San Francisco 1906: The Great Quake and Fires

On the morning of April 18, 1906, an event that lasted less than a minute changed San Francisco forever. An earthquake and a series of fires devastated much of the city and had long-term ramifications. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. Tracy.
As you know, I recently took a couple of days
off sort of. I still did some work, but I

(00:21):
went to one of my very favorite cities, San Francisco. Uh.
I go to San Francisco with some regularity, and this
has not happened to me before, but I noticed on
this recent visit one of the city's historical moments kept
coming up in conversation in a variety of different places,
like with our lift drivers are like, so I wanted
to bring it up at dinner and I was like,

(00:42):
did somebody run an article? Um? And it also came
up at the bed and breakfast where I like to
stay when I'm in San Francisco, which is the Monte Cristo,
which I'm in love with. UM. And that B ANDB
has its own really fun history. It was a bordello
and a saloon and then a speakeasy before it started
its life as a hotel. But one of the interesting
things about it and what had come up in conversation

(01:03):
with one of the staff while I was eating breakfast
was that it had been built in the eighteen seventies
and it was one of the buildings that survived the
nineteen o six earthquake and fires that destroyed so much
of the city, Like it came very close to this building,
but it remained intact. And in two thousand one, previous
host Sarah and Bablina did an episode called History's Unforgettable Fires,

(01:24):
and on that episode they talked about a handful of
significant fire incidents, including the fire that ravaged San Francisco
in nineteen o six. But today I thought it might
be worth giving this particular incident a little bit more attention,
because whenever you're doing one of those survey episodes, you
can't get really in depth on anything. The earthquake itself
remains geologically significant in terms of resulting learnings, and we're

(01:44):
going to talk a little bit about that coming up,
and the devastation that followed. It really does serve as
a terrifying example of just how quickly a really well
established city and its infrastructure can be completely leveled. And
the city was so damaged by this whole series of
events that Jack London wrote, after all of the events
were talking about today, quote, surrender was complete, essentially, like

(02:07):
the city was just gone. And there is also an
important story here about the city's immigrant population, specifically the
residents of Chinatown, which had grown into a very well
established and very prosperous community by nineteen o six. And
we're going to get to all of that, but first,
to set the stage, we're going to talk just a
little bit about San Francisco's beginnings as a city. In

(02:29):
the spring of nineteen o six, San Francisco had an
estimated population of about four hundred thousand people, so it
was a pretty bustling city. But like a lot of cities, uh,
it did not start with a lot of planning. Of course,
there were native people in the area long before any
Europeans got there. But Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga, who Spanish,

(02:50):
was working with Reverend Francisco Palou and they're credited with
establishing a military post at the tip of the San
Francisco Peninsula in seventeen seventy six, and over time that
little outpost evolved into the Presidio. William Anthony Richardson, an Englishman,
is cited as putting the first dwelling in the area,
and that happened in eighteen thirty five, so sometime after

(03:12):
that initial military post, that dwelling, as it's sometimes referred to,
was really just a simple tent, but a settlement kind
of grew around Richardson's tent, and that settlement was known
as your Ba Buena. And the U. S Government was
already well aware of the potential importance of California and
specifically the Bay Area because it is very good place

(03:33):
to do trade from because that same year that Richardson
started his settlement, the US was trying to buy that
land from Mexico. The United States gained control of northern
California eleven years later during the Mexican American War. Here
Babuena was renamed San Francisco in early eighteen forty seven,
and then, of course, two years later, the coastal town
was gripped by the gold rush. That led to a

(03:55):
huge growth period as thousands of people relocated to the
city in a very sort of amount of time, hoping
to strike it rich Yeah, that's come up on the
show a number of times, just how quickly there was
this huge population influx to San Francisco. And the surrounding areas,
and that haphazard nature of the city's growth meant that
it was pretty organic in its structure. More to the point,

(04:17):
there just really wasn't much in the way of city planning,
so things like utilities and neighborhood layouts were developed over
the years on the fly, and this was something that
people recognized as risky. For example, if you listen to
our episode on Levi strouss awhile Back, who died several
years before the events that we're talking about today, you
might recall that he was already in his lifetime advocating

