.
“The sight looked like the…”: Letter from William D. Alexander to his sister Mary C. Alexander, May 16, 1906, BL.
“What was once the business…”: Laveaga.
“locked the doors and left…”: Letter from Frederick H. Collins to his family in Placerville, April 24, 1906, VMSF.
“found it in ruins”…: Stetson1.
“our safe in the basement…”: Account of Thomas A. Burns, Arg., May 29, 1926.
“relatively cooled”…: JCook2.
“when he recognized me, looked…”: Account of Thomas A. Burns, supra.
“We were finally ordered to…”: Newell.
“after having been on duty…”: Boden.
Now the fire had destroyed…: All eleven members of Engine 6 lived either in the firehouse at 311 6th Street or within two blocks: Captain Charles J. Cullen at 925 Harrison Street, Lieutenant Edward Daunet at 7½ Harrison Street, engineer Patrick H. Brandon at 340 6th Street, driver Joseph McDonald in the firehouse, stoker Charles Neil at 957 Harrison Street, hoseman John Titus at 309 6th Street, hoseman A. Swanberg at 297½ Clara, hoseman Edward McGrorey at 442½ Clementina, hoseman James C. Crowley in the firehouse, hoseman Edward McDermott in the firehouse (recently transferred from Engine 21), and hoseman John Doherty at 439 Clementina. SFDirectory and Bill Koenig, Everything Took Time, p. 36.
“stationed at contiguous points”…: GBrown.
“well in hand”…: J. B. Levison, “Memories for my Family,” BL.
“a strong, cool sea breeze”…: Livingston.
“By eleven o’clock Friday morning…”: Landfield, p. 6.
“unharmed by the fire and…”: Arg., August 20, 1927.
“home treatment for mothers and daughters”…: Ad in SFC, July 20, 1902. Medical journals reported testimony in lawsuits against the company, which used saleswomen to peddle its snake-oil home remedy with vague assurances to “cure the incurable.” Its capsule form was inserted into the cervix and, as some lawsuits alleged, it could cause infection leading to sepsis. The “pharmaceutical” was marketed as a nonmedical alternative when surgery had been recommended by a physician. Pharmaceutical Journal, May 25, 1901, p. 688.
“ignited thousands of gallons of…”: Landfield, p. 6.
“hurling skyward”…: Account of Sgt. James E. Cottle, Arg., August 21, 1926.
“rose to something very like…”: The Last Fire, Hooker Family Papers 1783–1951, BL.
“Crookedest Street in the World”…: Lombard Street between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets was a 27-degree grade at that time, and newspapers reported delivery drivers were unable to deliver loads to the top of “what is recognized as one of the steepest streets in the city,” which one driver complained “is a billy goat proposition and not a truck one.” SFE, August 15, 1920, p. 54. In 1922 the street’s grade was reduced for that block by reconfiguring it into the series of switchbacks we know today, and until 1939 it was a two-way street. “Hairpin Insanity: San Francisco’s Famous Lombard Street” by Karen Harris in History Daily, https://historydaily.org/hairpin-insanity-san-franciscos-famous-lombard-street. The “crookedest street” in San Francisco is Vermont Street between 20th and 22nd Streets in the Potrero Hill neighborhood.
“Two agile schoolboys with pails…”: Landfield, p. 6.
“with blanket and bucket and…”: Lafler, p. 11.
“Two streams of water were…”: Unidentified Account in letter, filed in Putnam. Note: the two were pumping from the cistern at Greenwich/Dupont, which was soon overrun by the blaze.
“to egg on and spur…”: Account of Edward Lind, Arg., July 24, 1926.
“When we got the hose…”: Pond, p. 991.
“barrel rollers were already becoming…”: Account of Edward Lind, supra.
“searched frantically”…: Pond, p. 991.
“so we closed all the…”: Account of Edward Lind, supra.
“The look he gave me…”: Pond, p. 992.
“and instead of despairing”…: Account of Edward Lind, supra.
“Several times the block caught”…: Report of Cpt. Orrin R. Wolfe, 22nd Infantry Regt., US Army, May 24, 1906, VMSF.
“a barbecue”…: Account of Edward Lind, supra.
16.
“herds of people”…: Cpt. Kelly, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ft. Mason, to family in Boston, “Earthquake and Fire at San Francisco, Cal., April 18-May 19th,” BL.
“We are at the little…”: Griswold, quoted in Narratives of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, p. 82.
“and it became extremely…”: Putnam.
“that this whole section of…”: Freeman.
“How inadequate! How futile!”…: Putnam.
“He looked all in”…: Pond, p. 992.
“the tall watch tower of…”: Putnam.
“crowded with thousands of refugees…”: Way.
“All who want a place…”: Account of De Witt J. Lipe, Arg., July 10, 1926.
“felt as if we had…”: Putnam.
“from Thursday eve until Sunday…”: Letter from Mary, April 30, 1906, SFPL.
“hurriedly scribbled in pencil on…”: Arg., April 2, 1927.
“Lost. Paul E. Hoffes, nine…”: Ibid.
“Harry Markowitz is looking for…”: Ibid.
“Mother, Ray and Ethel E. Peck”…: Ibid.
“A.C. Rass and family, formerly…”: SFCh, April 24, 1906, p. 5.
“Dr. Geo. H. Martin and wife please inform…”: Ibid.
“wife and all the folks in the Panhandle…”: Arg., April 2, 1927.
“partial list”…: SFE, April 20, 1906.
“A. Enkel, a prominent Los Angelan…”: Ibid.
“withstood the earthquake surprisingly well”…: Recollection of Charles Derleth Jr., Denial of Disaster, p. 37.
“was coming from all directions”…: Account of William F. Burke, assistant postmaster, Arg., December 25, 1926.
“worked like demons”…: Letter from Guy T. Gould, San Francisco postmaster, to his parents, April 23, 1906, SFPL.
“Wagons and automobiles were impressed”…: Account of William F. Burke, assistant postmaster, supra.
“U.S. mail is carried in automobiles”…: Letter from Annie Darbee, April 23, 1906, postmarked April 22, 1906, SFPL.
“any little scrap of paper”…: Arthur Dangerfield, Journal of the Quake, April 24, 1906, BL.
“as curious mail as was…”: Account of William F. Burke, assistant postmaster, Arg., December 25, 1926.
“S.F. Apr 20th Dear Mother…”: Letter from Karl E. Kneiss to Rosa Kneiss, April 20, 1906, BL.
“beautiful, well-groomed”…: ConlonJr.
“We had fourteen people living…”: Dunne.
“filled to its capacity”…: Account of Edwin A. Freeman, December 4, 1919, RSS.
“covered with glass & debris”…: Letter from John Walter to his parents, April 26, 1906, published in Walter, To His Parents, April 18, 1906.
“very much blistered and blackened…”: Stetson1.
“No one went to bed”…: Miller.
“flames mounting in huge billows”…: Eugenia C. Murrell Poston, Personal Experiences from Apr. 18 to June 10, 1906: signed and amended typescript, BL.
“large quantities of water”…: Pond, p. 992.
“The hardest fight we had…”: Freeman.
“With these four lines”…: Account of Cpt. Daniel R. Sewell, Engine 9, Arg., August 20, 1927.
“several others which I fail…”: Freeman.
“When hope was almost gone…”: Eugenia C. Murrell Poston, Personal Experiences from Apr. 18 to June 10, 1906: signed and amended typescript, BL.
17.
“When the sea of flames…”: Kendrick.
“the almost total absence of life”…: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 31, 1906, CHS.
“The smell of human flesh…”: Letter from Hugh to Natie, April 21, 1906, Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Eyewitnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
“Walking down Market Street and…”: Letter from William Hancock to his sister Mary, May 31, 1906, CHS.
“most picturesque ruins”…: Letter from Tom to Jessie, April 26, 1906, Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Eyewitnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
“We located the bureau and…”: Letter from L. M. Simpson to George, May 14, 1906, Phillips-Jones.
