Photographs and Eyewitness Accounts of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
- dthholland
- Jun 5
- 7 min read
At precisely 05:12 AM on the morning of Wednesday, 18 April 1906, Northern California was torn from its slumber. The earth convulsed violently beneath the region’s feet, as a rupture along the infamous San Andreas Fault released seismic energy on a staggering scale. The quake, estimated at a moment magnitude of 7.9, was felt from Eureka in the north to the agricultural Salinas Valley in the south, and as far inland as central Nevada. In San Francisco, the impact was catastrophic.
For nearly a full minute, the city shook with an intensity later rated XI on the Mercalli scale—‘Extreme’. Buildings crumbled, roads split apart, and gas mains ruptured. Then came the fires.
Over the next three days, more than 30 separate fires, many ignited by damaged chimneys and fractured infrastructure, raged out of control, consuming everything in their path. Firefighters, in some cases unfamiliar with the dynamite they were using to create firebreaks, inadvertently worsened the crisis.
By the time the smoke cleared, over 3,000 people were dead, 80% of the city had been destroyed, and up to 300,000 residents, more than two-thirds of San Francisco’s population, were homeless. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake remains the deadliest earthquake in United States history, and the most destructive natural disaster California has ever known.
A City Shattered
San Francisco in 1906 was the West Coast’s beating heart, a financial and cultural hub with a booming port, and a cosmopolitan population that had grown rapidly during and after the Gold Rush. Its buildings were grand and densely packed; its fortunes fuelled by commerce with Asia and the Pacific. In a cruel twist of fate, it was that density, and the materials and methods used in its rapid construction, that made it so vulnerable.
The quake’s origin lay deep within the geology of the San Andreas Fault, a massive transform fault where the Pacific and North American plates grind past each other in a slow, tension-building standoff. On that morning in April, the strain was released with ferocious speed. The rupture travelled along a stretch of fault nearly 300 miles in length, producing displacements of up to 28 feet (8.5 metres). The shaking was so intense it was registered on seismographs across the United States and even noticed on ships at sea.
The fire chief, Dennis T. Sullivan, had been fatally injured in the initial shock. His death left the city’s emergency response leaderless just as the crisis demanded urgent coordination. In his absence, efforts became fragmented, and fires spread rapidly.
Fire and Confusion
Many of the city’s fires were unintentional, but others were deliberate. Knowing that insurance policies often covered fire damage but not earthquake damage, some residents set their own ruined homes alight in a desperate bid to recoup losses. A fire ignited in Hayes Valley (nicknamed the “Ham and Eggs Fire”) allegedly began when a woman attempted to cook breakfast unaware her chimney had been damaged.
Others came from well-intentioned but poorly executed attempts to stop the spread. Federal troops dynamited buildings to create firebreaks, but the explosions often caused new blazes. For four days, the fires consumed homes, civic buildings, theatres, schools, and laboratories. The Palace Hotel, which had hosted celebrities and heads of state, burned to the ground. Enrico Caruso, who had performed at the Grand Opera House the night before, reportedly fled the city with an autographed photo of President Theodore Roosevelt in hand, swearing never to return.
Eyewitness to Ruin
Photography, still a relatively recent innovation, played a crucial role in documenting the destruction. Arnold Genthe, famous for his photographs of Chinatown, captured haunting images of residents wandering through the smouldering ruins. George R. Lawrence created panoramic aerial images by attaching a large-format camera to a kite flown 2,000 feet above the city. Willard Worden’s photographs, including his iconic image of the ruined Towne Mansion’s marble columns framing the gutted City Hall, became enduring visual memorials.
Some of the most harrowing testimonies, however, came not through photographs but through words. In Jack London’s essay The Story of an Eyewitness, the famed writer described a city where “all the shrewd contrivances and safeguards of men had been thrown down, and the naked soul of man was laid bare.”
One eyewitness described a scene of religious hysteria amid the debris: “a band of men and women” praying fervently, led by “one fanatic, driven crazy by horror,” who was “crying out at the top of his voice: ‘The Lord sent it, the Lord!’” The shouting, it was said, “got on the nerves of the soldiers and bade fair to start a panic among the women and children, so the sergeant went over and stopped it by force.”