(04:39):
for building regulations that would reduce the risk of fire
spreading in the city of a fire broke out, because
they already recognized were kind of tightly packed and not
really well planned out. So this was an issue that
was being discussed among city and business leaders long before
the precarious nature of the city's infrastructure was so deeply
challenged and ultimately collapsed at the nineteen six quake. On

(05:01):
the morning of April eighteenth, nineteen o six, an event
happened that lasted less than a minute but changed the
city really forever. At five twelve am, the earthquakes started
and it was over at five thirteen. The actual length
of the quake is listed is forty five seconds to
a minute, depending on the source and where the report
was coming from. The epicenter of the quake was off shore,

(05:23):
and shocks were felt as far north as the mid
Oregon coast all the way down to Los Angeles, and
it also traveled inland all the way to Nevada. It's
full length of the rupture. That's the area of slip
on the Earth's crust that's been determined to have been
two six miles or four d seventy seven kilometers, and
the magnitude has been estimated at a number of different numbers,

(05:44):
from seven point seven to eight point three on the
Richter scale. And there were immediate collapses of buildings throughout
the city when this quake happened. The California Theater and
Hotel on Bush Street low structural integrity and its dome
fell into the nearby fire station. It mortally wounded the
fire chief engineer, Dennis T. Sullivan. He died several days

(06:04):
later of his injuries. Another fire station on Howard Street
also had part of a hotel collapse into it, killing
fireman James O'Neill, and there were a lot of other
fatalities as well as buildings went down, but losing fire
personnel would prove to be a particularly devastating problem. So
the quake caused structural damage all through the city, but

(06:24):
the situation became exponentially more grave immediately afterward. The city's
gas lines had been ruptured and that set off a
series of fires. To make matters worse, San Francisco's water
mains had also been seriously damaged in the quake, and
that made the task of fighting the fire just that
much more difficult. Plus, the city had lost a lot

(06:45):
of fireman in the earthquake. Initially, Yeah, we're going to
talk about it a little bit later, but Sullivan in
particular was a particularly hard loss. Uh two fires started
right after the quake, one south of Market and the
other north of Market Street near the water, and the
following day two additional fires began, one on Hayes Valley
and another in a restaurant and whend conditions really helped

(07:06):
these various fires spread to the west and then from
there they like got a stronghold and they just kept spreading.
At six thirty am on eighteenth, which was a little
more than an hour after the quakes started. All the
troops from Fort Mason were requested to report to the Mayor,
Eugene Smith's immediately. Within about thirty minutes, army soldiers were
arriving at the Hall of Justice and were assigned patrol

(07:29):
duties around the city to assess damage and to offer help.
Just as the troops were getting started with this effort,
and after shock hit at fourteen am, and a lot
of buildings that had remained standing after the main quake
a few hours earlier had sustained significant structural damage and
they collapsed in this aftershock. Then at ten am, more
troops arrived. These were coming from Fort McDowell on Angel Island.

(07:52):
The U. S. Navy cruiser the USS Chicago, received word
around the same time about the situation that was unfold
against San Francisco. It made its way to the city.
This was the first use of a telegraph to communicate
a natural disaster. The U. S. S. Chicago would become
instrumental in the evacuation of the city's residents, and then
the USS Prebble made its way to the city to

(08:14):
to offer medical assistance. Fires continued to claim buildings throughout
the city, including government buildings, the financial district, fire stations,
and hospitals. As the fire spread, crews worked frantically to
try to move people to safety and combat the blazes
that were starting at this point all over the city.
Coming up, we are going to talk about a really

(08:35):
bad move that was made in an effort to combat
the fires, and we'll get to that after we have
a quick sponsor break. In the afternoon of April eighteenth,
so at this point several hours had passed since the
quake and the fires were beginning, a decision was made
which has come to be seen pretty clearly as one

(08:57):
of the worst possible moves. The plan was to dynamite
some buildings in the city to create a firebreak. So
the idea was that if some buildings were destroyed but
before the fire got to them, they then could not
catch fire and continue to spread the fire, and thus
a barrier around the blaze would be created. This is
actually an approach that the fire chief engineer, Dennis T.