“The bugle-calls in the morning…”: Burke.
“[T]he entire waterfront from Fort…”: Pond, p. 993.
“Dead-tired when we reached”…: Einstein.
“The soldiers were parked about…”: Laurence Klauber, Typed Annotations on Transcript of his 1906 letter, 1958, CHS.
“People have been shot right…”: DBrown.
“they take a shot at…”: Letter from Frederick H. Collins to his family in Placerville, April 24, 1906, VMSF.
“All the men that pass…”: Letter from Catherine to Elise, April 22, 1906, Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Eyewitnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
“but every man caught in…”: Letter from Ernest H. Adams to Messrs. Reed and Barton, April 23, 1906, VMSF.
“cleaning debris, building conveniences”…: Letter from Tom Davis to his mother in England, 1906, CHS.
“this abuse of authority shall…”: Presidial Weekly Clarion, April 27, 1906.
“I had an idea that it…”: Livingston.
Approximately 100,000 had been fed…: Reports for April 19, 20, and 21 list “Number of persons (estimated) as 100,000, 150,000, and 200,000 respectively.” ReliefSurvey, Appendix II, Methods of Distribution, Table 6—Daily Issues of Rations from April 19 to May 12, 1906, p. 11.
“There was no starvation in…”: Unsigned manuscript letter addressed to Uncle Wales (Wales L. Knox), BL.
“Water is scarce, but food…”: Letter from Bert Tuttle to Mary Butler, April 24, 1906, CHS.
“putting the bread into…”: Anonymous man, account of the earthquake and fire, April 25, 1906, SFPL.
“It is a great sight to see…”: Letter from Clarence Gault to his parents, April 23, 1906, SFPL (original in San Joaquin Pioneer and Historical Society).
At least thirty-five thousand loaves had…: “On Friday, April 20 … The bakeries that day furnished 35,000 loaves of bread.” ReliefSurvey, Appendix II, Methods of Distribution, Section 2, Distribution of Food, p. 6.
“The neighbors helped build a…”: Unsigned manuscript letter addressed to Uncle Wales (Wales L. Knox), BL.
“[W]e all have our stoves…”: Letter from Catherine to Elise, April 22, 1906, Nine Miscellaneous Letters from Unidentified Eyewitnesses to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, CHS.
“built an elaborate range from…”: ConlonJr.
“gone beyond repair”…: Statement by Hermann Schussler, chief engineer, Spring Valley Water Company, April 24, 1906, VMSF.
“use any water except for…”: “Mayor Points to Grave Danger of Disease,” SFC, April 21, 1906, p. 1.
“reputation for scrupulous honesty…”: Walsh and O’Keefe, Legacy of a Native Son, p. 108.
“vastly inflated price”…: Ibid., p. 114.
“[m]any thousands homeless”…: Morrow.
“the immediate and pressing necessity…”: Ibid.
“In the night it poured”…: Burke.
“We never closed our eyes…”: Letter from Frederick H. Collins to his family in Placerville, April 24, 1906, VMSF.
“Although I had seen plenty…”: Carl Emil Peterson, Selection from “The Champion Globe-Trotter, Twice Round the World Without Money,” 1928, Fifth Chapter, BL.
Sunday morning the clergy of…: “Ministers Will Hold Services,” SFE, April 22, 1906, p. 2.
“sanitary arrangements of the city”…: Special Orders No. 27, April 20, 1906, Torney, p. 210.
Six-year-old Emily Curran…: Emily Curran, six, died April 22, 1906. DeathIndex, p. 2421.
“inhalation burns”…: Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL, SFC, April 24, 1906, p. 3; SFCh, April 24, 1906, p. 7.
Jens Sorenson…: Jens Sorenson, eighty-six, was a tailor found unconscious on April 18, admitted to Army General Hospital at the Presidio on April 19, died April 20, and was buried in San Francisco National Cemetery. Coroner’s Book C, front fly leaf, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
Holber Mansen…: Died at Army General Hospital on April 22, 1906, after being admitted for fracture of legs/bruises. Coroner’s Book C fly leaf, Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex.
fire chief Dennis Sullivan…: Dennis T. Sullivan (b. November 2, 1852) died April 22, 1906, at Army General Hospital. SFC, April 23, 1906, p. 3; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; DeathIndex. His funeral was held at the house he owned with his wife, Margaret, on 49th Avenue on April 24, 1906, and his remains were temporarily interred in Calvary Cemetery. SFCh, April 26, 1906, p. 6. His body was removed for burial to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, CA, on April 14, 1907. SFC, April 15, 1907, p. 7.
“had been working day and…”: Arg., March 12, 1927.
“Red Cross!”…: Arg., May 28, 1927; Account of William Harvey, Arg., March 12, 1927.
“The shots came rapidly”…: “Witnesses Tell of the Shooting at Red Cross Automobile by Defendants,” SFCh, September 25, 1906, p. 2.
“You’ve got one of us”…: Ibid. See also “Jury Secured To Try Slayers Of Heber C. Tilden,” The Recorder, September 22, 1906, p. 1; “Tilden Shooting is Described,” SFC, September 22, 1906, p. 16; and “R.G. Seamen Goes on Stand in Tilden Case,” SFE, September 25, 1906, p. 5.
“Clerk, foremen and general employees…”: Ad for the John Bollman Co., SFC, April 23, 1906, p. 4.
“uninjured”…: Ad for the Paraffine Paint Co., SFC, April 23, 1906, p. 6.
“report at the store”…: Ad for Pacific Hardware and Steel Company, SFC, April 23, 1906, p. 4.
“My route is burned up”…: Angove.
“knew I would have to find…”: Livingston.
“relaxing the rigidity of military rule”…: “Funston Relaxes the Rigor of Martial Law,” SFE, April 23, 1906, p. 1.
“all who are regularly employed…”: “Pay For All Who Work For City,” SFCh, April 24, 1906, p. 7.
“dangerous walls left standing in…”: Report of Cpt. Le Vert Coleman, US Army Artillery Corps, to the Adjutant at the Presidio, May 2, 1906, VMSF.
“to open a safe artery…”: “Dynamites Fire Ruins,” SFE, April 24, 1906, p. 1.
“They appeared as if the…”: Leach.
“fell and crushed every bone…”: OT, EXTRA Edition, April 28, 1906, p. 1.
“some of them seven stories high”…: Report of Cpt. Le Vert Coleman, supra.
“pile of bricks and a wobbly wall”…: Leithead.
“would soon have fallen of…”: “Dynamites Fire Ruins,” SFE, April 24, 1906, p. 1.
“as large a force of men…”: “Cars Begin to Run on the Streets,” SFC, April 22, 1906, p. 4.
“new Market Street”…: According to the article, “Fillmore Street … is the new Market Street at present,” ibid.
“endeavor and accomplishment”…: Greely, p. 91.
“no misunderstanding as to the…”: Ibid., p. 97.
“be strictly confined”…: Ibid., p. 98.
“9 deaths by violence”…: Ibid., p. 92.
“Presidio Soldier[s]”…: SFE, April 23, 1906.
“most important duty”…: Greely, p. 101.
“unwarranted by law”…: Ibid., p. 102.
sixty-four officers and five hundred enlisted…: Ibid.
“We have not yet gotten…”: Sinsheimer.
“OWNERS OF SAFES ACT TOO HASTILY”…: SFC, April 29, 1906.
“the contents burst into flames”…: “Fire Destroys Assessor’s Books,” SFE, May 3, 1906, p. 1.
“all danger from combustion is passed”…: “Hotel Guests Ask Police to Get Their Money,” SFE, May 3, 1906, p. 2.
“There will be abundant money…”: “United States Mint to Advance Millions to the Banks of Cities About the Bay,” SFC, April 22, 1906, p. 2.
“Every bank in San Francisco…”: Leach.
“Banker’s Row”…: Biography of a Bank, p. 27.
“He knew every one of…”: Ibid., p. 28.
“consisted of a plank counter…”: Ibid., p. 27. See also A. P. Giannini: The People’s Banker, p. 45.
