Mission Late

San Francisco?

I NEED a description of San Francisco life before the earthquake in 1906. For example their daily lives, the types of entirtainment, ect. Any thing would be helpful so please please please help! I will accept websites too as long as its not wikipedia. Thank you =]

Public Comments

1. Hi there, Life at the turn of the 20th century was pretty boring by today's standards. There was no tv, no radio, the telephone had just come into common use, and electrification was in it's infancy. Most people got around on horseback, or horse drawn carriage, or simply walked. Common household appliances like washing machines were almost none existant. People worked much harder and were less productive, but possibly more content. Foods were fresh or dried or salted/canned. Out of season foods were mostly unobtainable. No refrigeration (at least not recognizable by most of us). Mail came by train. Long distance travel was by same or by ship. An ocean crossing depending on the vessel could take up to a month. Not for the faint of heart. San Francisco was a fair size city and had more amenities than folks would have had in smaller more remote places. Public transit was the street railway (ie cable cars). I am sure there are copies of the daily newspaper from this period which could shed much more detailed information on this subject but i hope this helps get you started.
2. Here are links to the SF Museum and other sites that have various tidbits about life in the city before the 1906 quake. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/index3.html http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/index2.html http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/ http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/sfh2.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/kron/archive/1999/02/10/ba2k1900.DTL&type=ba2k http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/kron/archive/1999/02/10/ba2kplague.DTL&type=ba2k
3. The earthquake hit a few days before my father's fourteenth birthday. He and his parents lived in a section called the Western Addition. As I am told, they lived a comfortable middle class life. My grandfather, a Spanish American war veteran, went back and forth between being a harbor pilot and head of customs, depending on which party was in power in Washington. His wife ran a dry goods store for proper Victorian ladies. They enjoyed the theater (a relative of one of them was a performer of some sort), and took frequent trips by ferry across the bay into Marin County to travel the countryside. It seems to have been a genteel and civilized life. Members of the family on both sides involved themselves in politics (grandmother had a cousin whom the Mayor put on the Committee of Public Safety after the fire). Those who liked things more rowdy had a fairly wide open "sin city" section of town to visit, of which you can read in Jack London. The ugly underside was the racism treating ChinaTown, whose residents were denied citizenship and kept segregated. I have the impression the white residents of the day didn't appreciate Chinese food as much as we do today.
4. Get a copy of the book "A Crack in the Edge of the World - The Great American Earthquake of 1906" by Simon Winchester, Viking Books, 2005. It is very readable and should give you all the information you want.