Perhaps the only good outcome of tragedy is people coming together to pull through it. In the case of Anna Amelia Holshouser, she led the community effort to help others after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
San Francisco was originally built on swamplands back in the 19th century. Once the city started to grow drastically after the 1849 California Gold Rush, the residents did what they could do construct buildings on the shallow wetlands. To create stable ground they needed infill. It was common practice to fill in the wetlands with dirt, rocks and mud pumped in from the bottom of the bay. In some cases, garbage was put down first. Dirt would then be heaped on top where roads and buildings arose.
This construction method would eventually put the city in danger. San Francisco’s early residents had no clue that they had built a city approximately 10 miles from the San Andreas Fault. The proximity to the fault meant that the city was prone to earthquakes.
A northwest-facing view of the San Andreas fault, looking toward the Carrizo Plain. (Jw4nvc/CC BY 3.0)A Worst-Case Scenario
In April 1906, San Francisco residents experienced its first devastating earthquake. Nearly 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault shifted suddenly at approximately 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906. The rupture caused a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that violently shook the area. People hundreds of miles away in Los Angeles, as well as in other states—Oregon and Nevada—felt the quake.
The epicenter of the earthquake wasn’t in San Francisco; it struck just a short distance away out to sea. Geologists have since calculated that the earthquake moved over a mile and a half per second. “I could see it actually coming,” a policeman in San Francisco said, according to The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. “The whole street was undulating. It was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me.”
The violent quake twisted city streets, knocked down chimneys, and crumbled buildings. The city’s fire chief died instantly when a chimney collapsed on top of him in bed. But the tragedy didn’t end there.
The earthquake caused gas lines to erupt and water pipes to burst. One account even talks about a resident seeing asphalt heaved up due to a gas line explosion. Other buildings sunk into the ground. In one such situation, 9-year-old Erica Muncie and her family escaped their home from the third floor attic window. This window was level with the street, as the house had sunken two stories into the ground.
A fire then ignited across the city due to the broken gas lines. To make matters worse, with the water pipes broken, the city couldn’t extinguish the flames. Authorities did all they could to help, including the use of dynamite to blow up buildings around the blaze to create a fire line.
Few buildings remained standing in San Francisco after the fire and earthquake’s two-fold destruction. (Public Domain)A Heroine’s Initiative
Although little is known about Holshouser’s life before the earthquake, sources suggest she earned a living in San Francisco as a beautician and masseuse. She was sleeping in her Sacramento Street apartment on the morning of April 18, when she was abruptly thrown from her bed to the floor. She then took the time to dress herself, did her hair and put on makeup while feeling her home and the ground underneath it violently shaking.
Holshouser came down 120 stairs to the street. She went to her beauty shop only to find it completely destroyed. She saved what she could from it, then united with a friend. The two first camped out downtown in Union Square. However, when the flames came too close, soldiers escorted them farther away.
The two eventually settled in the 1,000-acre Golden Gate Park. The first day, Holshouser and her friend laid out a quilt. They shivered in the cold, foggy weather while watching the flames dance on the city buildings above them.
On their third day at the park, Holshouser jumped into action. She found sheets, carpets and blankets to stitch together into a makeshift tent. It provided much-needed shelter to 22 people, including 13 children.
With only one tin can for drinking and one pie plate to eat off of, Holshouser started a small soup kitchen. Others started to help once they saw her efforts. People went into collapsed houses and pulled out stoves to cook on.
There came a point where survivors could only watch the damage from the safe area at Golden Gate Park. (Public Domain)People from Oakland sent supplies to Holshouser. The Oakland people in coined Holshouser’s kitchen the “Palace Hotel” after one of the city’s hotels. Before it burnt down, it was one of the world’s largest.
Holhouser’s makeshift kitchen then got a boost when people arrived with wagonloads of supplies from Tonopah, Nevada, a mining boomtown. The kitchen ended up serving around 200 to 300 people per day. Using Holhouser as an example, other soup kitchens started popping up around town.
A postcard depicting the ruins of the Crocker mansions after the 1906 San Francisco fire. (Public Domain)In the end, the earthquake and fire cost the city around 3,000 lives. Half the city’s population was rendered homeless. The earthquake and the fire destroyed just over four square miles of the city, including over 28,000 buildings.
Total property damage estimates from the tragedy nearly reached over $500 million. Experts conclude that the reconstruction costs would total $32 billion in money today. However, the city’s residents were now newly united and prepared to rebuild the city to make it better than ever.
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