(09:18):
Sullivan that we've talked about earlier, had been an advocate of.
He had been talking about this long before this incident
happened as a way to potentially fight big fires, and
he would have been the one to execute such an idea,
but because he was dying, he could not, and there
weren't other people on hand with his level of expertise,
so proceeding without him and without a real understanding and

(09:39):
knowledge of how to do this turned out to be disastrous.
And like, this is not a technique that he was
just making up. This is something that had been used
in other historical fires, in some cases successfully. Yeah, and
he had done a lot of research about it to
figure out how it would work in their city, right, So,
like the core idea of it was not the issue.

(10:00):
The army had provided the fire department with explosives, but
the type of explosive that was provided was black gunpowder,
and the novice use of those explosives did not really
level the buildings as intended. It was more like it
blew them apart, and it sent burning shrapnel through the air.
That was in a city that was already engulfed in flame,

(10:20):
with water nearly impossible to come by, it's easy to
see how this really went wrong. In some cases, the
soldiers who were tasked with facing the blaze took out
buildings using artillery these incorrect methods just kept being used
while the city was burning, So as the firefighters and
the soldiers retreated from the spreading flames, they kept trying

(10:42):
to blow up the areas they had just left, not
realizing that they were making the whole situation worse. Yeah,
it's one of those things where it's a directive given
to people who don't have any training. So it's not
as though they understood why, like, oh, this, this is
the wrong way to do this, Like no, he really knew.
They were really grasping at straws. And the fire made

(11:03):
its way through Knob Hill in Chinatown, North Beach and
the Mission District. As residents fled, often with nothing but
the clothes that they wore. The dead that could be
collected that we're not trapped in buildings were brought to
public squares and parks. Some were buried in those same
spaces because there was just nowhere else to take them.
As the casualties mounted. Charles B. Sedgwick, who was editor

(11:27):
of the periodical The British Californian, wrote an account of
his experience in the earthquake and fire in the nine
six American Builders Review, and his account is really fascinating.
He writes candidly about the severity of the destruction and
his personal revelation that what was happening was a historic
level tragedy. He mentions like other historical moments where cities

(11:48):
have been destroyed, and kind of being very aware that
that this was happening where he was. But he also
writes this quote that night I climbed to the summit
of Russian Hill to view the conflagration, and never shall
I forget the site. It was weirdly beautiful. A thousand
banners of flame were streaming in the cloudless sky from
spires and domes and lofty roofs, the underseen being a

(12:09):
sea of glowing gold and tumultuous but brilliant, beyond anything
I had ever seen or conceived of, and magnificent in
the irresistible power. It's great flaming waves leaping upon or
dashing against the strongest creations of man and obliterating them.
Noise as of a hundred battles in progress with myriad
giant guns in play, told of the fierce, relentless destruction,

(12:33):
as towering buildings eaten, loose, toppled, and fell, or were
lifted skyward by thundering dynamite to then scatter and drop,
throwing up huge fiery splashes from the burning sea. But
he also writes in this account that during the fires
and even during the evacuation, most people seemed pretty upbeat
and cheerful. They helped each other out as much as

(12:54):
they could. This was almost undoubtedly because they were in
shock and having to focus on the basic hasks of
rescue and survival, and Sedgwick wrote quote, few of the
people who went through the San Francisco experience will ever again,
no fear I think. He also wrote that in the aftermath,
when the fires were finally put out, then the emotional
crash came as people saw how much they really had lost.

(13:17):
But this is a different take on the situation than
most accounts suggest. So other accounts describe the scene in
San Francisco as completely chaotic, not this sort of oddly
pleasant experience that Sedgwick had, with looting and other lawless
behavior a primary concern. This was so worrying that the
mayor issued the following proclamation on day one of the disaster. Quote,

(13:39):
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. I have
directed all the gas and electric lighting companies not to
turn on gas or electricity until I order them to
do so. You may therefore expect the city to remain

(14:02):
in darkness for an indefinite time. I request all citizens
to remain at home from darkness until daylight every night
until order is restored. I warn all citizens of the
danger of fire from damaged or destroyed chimneys, broken or
leaking gas pipes or fixtures, or any like cause. Law
enforcement was so concerned that drunkenness would lead to violence

