Unrecorded map of San Francisco highlighting the “burned district” following the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The San Francisco Earthquake struck Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906 with an estimated magnitude of 7.9. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for days. As many as 3000 people died, more than half the population was rendered homeless, and four square miles of the city were laid waste. The quake and subsequent fires are together remembered as one of the worst natural disasters in American history.
Just as today, the American public was fascinated by mayhem, and publishers churned out a flood of imagery depicting the destruction of San Francisco. Offered here is a hitherto-unrecorded example of the genre, being a pocket map of the city with the enormous “burned district” highlighted in orange. If anything, the map understates the extent of the destruction: the burnt district was among the city’s most densely populated, while much of the area shown had been laid out for development but was at most lightly inhabited.
The map is tipped into printed card stock covers promoting the lithographic work of Britton & Rey, “The Pioneer Lithographers of Greater San Francisco,” who, “in renewing our facilities on a larger scale after the Fire… have been guided by an experience of over Fifty years in serving patrons who place quality above all other considerations.” Indeed, after over more than five decades in business, by 1906 the firm was nearing the end of its long and successful run.
The map is unrecorded. We find no other examples, though we note another 1906 map by Britton & Rey entitled Map of greater San Francisco, showing contour lines and burned district (OCLC lists a sole example, held by Santa Clara University.) Despite the apparent similarities, our map has no features that could be construed as contour lines. The map was reissued, with a somewhat different title, in the Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1908).
References
Not in OCLC or Rumsey.