Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire
14 Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916

Capture a fascinating glimpse of San Francisco as it was in the late 1800's and the early 1900's as seen through the eyes of some of the earliest movie makers.

Here are some sample clips from four of the movies on this CD

Here is a description of each film on this CD

Films of just before and just after the San Francisco Quake and Fire

Army pack train bringing supplies. CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1906. SUMMARY This film highlights the role of the United States Army in transporting supplies following the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. The Army's relief operations headquarters was at their base, the Presidio, outside the burned part of the city. The Army played a major role in relief and refugee operations. In the first weeks after the fire, food, water, tents, blankets, medical supplies, and hay for horses, were the principal needs. To pay for these supplies, Congress appropriated nearly $2.5 million in emergency aid for San Francisco. An estimated 300,000 people were camped out in late April, but the number had dropped to 25,000 by July, and emergency relief switched to long-term care in the substantial camps of "earthquake cottages."

Exploded gas tanks, U.S. Mint, Emporium and Spreckels Bld'g CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1906. SUMMARY This film is a spectacular pan of the downtown area of San Francisco as seen from south of Market Street. The location among low ruins was ideal to view the tall ruined buildings along and north of Market Street. Since the facade of St. Patrick's Church is not visible in the pan, the film is probably later than May 9, the date the facade was demolished. The camera, placed on the east side of 4th Street near Natoma Street, one and two-thirds blocks south of Market Street, pans a full 240 degrees, from southwest to southeast.

San Francisco disaster CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1906. SUMMARY This film shows the partial burning of a small-scale model of downtown San Francisco in an early attempt at simulating the 1906 disaster. The model is seen in aerial view from above the South-of-Market district, looking northwest toward Market Street and the downtown area. Russian Hill (left) and Telegraph Hill (right) are shown in a painted background. The Call Building at 3rd and Market streets is modelled at left center, and the Ferry Building (Market and East streets) is shown at right. Market Street and downtown have been greatly shortened between the two enlarged model building. It is likely that the producers of the film wanted their audiences to think that they were viewing actual footage of the fire, and the film was probably promoted as such. In reality, the location of the initial fires was more widely scattered than is shown, with many more blazes beginning out of view, at left, and a few more north of the Ferry Building. And while the principal fires did coalesce and spread from the area shown burning, the flames never reached the spectacular proportions shown in the simulation. Note the heavy puffs of smoke wafted in from the left, both to give the impression of a rapidly spreading conflagration and to put out the flames for the final "smoking ruins" view. In fact, every part of the city shown (except a few small pockets) burned over a three day period. No doubt today's special effects wizards could produce a far more convincing simulation of the disaster.

San Francisco earthquake and fire, April 18, 1906 (in four parts) SUMMARY This film shows the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the devastation resulting from the subsequent three-day fire. The 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck at 5:12am and was centered along the San Andreas Fault, which slices through coastal California. Most of the cities of central California were badly damaged. San Francisco, with thousands of unreinforced brick buildings - and thousands more closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwellings - was poorly prepared for a major fire. Collapsed buildings, broken chimneys, and a shortage of water due to broken mains led to several large fires that soon coalesced into a city-wide holocaust. The fire swept over nearly a quarter of the city, including the entire downtown area. Dynamite was used with varying success to prevent the fire from spreading westward. Over 3,000 people are now estimated to have died as a result of the disaster. For the surviving refugees, the first few weeks were hard; as aid poured in from around the country, thousands slept in tents in city parks, and all citizens were asked to do their cooking in the street. A severe shortage of public transportation made a taxicab out of anything on wheels. Numerous businesses relocated teporarily in Oakland and many refugees found lodgings outside the city. Reconstruction of the city proceeded at a furious pace and by 1908, San Francisco was well on the way to recovery. The scenes in the film are preceded by titles, many of which are sensationalized. One entire scene showing a family eating in the street was almost certainly staged for the camera. The film was probably made in early May, as one scene can be precisely dated to May 9, and another to sometime after May 1.

Scenes in San Francisco #1 CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1906. SUMMARY This film is a compilation of views and pans among the ruins of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire and dates from Wednesday, May 9, 1906. The film was shot in the downtown area along Market and Mission streets.

Scenes in San Francisco #2 (in two parts) CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1906. This film is a compilation of panoramas filmed in the ruins of downtown San Francisco and outlying refugee camps following the 1906 earthquake and fire. The film dates from Wednesday, May 9, 1906.