(14:25):
that many saloon owners found their supply seized and destroyed.
It's estimated that thirty thousand dollars worth of liquor was
destroyed as this preemptive move to try to keep the peace.
Later on, those saloon owners made claims for restitution to
the government, and by the time the fires were put out,
which only happened after three days of the city burning,
San Francisco was obviously not the city that it had

(14:48):
been on April eighteenth. Before the earthquake, five hundred and
eight city blocks covering four point seven square miles had burned.
More than twenty eight thousand of the city's buildings had
been destroyed by fire, more than three thousand people had died,
and of that population of four hundred thousand that we
mentioned earlier, two hundred fifty thousand were left homeless. There

(15:10):
was an estimated four hundred million dollars worth of damage.
You'll see various different numbers, some a little higher than that,
but that is nineteen o six value. That is not
a number adjusted for modern equivalents. The ferry building had
been saved by the U. S. Navy, so fairies were
able to get people out of the city, and the
railroads suspended fair collection while they took people to other

(15:31):
towns for refuge. A lot of people stayed and started
clean up as soon as they could return to their property.
While this devastation led some to proclaim that San Francisco
was gone for good, that was obviously not the case.
We mentioned San Francisco's founding an explosive and organic growth
at the beginning of the episode. Because of its unplanned nature.
Of course, the city's infrastructure and layout had not really

(15:54):
had much forethought. In the aftermath of the devastation. Plans
were made to rebuild with a clearer and grander vision
for the city, but government officials were feeling the need
to prove their cities resilience and they rushed a lot
of this work. Also, things became mired in bribes and
underhanded dealings during the process that eventually led to a

(16:14):
series of trials known as the San Francisco Graft Trials. Sure,
outside of the scope of today's episode, but Holly assures
me it will be a show in the future. There's
no way I can't do it. There's like shots fired
in a courtroom. There's like a crazy argue. It's a
really good story, full of high drama and illicit behavior.

(16:36):
But it is also because of the events of nineteen
o six that the areas outside of San Francisco grew significantly. Oakland, Fremont,
San Jose and other areas all experience population growth, first
as people moved there away from the fire, although San
Jose had damage of its own, and then as the
Bay area rebuilt, more people moved there from outside that

(16:57):
had not been there in the first place. And it
it really did have this large explosion of population again,
but this time with a little more planning. But this
growth came with its own problems. Racism was pretty rampant.
There were some areas that were very clear that they
were not going to be welcoming to, for example, immigrants
or people of color. Uh So it wasn't as though
everything was rebuilt in a uh utopia where everybody was

(17:20):
cool with each other. But it was a huge time
of growth for the Bay Area and the city surrounding
San Francisco. The other big thing to come out of
this was a sudden focus on the scientific community on
the San Andreas fault system. The United States first seismographs
had been in use for less than twenty years. Other
countries around the globe had been researching the science of earthquakes,

(17:41):
but outside of a pretty small group of researchers, this
wasn't a significant area of study in the United States.
Yet the earthquake of six changed that though, And to
be clear, some of the seeming slowness in this space
was because seismology, even abroad, was still in its very
early stages. German scientists Alpha beganer, who you are going

(18:02):
to hear more about in coming episodes, was still six
years away from introducing the idea of continental drift and
the theory of plate tectonics wasn't developed until the nineteen sixties.
So even though other countries were working in earthquake study,
everyone was still really in the very beginnings of this science. Yeah,
by total coincidence, m researching an episode on Alfred beganor

(18:25):
right now as we speak, not literally while we're in
the studio, but as soon as we're done, I'm getting
back to it. So following this earthquake, you see, Berkeley
Geology Department head Andrew C. Lawson started amassing data and
he was named chair of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission
was established by California Governor George C. Party. That commission

(18:48):
published a full report after two years of work, and
that's generally referred to as the laws In report. The
report set the bar for scientific investigation and included work
from twenty different science tis. It's a really thorough compilation
of data, including maps and photos of the damage and
measurements of the movement of the earth around San Andrea's fault. Yeah,