“infloridissime condizioni”…: “Banca d’Italia,” LI, May 5, 1906, p. 2.
“We are quite fully insured”…: Letter from John Walter to his parents, April 26, 1906, published in Walter, To His Parents, April 18, 1906.
137 different insurance companies…: Robert A. James, “Six Bits or Bust: Insurance Litigation Over the 1906 Earthquake and Fire” (June 1, 2011), Western Legal History, vol. 24, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2011): p. 131.
“The Company sent for him…”: Letter from Carrie Mangels, July 9, 1906, CHS.
“the great fire”…: In the article “Great Buildings Are To Rise From Ashes,” it was reported that the San Francisco Real Estate Board met and “agreed that the calamity should be spoken of as ‘the great fire,’ and not as ‘the great earthquake.’” SFCh, p. 1.
“Dollar-for-Dollar”…: “Dollar-for-Dollar List Now Numbers Thirty-Five Concerns,” SFE, June 17, 1906, p. 1.
“I represented The Emporium in…”: Mark Lewis Gerstle, excerpt from Mark Lewis Gerstle Memories, 1946, BL, p. 46.
$235 million was paid…: Robert James, “Six Bits or Bust,” p. 32.
“We just received your letter…”: Letter from Marie Mueller to Aunt Josie, April 25, 1906, Seawall Family Collection.
“read the papers with tears…”: Letter from Minnie Mueller to her sister Josie, April 24, 1906, Seawall Family Collection.
“by the thousands”…: Letter from Minnie Mueller to her sister Josie, April 25, 1906, Seawall Family Collection.
“Not hearing from any of…”: Letter from Minnie Mueller to her sister Josie, April 24, 1906, Seawall Family Collection.
“to come stay with us”…: Letter from Minnie Mueller to her sister Josie, April 25, 1906, Seawall Family Collection.
“Leo Jacobs please let mamma…”: SFC, April 24, 1906, p. 5.
“Wanted—To know whereabouts of…”: Ibid.
“hip bones and other charred bones”…: “Finds Bodies Among Ruins,” SFC, May 19, 1906, p. 1.
Sixty-year-old Sarah Boyle…: Sixty-year-old Sarah Boyle, who kept a lodging house in San Francisco, went to Oakland with refugees and committed suicide by drowning; she died April 20, 1906. OH, April 21, 1906; Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL; and DeathIndex, p. 1103.
Thirty-four-year-old Ethel Gross…: Ethel Gross, thirty-four, died at 6:00 a.m. April 23, 1906, after committing suicide by jumping from the fourth floor of the hospital at Octavia St. and Golden Gate Ave. SFCh, April 24, 1906; DeathIndex; and Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
“[c]razed by the experience through…”: SFCh, April 24, 1906, p. 7.
fifty-six-year-old Albert Smith…: Albert Smith, fifty-six, died in Los Angeles on April 23, 1906. Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL, and DeathIndex.
“despondent over the deaths of…”: He committed suicide in his hotel room. He reportedly “came to Los Angeles two weeks ago looking for work” and died after getting the news of the deaths of his wife and son in San Francisco. Oakland Enquirer, April 27, 1906.
18.
“drawn to the car as though…”: “Cheers Greet the Return of the Trolley,” SFCh, p. 1.
“I rode it to the end…”: Livingston.
“practically ready to operate”…: “Cheers Greet the Return of the Trolley,” supra.
“is wholly temporary”…: SFE, April 26, 1906.
“invaded”…: “Trolley Cars in Operation—Market Street is Invaded for the First Time,” SFC, p. 8.
along with the sole surviving…: This was Cal Cable Dummy no. 24, stored in the company’s other car house on California Street past Central (present-day Presidio) Avenue. Its storage there allowed cars used in the morning to run from the outer end of the line without having to “dead-head” (run without passengers) from Hyde Street to begin service. Author interview with Emiliano Echeverria, June 24, 2022.
began limited service on August 17…: “Cable Runs on California Street,” SFE, August 18, 1906, p. 2. The machinery was given its first full-speed test on August 5. “California Cable to Start Soon,” SFC, August 6, 1906, p. 12. And it was reported that six of the twenty cars had arrived by August 13 and the first car was to be test-run the next day, August 14. “Old Cars for Old Hill Line,” SFCh, August 13, 1906, p. 7.
$9,673,057.94…: ReliefSurvey, Table 1. Cash Receipts of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds, and its Successor, the Corporation, to June 1, 1909, p. 3.
“able-bodied men, for whom…”: ReliefSurvey, p. 47.
“For Chinese”…: No. 3. Presidio, Ft. Winfield Scott (For Chinese), List of Official Camps, ReliefSurvey, p. 404.
“would be collected and placed…”: “Location of a Chinese Camp is Opposed,” SFC, April 29, 1906, p. 1.
“All of the Chinese at present…”: “Plan for New Chinatown,” SFCh, April 25, 1906, p. 5.
“as remote as possible from…”: “Chinese Camp is Picturesque,” SFC, May 13, 1906, p. 16.
“gave us each a cup of…”: Lily Sung on Her 1906 Earthquake Experience, interviewed by Connie Young Yu, Earthquake: The Chinatown Story, CHSA.
“The big fire has obliterated…”: “Plan for New Chinatown,” SFCh, April 25, 1906, p. 5.
“at once”…: “The Plan to Remove Celestials to San Mateo County Is Opposed,” SFCh, April 27, 1906, p. 9.
“Westerners have suggested moving the…”: Anna Naruta, Chung Sai Yat Po Translations by Danny Loong, “Relocation,” Earthquake: The Chinatown Story, CHSA.
“as soon as they could get an assurance…”: “To Resist Moving of Chinatown,” SFC, May 17, 1906, p. 1.
“important business center”…: “Oriental City is Planned,” SFC, May 24, 1906, p. 14.
“the Chinese style of architecture”…: Philip P. Choy, San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide to Its History & Architecture (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2012), p. 44.
“The appearance and condition of…”: W. E. Alexander, Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, CHS.
“Thank goodness we have the…”: Letter from Carrie A. Duncan to Mrs. Noitchey, May 23, 1906, CHS.
“I have not slept in bed…”: Letter from Halvor H. Berg, May 10, 1906, SFPL.
“The majority of these people…”: Letter from Carrie Mangels, July 9, 1906, CHS.
“successful in trade, business, or profession”…: ReliefSurvey, p. 172.
2,032 people applied and 1,226…: Ibid., p. 173.
“huckster or peddler”…: Ibid., Table 56, p. 184.
“We started the office going…”: Letter from John Walter to his parents, April 26, 1906, published in Walter, To His Parents, April 18, 1906.
“Two weeks after the earthquake…”: Account of Alex Paladini, Arg., August 7, 1926.
“a fully equipped studio waiting…”: Genthe, p. 97.
“Small houses are springing up…”: Letter from Dr. Wilber M. Swett, May 27, 1906, BL.
“that the new San Francisco…”: Livingston.
“turned carpenter again”…: Letter from Percy H. Gregory to his mother in Australia, May 29, 1906, CHS.
“THE CALL GETS FIRST PERMIT…”: SFC, April 23, 1906, p. 1.
“every cook and attendant connected…”: “Owners of Palace Hotel WILL ERECT Temporary Hostelry,” SFC, June 7, 1906, p. 12.
“walls and steel structure were…”: “Fairmont To Be Finished,” SFCh, April 29, 1906, p. 18.
“Let the whole idea be…”: “Eastern Lecturers Will Be Set Straight in the Matter,” Stockton Chamber of Commerce Circular, 1906, VMSF.
“New San Francisco Emergency Edition”…: E. H. Harriman, “San Francisco,” Sunset magazine, vol. XVII, no. 1 (May 1906).
“hyperbolic nonsense”…: Simon Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World, p. 330.
“for the purpose of studying…”: Structures, p. 14.
“mortar of poor quality”…: Ibid., p. 39.
“Flimsy and loosely built structures…”: Ibid., p. 14.
