San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

On the night of April 18, 1906, the whole town was woken by erratic shaking. Although the earthquake lasted under a measly minute, it caused significant damage. Many fires started all throughout the city; San Francisco burned in turmoil.

In the early 1900’s, Theodore Roosevelt took office after McKinley was assassinated. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only turmoil at the time. A ship with rats infected with bubonic plague started the first plague epidemic in the continental U.S. Survivors of the plague believed that the corpses were still contaminated, so all burials were banned within San Francisco. Fifteen blocks of China Town were quarantined because the Chinese were blamed to be the cause of leprous, small pox, and malaria. Fortunately, the plague was finally eradicated by 1905. The Bay area enjoyed success and growth from its formation during the gold rush of 1849 until the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

On April 18, 1906 at 5:12 a.m., a forceful shaking woke many people from their sleep. “It seemed as if I had scarcely been asleep when I was awakened by a terrifying sound—the Chinese porcelains that I had been collecting in the last years had crashed to the floor... The whole house was creaking and shaking, the chandelier was swinging like a pendulum, and I felt as if I were on a ship tossed about by a rough sea.”1 Thought Arnold Genthe, a German emigrant and photographer.

Enrico Caruso arrived in his cozy fifth floor room at the Palace Hotel after performing Carmen at San Francisco’s Grand Opera House the night before the earthquake. He says he “went to bed feeling very contented”, although he woke up feeling a very different way. “But what an awakening! … on the Wednesday morning early I wake up about 5...

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