At the Market Street ferry terminal, the atmosphere was summed up by another observer as “bedlam, pandemonium and hell rolled into one…. Men lost their reason at those awful moments.” Accounts like these reflect not only the physical trauma of the quake but the psychological rupture it inflicted.
Soldiers, Looters, and the "Shoot-to-Kill" Order
Federal troops, under General Frederick Funston, entered the city from the Presidio and nearby Angel Island. Their orders were to assist in fire control, maintain order, and aid the displaced. They dynamited buildings and set up refugee camps, but their presence was not universally welcomed.
Mayor Eugene Schmitz issued a proclamation authorising police, soldiers, and special deputies to shoot looters on sight:
“The Federal Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force and all Special Police Officers have been authorized by me to kill any and all persons found engaged in Looting or in the Commission of Any Other Crime.”
This heavy-handed response spoke to the authorities’ deep fear of disorder.
And yet, some of the looting was carried out by the very people tasked with restoring order. Retired Captain Edward Ord of the 22nd Infantry noted in a letter to his mother that he had witnessed “despicable” behaviour among his fellow soldiers. “Some of the boys,” he wrote, “have been drinking and are looting... I’m ashamed of them.” Still, he emphasised that “the majority served well and faithfully.”
Rebuilding and Denial
Despite the devastation, civic leaders were keen to promote San Francisco’s resilience. Insurance losses were immense—over $250 million—but since most policies did not cover earthquake damage, much of the compensation came via claims for fire. In fact, many property owners and politicians deliberately downplayed the role of the quake, emphasising the fires instead to avoid scaring off investors.
Governor George Pardee didn’t even mention the earthquake in his first official statement. Public discourse was managed tightly. Historian John C. Branner later complained that geologists were discouraged from studying or publishing findings about the quake for fear it would hurt the economy.
Nevertheless, reconstruction began almost immediately. The Bank of Italy (later Bank of America) provided much-needed liquidity. Architects proposed grand redesigns—including one by Daniel Burnham featuring a massive urban park and broad Parisian-style boulevards—but most were dismissed in favour of restoring the existing grid. Still, elements of Burnham’s vision, such as wider streets and improved civic infrastructure, did eventually materialise.
By 1915, San Francisco was largely rebuilt—just in time for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, a triumphant celebration of the city’s rebirth.
A Cultural Shift
The disaster prompted more than urban renewal. The city’s elite writers and artists, displaced and disillusioned, fled to Carmel-by-the-Sea, giving rise to a bohemian arts colony that endures today. San Francisco’s Chinese community, threatened with forced relocation, resisted efforts to rezone Chinatown to the city’s margins. In the chaos, many immigrants seized the opportunity to claim U.S. residency, circumventing the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The quake also shaped the landscape of public health. The University of California’s medical faculty, which had until then been peripheral to city life, became central to emergency response efforts, later establishing full medical facilities and a training school for nurses.
In the years following the disaster, the photographic record created by Genthe, Worden, and others became more than historical documentation. It became mythology. The sight of the city reduced to rubble, the ruined grandeur of Nob Hill mansions, the image of survivors huddled in camps or standing stoically beside broken walls—these became enduring symbols of endurance.
Writers like William James, who was at Stanford at the time, reflected on the psychological impact in essays like On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake. Across the country, H.G. Wells noted with some astonishment how casually New Yorkers spoke of the disaster—some even expressing hope that Chinatown would be gone for good.
“It does not seem to have affected any one with a sense of final destruction, with any foreboding of irreparable disaster,” Wells wrote. “Every one is talking of it this afternoon, and no one is in the least degree dismayed.” Even amid ruin, he believed, Americans carried an almost unnerving optimism. “I believe these people would more than half like the situation.”
And yet, as Max Page later observed in The City’s End, Americans have long had a complicated relationship with destruction—torn between horror and fascination. After the 9/11 attacks, he wrote, people repeatedly said the event was “unimaginable” and “just like a movie.” But in 1906, there were no blockbusters. No apocalyptic trailers. No digital simulations of buildings collapsing in slow motion. There was only the crack of the earth, the heat of the flames, and the unrelenting sound of things falling apart.