“on soft, marshy, or made ground”…: Ibid., p. 157.
“In the earth’s vibrations it…”: “Pile Foundation is Considered Best,” SFE, May 3, 1906, p. 3.
“Bonus Plan”…: ReliefSurvey, p. 239.
$423,288.17 helped 885 residents…: Ibid.
“destitute”…: Form for Special Relief, ReliefSurvey, p. 437.
nineteen two-story, wood-frame “tenement houses”…: Table 63, ReliefSurvey, p. 219.
“Camp Cottages”…: ReliefSurvey, p. 221.
A total of 5,610 “refugee cottages”…: Table 63, supra.
“My father was able to…”: Siegel.
“payments of $50 down and $10…”:SFE, August 11, 1907, p. 31.
“About October 1st our April-October…”: ConlonJr.
“prompt, determined action”…: Editorial, SFE, May 31, 1906, p. 16.
“the crowd of angry citizens”…: “Crowd Tries to Get at Ruef and the Curly Boss is Scared,” SFCh, October 27, 1906, p. 1.
“although martial law did not…”: “Jury Frees Vance and Simmons,” SFC, September 29, 1906, p. 1.
“I doubt if there were ten…”: “Dismisses Case Against Boynton,” The Recorder, October 10, 1906, p. 1.
“the third of those brought…”: “Makes Martial Law His Defense,” The Recorder, November 22, 1906, p. 1.
“I only did my duty”…: “Denicke Shot at Disarmed Man,” SFC, November 24, 1906, p. 6.
“the rule of the bullet”…: “City Governed by Law of Bullet,” SFC, November 28, 1906, p. 4.
Judge Cook dismissed the only…: “Useless to Try Bechtel Case,” SFC, December 5, 1906, p. 1.
“the last of the series…”: Ibid.
“The only thing saved from…”: “Mechanics’ Library Has Temporary Offices,” SFCh, May 26, 1906, p. 8.
143,000 of…: The May 19, 1906, report of the Library Restoration Committee found “that out of 166,344 volumes in the public library and its branches on April 17 there were only 23,000 accounted for on May 1.” SFC, May 23, 1906, p. 5.
“The greatest loss to the city…”: Eastwood.
“twelve-story Class A Building”…: “Imposing Corner is Assured,” SFC, November 3, 1906, p. 4.
“Concrete Construction”…: The San Francisco Crocker-Langley Directory for the Year Ending October 1907 (San Francisco: H.S. Crocker Company, 1907), p. 1802.
“Contractors—Building”…: Ibid., p. 1808.
“Engineers—Construction”…: Ibid., p. 1836.
“Engineers—Structural”…: Ibid., p. 1838.
3,430,000 feet of lumber…: Water Front Notes, SFC, December 14, 1906, p. 11.
“You can stand up and look…”: Account of Michael Maher, December 1, 1906, SFPL.
“the rushing crowd instantly stopped”…: “Ferry Clock Turns Over New Hands This Year,” SFE, January 1, 1907, p. 1.
“elaborately decorated”…: “Society at Dinner in Tait’s,” SFE, January 1, 1907, p. 2.
“chopped-up, multi-colored paper”…: “Joyous Spirit of Carnival Bids the New Year Welcome,” SFE, January 1, 1907, p. 1.
“It was all like this—broken…”: Austin.
Afterword
“no man, no matter how…”: “Schmitz Sentenced to Serve 5 Years,” The Recorder, July 9, 1907, p. 1.
The municipal and judicial spectacle…: Information on the public corruption “graft” trials was obtained primarily from Boss Ruef’s San Francisco and issues of SFC, SFCh, SFE, and The Recorder published between October 1906 and May 1912.
set aside by the Court…: People v. Schmitz, 7 Cal. App. 330, 94 P. 407 (Cal. Ct. App. 1908).
“wholesale debauchery of the government…”: “Schmitz Released from Indictments,” SFC, May 26, 1912, p. 60.
“ideas, investments, real estate”…: Crocker-Langley San Francisco Directory for the Year Ending June 1916, p. 1639.
“redeem his good name”…: “Big Vote Seen for Primary,” SFE, September 27, 1915, p. 4.
“bring back the good old times”…: “Schmitz Declares He Is Sure of Majority in Primary Vote,” SFE, September 27, 1915, p. 4.
He was decisively rejected…: “Gamblers in New Contest of Schmitz,” SFE, October 15, 1915, p. 11.
“K.O.”…: “Joyful Jottings,” SFE, November 6, 1919, p. 14.
“wholly and undeniably unconstitutional”…: “Praise the Army,” Topeka Daily Herald (Topeka, KS), April 27, 1906, p. 2.
“cowardly”…: Letter from Gen. Funston, Presidio of San Francisco, Cal., July 2, 1906, Arg., July 7, 1906.
“for fighting the great San Francisco…”: “Veteran of Three Wars Was Earthquake Battler,” The Kansas City Times, December 25, 1959, p. 21.
“her accuracy, good judgment”…: Dora Thompson, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/people/doraethompson.htm.
“Histories of the Army’s role…”: Carl Nolte, “We can’t gather at Lotta’s Fountain, but we can start a new ritual: Remembering the forgotten of 1906,” SFCh, April 10, 2020.
“[o]vercome by grief”…: “Hero of ’06 Quake Dies After Clearing Name in Navy Records,” OT, February 19, 1941, p. 12.
with his sister in Kentucky…: World War I Draft Registration Card for Frederick Newton Freeman, September 12, 1918, US, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, www.ancestry.com.
driving while intoxicated…: “Driver Arrested,” The Times (San Mateo, CA), July 29, 1929, p. 3.
President Roosevelt granted Freeman a…: “Hero of War and Fire—Vindication Comes—To Soledad Resident,” The Californian (Salinas, CA), February 19, 1941, p. 1.
“Navy Man Who Saved Piers…”: “Navy Man Who Saved Piers in 1906 Succumbs,” SFE, February 19, 1941, p. 36.
“Hero of ’06 Quake”…: “Hero of ’06 Quake Dies After Clearing Name in Navy Records,” supra. “Death Takes F.N. Freeman,” The Californian (Salinas, CA), February 18, 1941, p. 2.
It was only nine months later…: John Pond’s death was reported in “Naval Rites for Commander Pond,” OT, November 27, 1941, p. 2.
Two months after the fire…: “Has Honorable Career as Firefighter,” SFE, June 16, 1906, p. 3.
“dedicated to the principle…”: Steve Van Dyke, superintendent, Bureau of Engineering and Water Supply, San Francisco Fire Department Water Supply System, San Francisco Fire Department, VMSF.
“fire hero, chief of fire…”: “Old Comrades of Department at Fire Chief’s Bier,” SFE, October 18, 1925, p. 106.
Assistant Chief John Conlon…: “Asst. Fire Chief Dies of Injury,” SFCh, March 3, 1919, p. 2.
“Keep California White”…: Robert W. Cherny, “City Commercial, City Beautiful, City Practical: The San Francisco Visions of William C. Ralston, James D. Phelan, and Michael M. O’Shaughnessy,” California History, vol. 73, no. 4 (1994): pp. 296–307, https://doi.org/10.2307/25177450.
“save our country from the…”: “Phelan Rips C. Of C. Stand On Land Law,” SFE, April 30, 1921, p. 8.
“great leader of California”…: “Ex-Senator James D. Phelan Dies,” SFE, August 8, 1930, p. 1.
“name linked with city growth”…: Ibid., p. 2.
“weakened her and she never…”: “Lucy B. Fisher, Noted Nurse, Dies,” SFC, November 26, 1910, p. 1.
“nothing of intrinsic value”…: Will Proof and Certificate of Estate of Lucy B. Fisher, Book D of Wills, no. 154, p. 391, May 3, 1911; California, US, Wills & Probate Records, 1850–1953, database online; www.ancestry.com.
“We were not disheartened”…: Mahoney.