(19:10):
as a complete science sidebar, I will mention that where
the epicenter was determined by research has shifted a few
times over the years. As our scientific knowledge has gotten
a little bit more refined along the way. So but
really with the loss and report, all of these ideas started,
and all of this research really began, and the report

(19:32):
formed the basis of earthquake knowledge related to California, and
it also informed future construction and scientific observational guidelines. So
that meant that earthquake hazards were reduced because predictive modeling
was developed as a consequence to warn people of impending quakes,
and buildings were made to better withstand shaking. And it
really all goes back to the scientific community really rallying

(19:54):
right after this event. Coming up, we'll talk about a
very different topic, and that's how racist attitudes towards Chinatown
played out in the aftermath of the nineteen six quake.
But first we will pause and have another quick word
from one of our sponsors. In the wake of the

(20:16):
earthquake and fire, the displaced population of Chinatown in particular
based a really harrowing situation. The whole city was in
a bad state, right, people were displaced, more than half
of the city had lost their homes. Water was very
difficult to get, but Chinatown had a whole different problem
and We've talked on the show before about the Page
Act of eighteen seventy five and the Chinese Exclusion Act

(20:37):
of eighteen eighty two, both of which were intended to
stop immigration from China to the US, and as the
initial swell of the Gold Russia's prosperity had ebbed, animosity
toward immigrants had swelled, particularly Chinese people that were living
in California and San Francisco's Chinatown was viewed with suspicion
and outright hostility. This neighborhood was destroyed in the earth quake.

(21:00):
An estimated fifteen thousand of its residents lost their homes
in the disaster. It offered city officials this chance to
try to push the residents of Chinatown out permanently and
take over their neighborhood's real estate, which was really lucrative.
Most of Chinatown's displaced population sought refuge in nearby Oakland,
that also had its own well established Chinatown, but the

(21:23):
people that stayed behind were segregated away from other refugees
at the presidio. Meanwhile, all the other residents were allowed
to return to their property immediately after the fire was extinguished. Yeah,
but those Chinese residents were not they continued to be held.
City officials wanted to keep the displaced residents away from
their neighborhood to prevent rebuilding efforts in Chinatown. The city

(21:45):
government established a General Committee for the Chinese Relocation with
the intent to determine exactly what to do with this
entire community of people that the city no longer wanted,
and one possibility was to establish a new area of
for them outside the city limits. But even early on
it was recognized that this was not the best idea

(22:06):
because there was a lot of business done among the
occupants of Chinatown as well as tourism, and that included
taxes that the city desperately wanted to keep collecting. It
was going to need that money as part of the
rebuilding effort. And while this isn't in any way suggesting
that racism was not an issue in all of this,
there is an interesting thing that happens where there's a
mentality shift that's noted. Uh. It came up in a

(22:29):
paper that I was reading, where this is the first
time on record that people kind of acknowledge that instead
of thinking that Chinese immigrants were hurting the economy, they
were recognizing that they were a significant and important part
of the city's financial well being. That was something that
Chinatown's residents already knew, and they weren't passively waiting to

(22:50):
see what city officials would do. They immediately spoke out
against what was happening. Through their relationships with the Protestant
and Catholic churches, which offered spaces to gather, the residents
of Chinatown got organized. Leaders from the Chinese community gave
statements to the press that made it clear that they
would fight efforts to relocate them and that they were
as a community united in this stance. On May one,

(23:14):
nine six, the San Francisco Call ran an article. This
contained some very outdated language in terms of how Chinese
people were referred to, but it reported quote Celestial landowners
hold that they cannot be deprived of their rights. Fifty
Chinese owners of property in Old Chinatown have decided to
rebuild on the sites where their buildings were destroyed. Legal

(23:34):
advisers of the Chinese, the Chinese Consul General and the
Vice Consul King Ao Yang, gave it as their opinion
that the owners or lessees of land in Chinatown cannot
be deprived of the right to rebuild if they so desired.
It has been decided to resist any attempt of the
authorities to compel the Chinese to establish themselves at Hunter's

(23:54):
Point against the wishes of those who owned property in
the old territory. So throughout all this conflict, the Benevolent
Six Companies, which he might see, sided with a number
of slightly different names, including the Chinese Six Companies, or
by the name that it's known by today, which is
Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. I was vital to the organizational efforts.

