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Earth Dragon Trembled: San Francisco’s Chinatown and the Great Earthquake of 1906
The animals could feel it coming.
The early hours of April 18, 1906 reportedly filled with the frightened barking of dogs and horses’ panicked neighs. But people have duller senses, and San Francisco, with its half-million residents, slept on until the huge earthquake hit at 5:13 that morning. Buildings crashed down and fire rose up, and for three days all was chaos. By April 21, over 28,000 structures were destroyed, 521 blocks burned, and an estimated 498 lives lost. It was, to many people, one of “the great catastrophes of the world’s history.”
Destruction, though, can often fold into resurrection. Even as survivors cleared the rubble and took accounting of their losses, San Francisco’s political and economic leaders convened with ideas for the city’s rebirth. Their plans centered on turning the now-burned downtown area north of Union Square into a handsome, Daniel Burnham-designed commerical center; to do so, the fire-leveled Chinatown, viewed by those at the top of the local power structure as a hive of sin and corruption, would have to be moved from the city’s heart to its outer environs.
However, the residents of Chinatown had no intention of being displaced. In the face of enormous pressure, and using their financial and political importance to the…