“pioneer physician”…: “Mass Is Said for Woman Physician,” OT, December 9, 1931, p. 16. The memorial service held by the Native Daughters of the Golden West was reported in “Last Rites Today For Dr. Mahoney,” SFE, December 10, 1931, p. 17.
Ng Poon Chew…: Information about Dr. Ng Poon Chew was gained primarily from the Ng Poon Chew papers, ca. 1901–1964, BL; articles “Wa Mi San Po: Los Angeles’ Chinese Newspaper and Its Busy Editor,” LAT, July 23, 1899, p. 4; and “Chinese Talks on Exclusion: Ng Poon Chew Lectures Before the Academy of Sciences,” SFC, September 2, 1905; see also “Chinese Editor to Be Buried as Occidental,” OT, March 15, 1931, p. 1; “Prominent Chinese Doctor Succumbs,” La Grande Observer (La Grande, OR), March 14, 1931; and “Ng Poon Chew Famed Chinese Editor Passes,” Medford Mail Tribune (Medford, OR), March 14, 1931.
Lily Soo-Hoo’s…: “A Pioneer Chinese Family” by Mrs. Wm. Z. L. Sung, collected in “The Life, Influence and the Role of the Chinese in the United States, 1776–1960,” Proceedings/Papers of the National Conference at the University of San Francisco, July 10, 11, 12, 1975, CHSA.
“there was not as much…”: Ibid., p. 327.
“too frightened”…: Interview of Lily Sung, by Connie Young Yu at Lily’s Palo Alto home, March 27, 1980; taped recording transcribed by Yu, January 26, 2006, The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906, p. 16.
“We could feel the fire…”: Ibid., pp. 16–17.
“And when I smell hot coffee now”…: Ibid., p. 17.
Lee Yoke Suey…: “Chinatown, 1906: The End and the Beginning,” by Connie Young Yu, The Unshakable—Rebirth of Chinatown in 1906, pp. 14–15.
“victim of technicalities…”: “Law Parts S. F. Chinese, Tots,” SFE, March 10, 1925, p. 4.
“fine old scrub-oak”…: Genthe, p. 97.
“[s]ince breathing San Francisco air…”: “Noted Photographer Visits S.F.—Arnold Genthe Back in ‘Home Town,’” SFCh, September 29, 1937, p. 1.
Charmian and Jack London…: Charmian London, The Book of Jack London, Volumes I and II (New York: The Century Co., 1921); Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020).
“a woman ahead of her time…”: Dunkle, Charmian Kittredge London, p. 303.
“embarrassed”…: George C. Marshall, Memoirs of My Services in the World War 1917–1918 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 95. See also Matthew Davenport, First Over There (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015).
“lawyer, war correspondent, football coach…”: “Funeral Held for Writer J. B. Hopper,” SFE, August 31, 1956, p. 8.
“quarterback of the famous…”: “Rites for Carmel Writer James B. Hopper Are Held,” Modesto Bee (Modesto, CA), August 30, 1956, p. 19.
“California’s authentically great men”…: “James Hopper,” OT, August 31, 1956, p. 60.
“to the use and benefit…”: “Lotta’s Fountain—Its Final Presentation to the City of San Francisco,” SFCh, September 10, 1875, p. 3.
“Lotta’s Fountain!”…: “Church Federation Wants to Know Where Visitors in 1915 Can Get a Drink of Water,” SFCh, April 18, 1913.
Luisa Tetrazzini…: “Tetrazzini Thrilled S. F. Crowd of 250,000,” SFE, April 29, 1940, p. 1.
on April 18, 1956…: “Civic Rites to Mark Anniversary Today of City’s Destruction,” SFE, April 18, 1956, p. 2.
“placed on the fountain in…”: Ibid.
first in 1926 for the twentieth…: The Recorder, March 11, 1926, p. 9; “South of Market Folk Celebrate at Grand Ball,” SFE, April 18, 1906, p. 3; “Nation Lauds City 25 years after Big Fire,” SFE, April 18, 1931, p. 7.
“Californians long ago learned to…”: “California Sits on Top of Quake 50 Years After Frisco Disaster,” The Knoxville Journal (Knoxville, TN), April 15, 1956, p. 52.
“California’s Next Earthquake”…: “CD Chiefs Talk On ‘Next Quake,’” Record Searchlight (Redding, CA), April 17, 1956, p. 5; and “Meet to Set Quake Strategy,” The Times (San Mateo, CA), April 17, 1956, p. 5.
“California may go 10…”: “Great Disaster of 1906 Could Repeat Tomorrow,” Rocky Mount Telegram (Rocky Mount, NC), April 15, 1956, p. 9.
“for the first time since…”: “Dramatic Stories of the Quake From ‘Eyewitnesses’ in S. F.,” SFE, March 23, 1957, p. 2.
108 years of ferry service…: “Old-Timers Taken on Last Ferry Ride,” SFE, July 31, 1958, p. 11. Note this was the Southern Pacific’s final ferry service. Ferries resumed service years later but never in the same volume or frequency as prior to August 1, 1958.
“hideous monstrosity”…: The editorial read in part, “We oppose, and have consistently opposed, the hideous monstrosity which the State Highway Commission built along the Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building, obscuring the tower.” Editorial Staff, “The Boobery Goes On and On,” SFCh, August 28, 1959, p. 32.
“the handsomest office building…”: Michael R. Corbett, Splendid Survivors: San Francisco’s Downtown Architectural Heritage (San Francisco: California Living Books, 1979), p. 85.
“modernized”…: “Claus Spreckels Building Will Be Modernized,” SFCh, May 17, 1937, p. 5.
“Economic forces prove stronger…”: Splendid Survivors, supra.
“This, San Francisco’s first fireproof…”: “Plaque Unveiled at Historic San Francisco Building,” SFE, September 8, 1955, p. 21.
But four years later, both…: Oliver Perry Stidger: 12/31/1873–9/2/1959. Buried in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, CA; “Landmark is Doomed,” SFE, March 8, 1959, p. 14.
“construction of a towering pyramid…”: “Transamerica ‘Pyramid’ Receives Go-Ahead by City,” SFE, August 26, 1969, p. 3.
“a practice drill”…: “East Bay to Rehearse for Earthquake,” SFCh, August 7, 1989, p. A9.
“There was a loud noise…”: Recollection of Sgt. Diane Langdon, An Oral History of the Presidio of San Francisco During the Loma Prieta Earthquake, by Eve Iverson, VMSF.
“I tell you what, we’re having…”: Al Michaels, “1989 World Series Game 3—Battle of the Bay,” ABC Sports, October 17, 1989, television broadcast.
“looked down on the ground…”: Recollection of Sgt. Diane Langdon, supra.
The earth’s crust had ruptured…: David J. Wald, Donald V. Helmberger, and Thomas H. Heaton, “Rupture Model of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake from the Inversion of Strong-Motion and Broadband Teleseismic Data,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 81, no. 5 (October 1991): pp. 1540–1572.
“History does not repeat itself…”: James Eayrs, Diplomacy and Its Discontents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), p. 121. Note: this was one of several citations from the early 1970s exploring the origin of the quote and its attribution to Mark Twain (who passed in 1910 but was never attributed any variation of the quote in print until 1970). See also “History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes,” quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/.
City Water Department workers…: Art Jensen, acting general manager of Public Utilities Commission for the City and County of San Francisco, Report to the Board of Supervisors Concerning the Water Supply, November 21, 1989, VMSF; and Water Supply System Review, VMSF.
“ask for the maximum bail and…”: “DEVASTATING REPORTS FROM BIG QUAKE AREA,” SFCh, October 19, 1989, p. A1.
forty-two over in Oakland…: Bernard J. Feldman, “The Nimitz Freeway Collapse,” The Physics Teacher, vol. 42 (October 2004): p. 400.
nearly a mile-long stretch…: The length of the collapsed portion was 1.4 kilometers (0.87 mile), ibid.
one-tenth the size and one-thirtieth…: “How Much Bigger…?” calculator, USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, earthquake.usgs.gov/education/calculator.php.
