"A vivid and realistic story graphically depicting San Francisco's destruction."
A Stark Image of the San Francisco Fire, with a Promise of a Brighter Future
Scarce early account of the San Francisco fire by Frank Thompson Searight, with a rare separately printed map of San Francisco, illustrating the devastation caused by the 1906 Earthquake and fire.
The map illustrates in a pictorial style the area which the fire burned for three days, destroying structures on more than 500 blocks in today's financial district.
An inset at bottom left illustrates the relative magnitude of the area impacted, by comparison to the famous fires in Baltimore and Chicago.
The map strikes a hopeful tone, noting in "Plain Facts":
The public must not conclude, from the graphic descriptions and many scenes of the burned district, that the beautiful Golden Gate city has been entirely destroyed … The new San Francisco will be grander and more beautiful.
1906 San Francisco 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 the presses 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.
Rarity
There seems to have been two different editions of the book, only one of which included this foldout map of the Burned District.
The edition with the map seems to have been issued in a special pictorial cloth binding. Not in Cowan.