A trip down Market Street before the fire (in three parts) SUMMARY This film, shot from the front window of a moving Market Street cable car, is a rare record of San Francisco's principal thoroughfare and downtown area before their destruction in the 1906 earthquake and fire. The filmed ride covers 1.55 miles at an average speed of nearly 10 miles per hour. While there is no production or copyright information on the film, the state of completion of the Flood Building and the Monadnock Building indicate that the year is 1905. Also, the apparent position of the sun in relation to the time visible on the Ferry Building clock point to early September as the month. Market Street, graded through sand dunes in the 1850's, is 120 feet wide, and nearly 3.5 miles long. The street runs northeast from the foot of Twin Peaks to the Ferry Building. Different street grids, diagonal on the northwest side and parallel on the southeast side, create several awkward diagonal intersections along Market Street, contributing to the chaotic traffic situation that is evident in the film. San Francisco's cable cars, which first began operations in 1873, have no power of their own, and operate by "gripping" a moving cable beneath a slot in the street. This is the origin of the name "south of the slot" for the South-of-Market Street district. The Market Street lines, dating from 1883, merged in 1902 to form the United Railroads of San Francisco. Dark cars served westerly neighborhood lines extending along McAllister, Hayes and Haight streets, light cars served southwesterly neighborhoods, with the lines extending along Valencia and Castro streets. The Market Street section of the lines ended at the Ferry Building, where passengers boarded ferries for Oakland, Alameda, or Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay. East of Sutter Street, horse cars ran along Market Street. Independently owned, they ran on side tracks to the Ferry Building. A few electric streetcars, dating from 1892, are seen in the film crossing Market Street. Market Street itself reverted to electric streetcars in 1906, following the earthquake and fire. In all, the film shows some thirty cable cars, four horse cars and four streetcars. An interesting feature of the film is the apparent abundance of automobiles. However, a careful tracking of automobile traffic shows that almost all of the autos seen circle around the camera/cable car many times (one ten times). This traffic was apparently staged by the producer to give Market Street the appearance of a prosperous modern boulevard with many automobiles. In fact, in 1905 the automobile was still something of a novelty in San Francisco, with horse-drawn buggies, carts, vans, and wagons being the common private and business vehicles. The near total lack of traffic control along Market Street emphasizes the newness of the automobile. Granite paving stripes in the street marking ignored pedestrian crosswalks, making the crossing of Market Street on foot a risky venture. The pedestrian "islands" for homeward-bound downtown cable car commuters are among the few signs of order visible in the film.

San Francisco after the earthquake and fire of 1906 (in three parts) SUMMARY This film is made up of five panoramas, four wide and one close-up, of the ruins of downtown San Francisco shortly after the 1906 disaster, plus a panorama and scene in a nearby refugee camp. Original intertitles precede each change of scene, but the locations provided are incorrect for three of the five views. The state of the ruins and camp suggest a date in late April, 1906. The absence of streetcar tracks in the "Grand Avenue" panorama dates that segment to before May 1, 1906.

Additional early San Francisco Films

Arrest in Chinatown, San Francisco, Cal. CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1897. SUMMARY This film shows the arrest and conveyance of a Chinese man in Chinatown, watched by a crowd of onlookers. The precise date of this film and the arrest charge are uncertain. It is possible that the arrest was connected with the smuggling of illegal immigrants from China. By mutual agreement between China and the United States, a small quota of merchants and students was allowed to immigrate yearly, but few legal immigrants actually were of these professions, and illegal immigration continued. One of the San Francisco residences for new arrivals was located at 830/832 Washington Street, the general location from which the arrest party ascends at the start of the film. A second possible cause for the arrest is tong activity. Chinatown at this time was plagued with warfare between various tongs (gang associations of rootless and under-enfranchised immigrants and non-family members). The murder of tong kingpin Fong Ching - called "Little Pete" - in January 1897 set off a flurry of tong violence that continued for months. The practice of tying the queue up on the head, a fashion supposedly confined to tong "hit men" called "highbinders" was in fact common among laborers. The arrested man has followed this practice and his rough canvas jacket suggests he is a peddler or shophand by (legitimate) profession. A third possible arrest charge may involve illegal gambling. Stout's Alley was lined with gambling houses, many owned by the late Fong Ching. Pawnbroker shops were nearby. The circular sign seen at left in the first part of the film is a pawnbroker's sign. All of the local streets had Chinese names. Washington Street was Wa Sheng Shong Hong ("Waystation to Prosperity Street"), Stout's Alley was Lou Shong Hong ("Old Spanish (Mexican Gambler) Alley") and Waverly Place was Ten How Mui Gai ("Ten How Temple Street"). These names are still in use.

Bird's-eye view of San Francisco, Cal., from a balloon CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1902. SUMMARY As early as 1874, passenger balloon flights were being made over San Francisco. San Franciscans - and Americans in general - were fascinated with the thrills and dangers of flight. Although balloon technology had not advanced greatly by the turn of the century, attempts at man-powered flight were sustaining public interest. The era of powered flight arrived in 1903 with the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The balloon used in this film was owned by Professor T. S. Baldwin, who had earlier displayed it in San Francisco in 1893-94. His return to San Francisco followed an engagement at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York (1901). The balloon made headlines shortly before this filmed flight, when it burst its moorings on November 2, 1901, carrying eight terrified passengers fifty miles south to Pescadero. Although nobody was hurt, the balloon was almost swept out to sea. This film shows aerial views of an informal fairground and surrounding north-central San Francisco from Professor Baldwin's captive balloon on a late winter afternoon in late 1901 or early 1902. Restrained by hemp ropes, the hydrogen-filled balloon rose to a height of 1,500 feet before being winched back to the ground. Edward Dudley is named as one of the "aeronauts" who controlled the balloon, which could carry up to twenty passengers at a fare of one dollar per person. The long shadows suggest that this was one of the last flights of the day.