“dwindling band of survivors”…: “San Francisco Journal; And Yet Again, the Earth Trembles for a Tiny Band of 1906 Survivors,” NYT, April 19, 1990.
“When his horse and buggy…”: “Quake Survivors Look Back to 1906,” SFE, April 18, 1906, p. 2.
In 1994, the Fairmont Hotel…: “Hotel Fete for Woman, 99, Fulfills Dream Deferred by 1906 Quake,” LAT, November 27, 1994.
In 1997, the Fairmont extended…: Manny Fernandez, “At 102, She’s Celebrating What Might Have Been,” SFGate, November 28, 1997.
“set aside the death toll of 478”…: Resolution No. 53–05, File No. 041149, “Death Toll of 1906 Earthquake Victims,” https://sfbos.org/resolutions-2005. See also Suzanne Herel, “A century later, quake’s toll to rise,” SFCh, January 27, 2005, p. B4.
“what seemed like thousands of letters”…: Tom Graham, “Gladys Hansen—90 Years Later, Quake Victims Get Names,” SFCh, April 14, 1996, p. 3/Z1.
“the names of 1,500 persons…”: “SF Earthquake Fatal to 1,500,” Tyler Morning Telegraph (Tyler, TX), April 18, 1985.
“1906 List of Dead & Survivors”…: “Integrated List All Deaths 7–22–10 992 Names, 75 Unknowns,” VMSF, accessed February 24, 2023.
The index cards completed with…: Information from these cards cited herein as Gladys Hansen Death Index, SFPL.
“Integrated List All Deaths”…: Supra.
“When the Big One Strikes Again”…: Charles A. Kircher, Hope A. Seligson, Jawhar Bouabid, and Guy C. Morrow, “When the Big One Strikes Again—Estimated Losses Due to a Repeat of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake,” Study commissioned by the 100th Anniversary Conference, California Office of Emergency Services, and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 2006.
“seismically vulnerable”…: Ibid., p. 31.
“The Bay Area is probably…”: Terence Chea, “The big one,” The Standard-Times (New Bedford, MA), April 18, 2006.
at least eight of 7.0 or greater…: California Earthquake Authority, https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/California-Earthquake-Risks/California-Earthquake-History-Timeline.
“creeping section”…: “Tectonic Setting,” US Geological Survey, Earthquake Hazards Program, https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/parkfield/geology.php.
“a large quake there is inevitable”…: Kurtis Alexander, “‘San Francisco earthquakes’ went viral because of a report detailing the worst case scenario. Here’s what it says,” SFCh, March 4, 2022.
“life safety and socioeconomic impact”…: “Editorial: Lessons from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake,” SFCh, September 20, 2019.
And on October 17, 2019…: Robert Sanders, “California rolls out first statewide earthquake early warning system,” Berkeley News, October 17, 2019, https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/10/17/California-rolls-out-first-statewide-earthquake-early-warning-system/. See also “Earthquake Warning California—Don’t Let Earthquakes Catch You Off Guard,” https://earthquake.ca.gov.
Oregon and Washington were added…: “Entire West Coast Now Has Access to ShakeAlert®,” News Alert from Communications and Publishing, US Geological Survey, May 4, 2021, https://usgs.gov/news/entire-us-west-coast-now-has-access-shakealert-earthquake-early-warning.
“grant people enough time to…”: Jenessa Duncombe, “California Launches Nation’s First Earthquake Early Warning System,” Eos, October 24, 2019, https://eos.org/articles/california-launches-nations-first-earthquake-early-warning-system.
“‘The house may not have…’”: “A Midsummer Story—Concluded,” SFCh, August 3, 1949, p. 16.
“the high-ceilinged front room…”: “Feusier Rites Monday—Services to Be Conducted in Octagonal House,” SFE, July 7, 1951, p. 1.
“due to a mile long fire…”: 451 Jackson Street was built by A. P. Hotaling in 1866 and is San Francisco Landmark No. 12.
“If, as they say, God spanked…”: After a Los Angeles medium “attributed the earthquake to the wrath of God,” Charles Field wrote this poem after learning “that 12,000 barrels of whiskey belonging to Dick Hotaling were saved.” “Providence Questioned,” Evening Sentinel (Santa Cruz, CA), May 26, 1906, p. 2.
Selected Secondary Sources
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Thomas, 1906)Barker, Malcolm E., Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake & Fire (San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1998)Barrymore, John, Confessions of an Actor (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926)Bean, Walter, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco—The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952)Becker, Robert S. and Tillis, Jane, Look Tin Eli: The Mendocino Visionary Who Helped Shape the Chinese-American Experience (Mendocino, CA: Kelley House Museum, 2021)Bennett, Milly, On Her Own: Journalistic Adventures from San Francisco to the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1927 (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1993)Benton, Lisa M., The Presidio: From Army Post to National Park (Chicago: Northeastern University Press, 1998)Bolt, Bruce A., Earthquakes, Fifth Edition (New York: W.H. Freeman & Company, 2003)Brands, H. W., The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Anchor Books, 2003)Brechin, Gray, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)Breuer, Karin, ed.; Binder, Victoria; Ganz, James A.; Görgen, Carolin; Terry, Colleen; and Misrach, Richard, Among the Ruins: Arnold Genthe’s Photographs of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Firestorm (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: Cameron + Company, 2021)Careaga, Rand, The United States Customhouse in San Francisco, An Illustrated History (Washington, DC: General Services Administration, 2011)Choy, Philip P., San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide to Its History & Architecture (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2012)Cohen, Katherine Powell, San Francisco’s Nob Hill (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010)Corbett, Michael R., Splendid Survivors: San Francisco’s Downtown Architectural Heritage (San Francisco: California Living Books, 1979)Davies, Andrea Rees, Saving San Francisco: Relief and Recovery after the 1906 Disaster (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011)Dillon, Richard (author) and Monaco, J. 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(illustrator), North Beach: The Italian Heart of San Francisco (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1985)Dunkle, Iris Jamahl, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020)Dyl, Joanna Leslie, Seismic City—An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017)Echeverria, Emiliano; Dolgushkin, Michael; and Rice, Walter, San Francisco’s Transportation Octopus: The Market Street Railway of 1893 (ebook: Michael Dolgushkin, 2013)Echeverria, Emiliano and Rice, Walter, San Francisco’s Powell Street Cable Cars (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005)Fracchia, Charles A., Fire and Gold: The San Francisco Story (Encinitas, CA: Heritage Media Corp., 1998)________, When the Water Came Up to Montgomery Street (Virginia: The Donning Company sponsored by San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, 2009)Fradkin, Philip L., The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)Gann, Richard G. and Friedman, Raymond, Principles of Fire Behavior and Combustion (Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2015)Garvey, John, San Francisco Fire Department (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003)Hansen, Gladys and Condon, Emmet, Denial of Disaster—The Untold Story and Photographs of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (San Francisco: Cameron + Company, 1989)Hansen, Gladys; Hansen, Richard; and Blaisell, Dr. William, Earthquake, Fire, and Epidemic—Personal Accounts of the 1906 Disaster (San Francisco: Untreed Reads Publishing, 2013)Hittell, John S., A History of the City of San Francisco and Incidentally of the State of California (San Francisco: A. 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P. Giannini—The People’s Banker (Temple City, CA: Barbera Foundation, 2017)Walsh, James P. and O’Keefe, Timothy J., Legacy of a Native Son: James Duval Phelan & Villa Montalve (Forbes Mill Press, 1993)Winchester, Simon, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006)Wollenberg, Charles, Golden Gate Metropolis: Perspectives on Bay Area History (Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, 1985)Yeats, Robert S.; Sieh, Kerry; and Allen, Clarence R., The Geology of Earthquakes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Yung, Judy and the Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco’s Chinatown (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006)