(24:15):
This group has its own complex and nuanced history, but
by nineteen o six it was working essentially as an
internal support and umbrella organization for the people of Chinatown.
We should mention that the group had expanded outside of California,
but their headquarters were still in San Francisco, and the
Benevolent Six Companies organization was able to leverage its position
to reach out to the Chinese government, and as a result,

(24:38):
a delegation of Chinese officials made a public statement and
requested a meeting with Governor Party, and their statement began.
This is said in the point of view of the
person giving the statement, quote, I have heard the report
that the authorities intend to remove Chinatown, but I cannot
believe it. America is a free country, and every man
has a right to occupy land which he owns, provided

(25:00):
that he makes no nuisance. The Chinese government owns the
lot on which the Chinese Consulate of San Francisco formerly stood,
and this site on Stockton Street will be used again.
It is the intention of our government to build a
new building on the property, paying strict attention to the
new building regulations which may be framed. While that statement
was specifically about the consulate, the officials used their meeting

(25:22):
with the governor to make the convincing case that Chinatown
was a driver of significant tax revenue and trade. There
was also a request that Chinese officials be allowed to
enter the area of the presidio while the city's Chinese
refugees are being held under guard, so those officials could
administer aid. The city of San Francisco also started seeing
more and more just how valuable the economic influence of

(25:45):
its Chinese residence was. Some business owners just got tired
of this whole situation and opted to leave the Bay
Area and start over in new cities, often at the
invitation of those cities. Delegates from Seattle and Portland had
actually arrived in San Francisco to reach out to displace
Chinese business owners and offer them assistance if they wanted

(26:05):
to move to their cities. That was a little bit
scary for the leadership of San Francisco, who realized they
were clearly getting rid of something that other people saw
as an asset. And though this caused a permanent dip
in the Chinese population of the city, one that actually
took decades to make up, the majority of Chinatown's residents
really wanted more than anything to just continue their lives

(26:26):
in San Francisco, which they considered their home at this point.
After the lobbying efforts, protests, and statements that San Francisco's
Chinese community would not just accept relocation, as well as
a serious realization about the fiscal value of keeping Chinatown
inside the city's municipality, city officials finally relented and allowed

(26:46):
the residents of Chinatown to go back to their neighborhood
and start rebuilding the new Chinatown. As most of the
rebuilt San Francisco was built with city planning at the
forefront to make it better than before. Ride up with
the San Francisco Call described the newly rebuilt Chinatown as
quote barbarously gorgeous. Again, we're super not saying that racism

(27:07):
towards the Chinese and other Asian communities was suddenly abandoned.
I mean, the fact the word barbarously is right there
before gorgeous nods to that. Um. Also, if you would
like to like hear more about this rebuilding process, there's
a great episode of Invisible that's like specifically about how
they redesigned Chinatown. Yeah, it's also interesting there are that

(27:30):
entire article that calls it barbarously gorgeous. It's a weird
series of praise and backhanded compliments where it's like, it's
so beautiful and amazing. I hope it doesn't start to
stink like it did before. Like it's a really strange,
horrible while they're like acknowledging, how like what an astonishing
and absolutely beautiful accomplishment it was in the rebuild, like

(27:53):
they couldn't resist getting in some really grossed racist barbs
along the way. Uh. Yeah, it's a again fascinating. Even
while they acknowledged people's value, they still had to like
getting insults, which is a very strange and dismaying thing
to read. Um. There is still information today that is

(28:15):
surfacing about the fire and Chinatown specifically, in two fifteen,
while construction was being done on the Muni light rail
line from Chinatown to South Market, in archaeological excavation that
was running, concurrently discovered a number of industrial showing machines
that were manufactured in the late nineteenth century. That find
was right in front of today's Chinese American Citizens Alliance

(28:37):
building on Stockton Street, and it offered inside into an
area of the city that wasn't particularly well documented in
nineteen o six. Even things in Chinatown that were documented
have been pretty elusive from historical standpoint because the documentation
of where things were was largely lost in the earthquake
and the fires that followed. City Hall, for example, had

