Lotta Shaking

Here are 40 remarkable photos of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco, curated by Alan Taylor at the Atlantic. As of April 18, 110 years have passed now since that day.

All of my grandparents were on the far end of the Mission District, a mile south of the furthest reach of the fire that levelled much of San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake. As for the earthquake, one grandmother never spoke of it, and the other always called it "The Fire," preferring, like so many who lived through it, to memorialize the enormity with that all-consuming word instead of the other.

They Always Called It "The Fire"

My grandparents all had stories of the 1906 earthquake, how my grandmother was saved by her sister from being crushed by a falling cabinet, how her father's team of horses kept busy for weeks hauling people's stuff out Mission Street all the way to Colma, all of them, father's and mother's people, living in the Mission District and thus spared the utter obliteration of the fire that consumed downtown, but caught up in the ancillary destruction of broken buildings and streets and lives that visited everyone from Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz in the wake of the enormous temblor that struck that day 102 years ago.

Here are some panoramas the city from that time.