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Academy of Sciencesaid and relief work. See also hospitals and medical aidfrom ArmyBusiness Rehabilitation GrantCitizens’ Committee role indistribution offederalfood supplyFunston requests for and management oflegal avenues forfrom NavyOakland as hub forprivateRed Crossanimalsarchitecture. See building design and codesArmy, US. See also Funston, Frederickaid and relief workcitizen looter shot bycitizen response todeployment offire department taken charge byfirefighting efforts offood aid fromGreely command ofliquor stores and bars shut down bymartial law precedence andmedical staff and aidnational guard difference fromNavy coordination withpolice coordinating withprisoners escorted byrefugee aid fromROTC cadets andSchmitz meeting with general ofstreets, buildings, and crowd patrolled byviolence ofwithdrawal ofart, rescuedfrom Bohemian Clubfrom City Hallfrom Hopkins Institute of ArtMartínezfrom Phelan BuildingAustin, Marybanks. See also Mint, USBank of Italyfreezing activity atrecovery financing fromreopeningScandinavian-American Savings BankBlack communityblack powderBohemian ClubBriggs, RaymondBrunswick Housebuilding design and codesbusiness explosion around newCall BuildingCity Halldeaths relation toearthquake proofing efforts1849–1851 fires and1868 earthquake and1870s and 1890sfireproofing andgold rushlow-income neighborhoodsMintnational recommendations ignored inPalace Hotelrebuilding andSt. Francis Hotelskyscraperburials and cemeteriescable cars/streetcarsCalifornia Street Cable Railroadestablishment and speed offire threat and damage toMarket Streetpost-earthquake scene andreinstatement ofUnited RailroadsCalifornia, statehoodCalifornia HotelCalifornia StreetCalifornia Street Cable RailroadCall Buildingfireoriginal construction and heightrebuilding oftremors hittingCarmenCaruso, Enricocemeteries. See burials and cemeteriesCentral California Canneries fireCentral Emergency HospitalchimneysChinatownday before indestruction ofestablishment ofevacuation and refugees offiresrebuilding oftremors hittingwhite rule inChinese communitycitizenship and immigration lawspopulation in 2023racism againstrefugee camps forChinese Exclusion ActChronicle BuildingchurchesAfrican AmericanGrace Churchrebuilding offor refugeesSt. Mary’s CathedralCitizens’ Committee (Committee of Fifty)City Hallarchitectural issuescornerstone laid in 1872dome collapse1850 fire destroying original1868 earthquake damage tofiresopening in 1899post-earthquake scene atrecords vault firerefugees in front oftemporary set up at opera housecity planning. See also building design and codeswater supply challenges forCivil Warclass divisionsCollege Hill reservoircommemorationsHotaling Buildingat Lotta’s Fountain100th anniversarySouth of Market districtsurvivors2022Committee of Fifty. See Citizens’ CommitteeConlon, Johnconstruction. See building design and codesCook, Jessecrowd policing workearthquake experiencecooking, post-earthquakecorruption. See political corruptioncourt casesimmigrant birthright citizenshipinsurance claimspolitical corruptionon Red Cross worker shootingCow Hollowcrime and lootingcitizen shot by soldiers forshoot-to-kill order forCrocker BuildingCrystal Springs reservoirCullen, CharlesCustom HouseDaly Citydeaths. See also morgueburials andfrom chimney fallsclass division relation tocommemoration events forconstruction quality relation todifferent reasons for1868 earthquakeevacuees response tofrom exposure and exhaustionfirefighterfrom firesfrom gas explosionsat Geary Hotelfrom heart failureinjuries leading to post-disasterof looter shot by soldiersMarket Street areaby military actionnews coverage of1989 earthquakeoverflow of bodies fromRed Cross workersmell ofSouth of Market districtstreet conditions andsuicidetollunknown details and identitieswhile sleepingDewey MonumentDolores Park refugee campDougherty, Johndynamite. See also firebreaksearthquake (1906). See also fires (1906); specific locations and topicsaftershocksdurationmagnitude and velocity of wavesshockwaves experiencesleeping throughsounds ofsurrounding areas experience ofearthquakesanimals response tobuilding designDaly City 1956detection advancements and systemsdrills for preparing for1868fill land and threat ofinevitability of future1989pre-1868preparation conference in 2006San Andreas Fault andEdwards, Ernestelectricityadoption in citycable cars andpost-earthquake scene of power lines forpost-fires safety aroundthreats around wires forEmporium department storeExaminer BuildingFairmont Hotelfederal aidFerry Buildingcommuter and visitor activity atfiremodern daypendulum clock inpost-earthquake scene and evacuations atrefugees attremors hittingfire alarm officefire rating, pre-1906firebreaksblack powder use forChinatowndemolitionfire department plan forHall of Justice protection withliquor seller andNorth Beachopposition to demolitionRussian HillVan Nessfirefighters/fire department. See also specific individuals and locationsArmycentralized strategies and control lacking forchemical enginescommunications severed by tremorscoordination betweendeathsestablishment of professionalexhaustion offirebreak planshorse-drawn hose wagons ofhydrant water pressure and procedure forimmigrants role asMarket Street rescue efforts ofNavy role asnotablesOaklandquality and modernity ofrefugees taken in bySouth of Marketspotting fires approachSullivan notable leadership oftactics and tools2022 commemoration andvolunteerwater sources ingenuity ofwater supply and system inadequacies forfireproofing, for buildingsfires (1849–1851)fires (1906). See also specific locations and topicsbeginning ofbrightness at nightcannery fire night before earthquakecombustible materials impact oncooking with broken chimneys startingdeaths fromdevastation afterduration ofend ofpollution withspeed of spreadvaluables gathered and secured duringwind role inFisher, LucyFisherman’s WharfFlood mansionFolger Coffee Companyfood supplyaidpost-earthquakeprice gouging withFort MasonFreeman, Frederickcitizen patrol work underearthquake experience forfinal years forfirefighting and rescue efforts underFunston, Frederickaid requests and management ofcharacter and backgroundcommand end fordeathearthquake experience forshoot-to-kill orders undersoldier deployment undergas supplyGeary HotelGenthe, Arnoldat Carmen performanceearthquake experience oflegacy and final yearsphotographic documentation ofon post-earthquake sceneGhirardelli FactoryGiannini, AmadeoGoerlitz, Ernestgold rushGolden Gate BridgeGolden Gate Parkemergency hospital infirst shockwaves hittingpost-earthquake scene inrefugee camp inGolden Gate straitGrand HotelGrand Opera HouseGreely, AdolphusHall of JusticeAustin on scene outside ofCitizens’ Committee meeting atevacuation offiresmayoral direction fromprisoners evacuation fromHansen, GladysHayes Valley fireHayward FaultHopkins, MarkHopkins (mansion) Institute of ArtHopper, Jamesday before earthquake forearthquake experience forjournalistic importance oflegacy and final yearson post-earthquake scene and firesrescue efforts ofhorseshospitals and medical aid. See also Red CrossArmyGolden Gate Parkinjuries experienced inMechanics’ Pavilion temporary hospitalnotables working inpatient evacuations andpolice help withpost-firesHotaling & Co.housing. See building design and codesHoward Streetimmigrants. See also specific ethnicityfirefighting companies formed byFrenchlawspopulation and demographics andinsurance payoutsIrish communityItalian American communityjail and prisonersJapanese communityJefferson SquareKingsbury House/HotelLafayette Park refugee campLeach, Frankearthquake experience foron firesfires around Mint fought byas Mint superintendentLee Yoke SueyLeidesdorff, Williamliquorsales halted and stock destroyedsaving stores ofLondon, Jack and Charmianlooting. See crime and lootingLormor HouseLotta’s Fountainlow-income neighborhoodsconstruction quality and safety inlower Nob Hillrefugees fromshockwaves destruction inwater supply issues inLuchetti, CoraMack & Company Drug Wholesaler fireMahoney, MargaretMarket Street. See also South of Market