(28:58):
burned to the ground and with it went the census
records and citizenship documentation. Yes, sorting that whole citizenship status
situation out uh was its own big mess. Uh. There
are certainly, um some indications that some people took advantage
of that situation and could just say like, no, I

(29:18):
was a citizen, but my records are burned. But also
people that were citizens had no proof either it was
a very strange time. Um. But because this area was
more than eight feet below the street where they found
these sewing machines, that discovery indicated that there was probably
a basement factory that existed on that site, and this

(29:38):
meant that researchers could use that information to try to identify,
from what records still do exist, the garment factory that
had been there and hopefully eventually identify some of the
workers that had been there, uh and thus create a
little bit more robust historical record of the neighborhood and
its citizens. And that's something that takes on considerable significance.

(30:00):
And you consider the treatment of the displaced Chinese population
after the disaster, and as the city continues construction projects
finds like these are more and more difficult, and pre
nineteen o six discoveries are becoming ever more rare. But
for Chinatown in particular, it's piecing together a big, big
gap in their record, so it becomes more and more important.

(30:21):
I don't know what the status is on the research
into what building was there and finding out who the
people that worked in that factory where I couldn't did
not manage to dig up more info on it. So
I'm not sure what status that that research is at,
but it's fascinating. I sure do love San Francisco's Chinatown,
the eating I have done in San Francisco's China Town.

(30:45):
That that invisible episode I think it's called It's Chinatown.
It's from I think Yum and it's it talks about
how they designed that that Chinatown neighborhood and then how
that influenced other city these chinatown It's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean San Francisco's Chinatown is often uh considered like

(31:09):
the original United States Chinatown in a metro area, and
so it has been I said, very influential, um, throughout
our country and others. Frankly uh and again, oh the
food I have eaten there and I just love it.
It's it is a really beautiful part of the city.
It makes me so happy just to walk around there. Um.

(31:31):
I have two pieces of listener mail. One is about
our Halloween episodes. Uh. It comes from our listener Chip,
who writes, Dear Tracy and Holly on my list of
favorite things about Autumn and Halloween. Up there with camp fires,
pumpkin pie, and frosty mornings are the stuff you missed
in history class. Spooky History episodes The Devil's Footprints of
Devonshire and The Beast of Jevadon are my top favorites.

(31:53):
Thank you for making the best season of the year
even more enjoyable, and I hope the season is a
very happy one for you and your family's happy Halloween.
Even though we're past Halloween, every day is Halloween in
my heart, so I'm always happy to read more and
thank you so much. Chip, I too love all Halloween things.
Like I said, every day is Halloween to me. Our
second postcard is from our listener Katie, and it's just delightful.

(32:15):
S Hi, Holly and Tracy. I was at the Wisconsin
Historical Society's Historic Preservation Conference and this postcard made me
think of you. Thank you for all the work you
do making history accessible. And I wanted to mention this
postcard because the image on it is automobile suits for dogs,
which I love. It's super cute. It's basically it's funny

(32:37):
because it's a historical thing. But if you've ever known
people with dogs, you might know that there are things
called doggles, which are goggles made for dogs so that
they can stick their heads out of car windows or
right inside cars, etcetera, without debris getting in their eyes.
And that's essentially what most of these suits are based on.
They're like a little jacket for the dog with a
pair of doggles and one of the drawings it's all sketch, obvious,

(33:00):
slee and one of the drawings actually looks like a cat,
which cracks me up in a whole other way. So
thank you, Katie, because that made me smile and cackle
a little bit, which is always great fun. If you
would like to write to us, you can absolutely do that.
Our email address is History Podcast at how stoneworks dot com.
You can also find us everywhere on social media as
Missed in History, and you can visit our website missed

(33:21):
in History dot com to check out every episode that's
ever existed, as well as all of the new ones
going forward. Uh. If you would like to subscribe to
the show, that sounds like a grand idea to me.
You can do that on the I Heart Radio app,
at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is that you listen Stuffy.

(33:42):
Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radios.
How stuff Works for more podcasts for my Heart Radio
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
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