April 18, 1906

San Francisco, California

Earthquake, San Francisco

“I was certainly sleeping soundly, when, at 5:13 A.M. I was suddenly and rudely awakened by something falling on me, and the most awful pitching, and rocking, and swaying, and jarring of the whole bed and building” recounted in a letter from, presumably, Mary E. Pease, a nurse who was to live through the catastrophe of the earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco. She was at the time staying in a newly...

April 21, 1906

Alameda, California

Earthquake, Urban Life/Boosterism, Fremont

The great 1906 earthquake turned the thriving city of San Francisco, California, into a sea of flames on the morning of April 18, 1906. However, the earthquake’s effects were more far-reaching than just the city of San Francisco itself. While Oakland was rather fortunate and did not sustain a large amount of damage, in San Jose “few buildings…escaped injury, and the death toll [was] not small.”...