districtcable carsclass demarcation line offiresfires north ofLotta’s Fountain events onpost-earthquake conditions ofpost-fire scene inrebuilding ofrescue work north oftremors reachingMartel Power Company firemartial lawMartínez, Xaviermayor. See Phelan, James; Schmitz, Eugenemedical services. See hospitals and medical aid; Red CrossMetropolitan Opera companyCarmen performance ofdisaster and post-disaster experience ofmilitary. See Army, US; Navy, USmilitia. See national guardMint, USconstruction ofcurrency amount infires aroundfreezing capital andLeach role as superintendent ofmodern daysoldiers guarding ofwater supply for firefightingMission District. See also Valencia Hotelcommunityday before inearthquake experience inevacuation offill land infirebreak blasting infirespost-earthquake scene inrefugeesschools reopening inwater supplyMission DoloresMission Streetdemolitions for firebreaks onearthquake hittingfill landfiresGrand Opera House onMontague CompanyMontgomery Blockdemolition thwartedfire threat and protection offireproof claim ofhistorical landmarkmorgueMutual Life Insurance Company buildingnational guardArmy soldiers difference fromfood aid fromlethal force authority and use bymobilization ofprisoners escorted byRed Cross shot and killed byVan Ness evacuation byNavy, US. See also Freeman, Frederickaid fromArmy coordination withcitizens patrolled byfirefighting support fromFreeman discharge fromNevada HouseNew Year’s Eve (1906)news coverageanti-Chinese prejudice andChinatown-basedof Civil Waron cooking-related firescoordinated efforts of news outlets foron deathsdisruptions toon duration of earthquake in 1906employees day before earthquakefor missing peoplenewspapers released in city post-earthquakeof notablesOakland reporters role insensationalism and rumors inNg Poon ChewNob Hillevacuations offires onfires threatening lowermansionspost-earthquake scene onrefugees fleeing totremors hittingNorth Beachday before cannery fire atevacuationfiresItalian American community inpost-earthquake scene inWashington Square burial innurses. See hospitals and medical aidOaklandcrowds/onlookers fromfirefighters fromrefugees toas relief efforts hubreporters role in covering disastertelegraph services inwater deliveries fromOhio Houseopera houses. See also Metropolitan Opera companyCity Hall temporary set up inGrand Opera HouseTivoli Opera HouseWar Memorial Opera HousePacific Heightspost-earthquake scene atrefugees inPalace Hotelbuilding design and safety claims ofday before atevacuation offiresMetropolitan Opera company atopulence ofpost-earthquake scene atrebuilding and reopening oftremors hittingPanama–Pacific International ExpositionPaolinelli, RafaeloPardee, GeorgePhelan, Jamesanti-Chinese sentiments ofin Citizens’ Committeeevacuationlegacy and death ofas mayorpost-earthquake response ofrelief management ofrescue work ofrescuing art from Phelan Building during aftershockPhelan BuildingPhilippinesphotographypoliceArmy coordinating withcrowd control work ofexhaustionhospital assistance ofprisoners released byrescue work ofshoot-to-kill order given topolitical corruptionPolk, James K.Pond, Johnfirefighting efforts oflater years and deathpoor. See low-income neighborhoodspopulation and demographics18531880189019061931gold rush impact ongrowth from 1865 to 1870growth in 1849Portsmouth Squarepost office and postal servicePresidioPresidio military postrefugees atsoldier deployment and aid fromprisoners. See jail and prisonersPulis, Charlesracismagainst Chineseof Phelanof SchmitzrailroadsChinese laborers onpopulation increase withSouthern Pacific RailroadUnited Railroadsrecovery and rebuildingbanks financingfor Black communitybuilding design and codes inCall BuildingChinatownof churchesafter fires of 1849–1851Market Streetnews coverage onof Palace HotelSt. Francis Hotelof telegraph servicesof waterfrontRed CrossrefugeesArmy aid forboat camps forcamps, number ofchaos with fleeingChinatownchurch services forcookingDaly City establishment bydeaths from exposure and exhaustionDolores Park camp fordrinking water shortagesestimates ofevacuation dangers forexhaustion offamilies taking infamily and friends reuniting withfear and sleeplessness offederal aid forfire department taking infood aid forFort Masonfriends and family searched for byin front of City HallGolden Gate Park camp forJefferson Square camp forLafayette Park camp forlength of homelessness forfrom low-income neighborhoodsMint water supply shared withMission Districtnewspapers distributed toon Nob Hillto Oaklandin Pacific Heightspermanent shelter built forpostal service forat Presidio military postprice gouging to transportreturning to homes/home sitessanitation issues forsoldiers forced labor ofSouth of Market camp forfrom South of Market districtsuicide ofTelegraph Hill camp forUnion Square camp forvaluables gathered and secured forvolunteering to fight firesat waterfrontin Western Additionrelief aid. See aid and relief workRichmond DistrictRincon HillRoosevelt, TheodoreRuef, Abebackgrounddeathfire threat to property ofpolitical corruption ofRussian Hillfireshouses surviving onnaming ofwater supply onsafesSt. Francis Hotelbuilding design and opulence ofearthquake experience atfirespost-earthquake scene atrebuilding and modern daySt. Mary’s CathedralSan Andreas FaultSan Francisco. See also specific topics and locationsfashion in early 1900sfire rating of pre-1906indigenous history and founding ofSan Francisco Gas and Electric CompanySansome StreetSchmitz, EugenebackgroundCitizens’ Committee andcommunication lacking between military leaders andfinal years and deathfirebreak orders fromliquor stores closed bymayoral win formilitary deployment andmorgue help frompasses created bypolitical corruption ofpost-earthquake response fromprisoners released bypublic proclamation drafted byracism ofshoot-to-kill orders undertelegrams from governor and president towater supply orders underschools, reopening ofSchussler, HermannShaughnessy, Patricksinkholessoldiers. See Army, USSoo-Hoo, LilySouth of Market district. See also Mission Streetcheap construction inclass demarcation withcommemorations indeathsearthquake destruction infill land offirefightersfireproof buildings infiresfood looting infood ration lines inpost-earthquake scene onrefugee camp built inrefugees fromsecondary waves hittingwater supply issues inSouthern Pacific ferrySouthern Pacific RailroadSpanish settlersSpreckels family. See also Call BuildingSpring Valley Water CompanyStanford mansionStetson, JamesStevenson, Robert Louis (house)Strauss, Levistreetcars. See cable cars/streetcarssuicideSullivan, Dennisearthquake injurylegacy and death ofon water supply issuessurvivors, commemorations forTaft, William H.Telegraph Hillfire threat and firesnaming ofrefugee camp ontelegraph servicestelephone servicedisruptionOakland relief services andTenderloinThompson, DoraTilden, HeberTivoli Opera HouseTorney, Georgetrials. See court casestrolleys. See cable cars/streetcarsTwain, MarkUnion SquareUnited RailroadsUnited States. See also Army, US; Mint, US; Navy, USbirthright citizenship legislation inCalifornia statehood andfederal aidSan Francisco claimed byWar Department communicationsValencia Hotelearthquake destruction offill land underpost-earthquake scene atvictims atVan Ness Avenuecontrolled burn ordered forevacuation offirebreak work onfireshydrantspost-earthquake scene onwealthy homes onvolunteersfirefightingfood supplied byrefugees taken in byrescue byWar Department, USWar Memorial Opera HouseWashington Square burialWashington Streetwater supply and systemcity planning challenges withCollege Hill reservoirconstruction of emergencycorruption aroundCrystal Springs reservoirdrinking water shortagesearthquake destruction ofafter 1849–1851 firesfirefighting impacted by inadequatefirefighting ingenuities aroundinfrastructure improvementsLaguna Honda Reservoirin low-income neighborhoodsMint providing emergencymodern day inadequacies inpopulation outpacingon Russian HillSpring Valley Water CompanyWestern Additionwaterfront. See also Ferry Buildingbackfilled land ofearthquake hittingentertainment atfirefighting atFisherman’s WharfNavy work in savingport business andrecovery ofrefugees andWestern Additionaftershock incable cars indisaster clean up infire threat and firesschools reopening insoldiers stationed inwater supplyWong Kim Ark, court case
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