Just close your eyes for a moment and let San Francisco flow into your imagination. From the moment the first nail was hammered and the first bricks were fired to construct San Francisco, she has been one of the most famous cities in the world. The city is just waking up to the start of a new day. Do you see the steep hills, the cable cars rolling along with bells ringing? Do you smell the aroma of seafood at Fisherman’s Wharf? Are you watching the effects of the sunrise on the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge? Perhaps you see the sun as it rises over the East Bay hills. You might be hearing The Animals’ 1967 song “San Franciscan Nights” wafting through your speakers, or maybe Tony Bennett’s 1962 “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” playing on your radio. Can you hear the ships’ horns blow as they pass through the bay? Today, San Francisco is known across the world as an artsy and progressive city, having been the center of the 1960s flower child movement. It is the
city of “coloring outside of the lines,” and the city of acceptance. Now, take yourself back in time but still remaining in San Francisco. Can you hear the sounds of horse hooves and carriage wheels rolling down Market Street, over brick and dirt roadways? Dogs are barking, a young man is selling newspapers on the corner, and shopkeepers are opening their doors for a new day’s business. Can you smell the odor of coal burning as smoke rises from the chimneys, warming homes in the cold morning? It was this San Francisco, as lively and alluring as today’s city, which came to an abrupt end in late April 1906. Of all the severe earthquakes which have hit the Bay Area during recorded history, the Great Earthquake and Fire became the most famous of them all, and has never had a serious competitor. It marked the end of the old city and the beginning of the new one we all know and love.