Mabel and Fatty viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco, Cal. (in five parts) CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Keystone Film Company, 1915. SUMMARY The 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition was San Francisco's second fair (following the 1894 Mid-Winter Fair) and her first major exposition. The 1915 fair celebrated both the opening of the newly-completed Panama Canal -- a triumph of Franco-American engineering -- and the newly-rebuilt San Francisco, vital and vigorous after recovering from the 1906 earthquake and fire. The fair opened on February 20, 1915, and closed December 4, 1915, having attracted 18,876,438 visits by several million visitors. Mabel Normand and Fatty Arbuckle were major comedy stars of the silent screen. Mabel Normand (1894-1930) was a brilliant comedienne and prankster with an irrepressible vitality who became a Mack Sennet star. She played opposite such greats as Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle and was perhaps the most talented comic star of the silent screen. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (1887-1933), a vaudeville veteran, became one of Sennet's Keystone Kops in 1913 and rose to stardom. In 1917 he was accused of sexual assault in the death of starlet Virginia Rappe, who collapsed during a wild drinking party he threw in a suite of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Although acquitted, Arbuckle's career was ruined.

Market Street before parade CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1903. SUMMARY This film is an automobile tour of a portion of the arrival parade route of President Theodore Roosevelt along Market Street, San Francisco, on Tuesday, May 12, 1903. The film was shot in the mid-afternoon, shortly before the parade, which traversed this portion of the route in the reverse direction shown here. The earlier portion of the route is seen in the film "Over Route of Roosevelt Parade in an Automobile" (1903).

Panorama, Union Square, San Francisco (in two parts) CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1903. SUMMARY This film shows the crowd gathered in San Francisco for the dedication of the Dewey Monument in Union Square, on Thursday, May 14, 1903, from 9:00am to 9:20am. The Monument, which is still in place, commemorates the victory of Admiral George Dewey and the American fleet over Spanish forces at Manila Bay, the Philippines, on May 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War. The monument is also a tribute to the sailors of the U.S. Navy. Ground was broken for the monument by President McKinley, Roosevelt's predecessor, on May 12, 1901. The dedication of the monument was President Roosevelt's last official act before leaving San Francisco. Union Square was - and is - the center of San Francisco's retail district, and is located two blocks north of Market Street. Originally a tall sand dune, the square was set aside as a public park in 1850. It got its name from the pro-Union rallies held there on the eve of the Civil War. The camera was located on the roof a building at the southeast corner of Stockton Street and Union Square Avenue (today's Maiden Lane). Looking north on Stockton, the camera pans left along Post Street, and across Union Square to Powell Street and the St. Francis Hotel to the west. The pan continues south to Geary Street and on to the Stockton Street intersection, then sweeps back north to Stockton Street before drifting back into the square.

Panoramic view of the Golden Gate CREATED/PUBLISHED United States : Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1902. SUMMARY This film, photographed from the front of a moving steam engine, shows the scenic portion of the Ferries and Cliff House Railroad route along the bluffs and cliffs of Lands End (at the northwest corner of San Francisco) overlooking the Golden Gate and the Marin headlands. The line gave access to the famed Cliff House and Sutro Baths, previously accessed by the Point Lobos toll road through the sand dunes and by a nearby inland railroad. The Ferries and Cliff House line, the youngest and last of San Francisco's steam railroads (five in all) was built between 1886 and 1888 under the direction of owners W.H. Martin, John Ballard, W.J. Adams, Thomas Magee, and H.H. Lynch. The line was absorbed into the United Railroads of San Francisco in 1894 (owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad) and was served by six light and two heavy Baldwin steam engines, the latter used on Sundays. The rails were of English steel. Hurt by competition from a rival - and cheaper - inland line owned by former Mayor Adolph Sutro (owner of the Cliff House and Sutro Baths and enemy of the Southern Pacific Railroad), the line ceased operation shortly before the 1906 earthquake. The locomotives were replaced with electric streetcars of the Sutter and California Street Railroad's #1 line. The streetcars ceased operation after the trackbed was eroded by landslides in 1925. Today the trackbed, partly destroyed by landslides, is a trail in the Lands End unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Monterey cypress trees and other plants were subsequently introduced and have greatly altered the original coastal shrub landscape. The film shows the first 1.5 miles of the 5.25 mile eastbound return trip from the Cliff House and Sutro Baths to the train terminal at California Street and Central Avenue (now Presidio Avenue). From the terminal, passengers could continue by cable car to downtown or to various outlying neighborhoods. The portion of the route not shown was along California Street, through the thinly-developed sand dunes of the Richmond district. The scenic portion was built at an elevation averaging 150 feet, affording superb views of the Golden Gate, the entrance strait to San Francisco Bay.

This CD is created to run on both Windows and Macintosh computers using an HTML menu to navigate to the various movies. IMPORTANT: These CDs are designed to be played in your computer - not your DVD player.