It’s a common nightmare of any newspaper editor: The biggest story of your lifetime comes along, but you have no way to get the news out.
Such was the dilemma faced by the Santa Rosa Republican and Press Democrat after the April 18, 1906 earthquake. For most of the next fourteen days, the rival newspapers published a combined “Democrat-Republican” edition using a small printing press that was normally used to print Sweet’s Business College’s “Saul’s Letter” and was, as Tom Gregory wrote in his 1911 county history, “about the dimensions of an infantile pocket-hankerchief.”
The hanky-edition of the paper(s) is disappointing to anyone seeking out ghastly tales of death and destruction, even though some out-of-town newspapers at the time were describing Santa Rosa as a modern-day Pompeii laid waste. Mostly the thin twelve editions served as a newsletter listing the whereabouts of displaced persons and temporary locations of stores, reports on disaster related civic matters including building permits and relief (“G. E. Smithers brought in a load of eggs…a tierce of hams, a barrel of salt pork and a huge case of clothing were received Saturday from Patterson, N. J…”), notices of aid available to members of the many fraternal organizations, and lots of news articles describing San Francisco as a modern-day Pompeii laid waste. Still, it’s a remarkable document of Santa Rosa’s history (PDF).
With space at a premium on the tiny pages, even a visit from California Gov. Pardee, the U.S. Commerce Secretary, the general in charge of San Francisco and other officials merited only a single paragraph. After listing names and titles, the paper noted tersely that the group “walked up Fourth street through the blocks of ruined business houses, and then entered automobiles and were taken around the town and shown the various residences which were wrecked by the earthquake. The sights which met the gaze of the visitors was one that they will never forget.” Still, there was room to squeeze in the latest from the melodramatic life of local beauty and wealthy widow Abbie Treadwell: “Mrs. Abbie Treadwell Hall and her husband, Dr. Walter Hall, the Petaluma dentist, whom she sued for divorce, have made up again and are living quietly in San Rafael. Mrs. Hall lost over $300,000 in the San Francisco fire.”
Probably the best parts of the short-lived Democrat-Republican are the vignettes that allow us glimpses of how they coped with the disaster. From the long-distance telephone fastened on a tree to hundreds of Santa Rosans packing the Sunday train to San Francisco to gawk at someone else’s ruins, this is what catastrophe looked like in 1906:
A telephone office for points south to Sausalito has been established on a tree in the rear of the old office. For points north on the old Dr. Finlaw office. [sic]
Mrs. Keithley of Bodega reports that two of her cows died of fright during the earthquake.
Anxious relatives and friends of Santa Rosans are arriving here from all over the Pacific Coast to make inquiries.
A quantity of provisions have been received by Dr. H. W. Mallory for the Independent Order [of] Foresters. Members call at Mallory residence, 450 Beaver.
Hundreds of people gather at the depots upon the arrival of each train and eagerly scan the passengers for relatives and friends.
The library trustees will meet today to talk over the repair of the building without delay. No fines will be imposed on books that are out, President McMeans stated today
Former Congressman Bell, representing the [Fraternal Order of] Eagles, arrived here today with financial relief for members of the order.
The amount of mail matter that is being received here is immense.
Tomorrow morning [Sunday, April 22] services will be held by the various churches, either in their edifices or in the lots adjoining. In the afternoon there will be a union service in the old College grounds [College Ave and E, now Santa Rosa Middle School] in which every church in town will participate.
Several hundred visitors were attracted here on Sunday [April 29] to view the ruins and several hundred Santa Rosans did a similar thing in San Francisco.
Hundreds of belated telegrams are being received here daily for Santa Rosans and Sonoma County people.
There are several individuals in Santa Rosa at the present time who can find nothing better to do than to go about inspiring alarm in nervous people by stating that some fool has predicted another earthquake, naming several dates. One of the alarmists was threatened with a thrashing if he did not desist.
Looking eastward near the intersection of 4th and B, adjacent to the Shea building, where one of the early fires started. The small structure in the right foreground is the W.C.T.U. water fountain (really, a faucet) that was on the Shea street corner, and was installed the year before as alternative to saloons for thirsty men. A closeup photographed by James O. Rue had the false claim that it was “The only thing on Fourth St. that remains intact.” Image courtesy Larry Lapeere
In April, 1906, Santa Rosa was a small town of about 10,000 and everybody pretty much knew everybody else. Now everybody knew somebody dead.
One of three known photographs taken on the day of the 1906 earthquake
From the April 18 newsletter-sized edition of the Santa Rosa Republican, published the afternoon of the Great Earthquake:
Those who are known to be dead, or who are believed to be in the ruins are: Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Carter… Mrs. C. E. Manning and child… Miles H. Peerman, Chester Trudgeon, Jacob Woods, Joseph Domeniconi, Nick —-, Mr. and Mrs. Blum, R. W. Mallory and child. Trudgen and Peerman were burned alive, being pinioned beneath timbers, and rescuers were unable to extricate them…
The Press Democrat picked up the grim tally the next morning:
N. L. Jones, manager Sunset Telephone company, Mrs. N. L. Jones, wife of the above… Louis Blum, proprietor Sample Rooms, not recovered… Miss Willie Reid, school teacher… Fritz Tanner from Eagle Hotel… Child by the name of Kayser… Biu Yuin, Chinese… Miss Excelsa, Novelty theatre…
And so it went. The lists contained over fifty names, and the list of injured suggested more would very soon be dead:
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis C. Cnopius, the latter believed to be fatally hurt… Mrs. Demmer, serious, will die… H. Kang, Japanese, ribs broken, will die… Barney Mullen, prize fighter, neck wrenched… Lyman C. Hill, leg and head mashed…
It was not all tragedy: “Mrs. N. L Jones was not killed as first reported. She is at Dr. Lain’s residence where she is doing nicely…Mrs. L. C. Cnopius, believed to have been fatally injured, is improving nicely,” the merged Democrat-Republican newspaper reported a few days later, and it was good to hear that Ferdinand Drey was pulled uninjured after a day trapped beneath the ruins of the Eagle Hotel. But otherwise there were sad tidings from the rescue crews:
Milo Fish, the pressman [for the Press Democrat]… was dug out while alive but succumed [sic] to his injuries shortly after being taken to his home. He leaves a wife and six children.
The charred remains of Mr. and Mrs. F. W. Carter were recovered this morning.
The bodies of three unknown persons were brought to the Morgue late Monday evening, having been found in the stairway to the Princess lodging house. Nothing could be learned of their identity. It is supposed to be a man, woman, and child.
The remains of a woman, supposed to be those of Mrs. A. S. Rogers, were taken from the Reynolds building on Third street this afternoon.
The remains of a man supposed to be Contractor Richards of San Rafael were discovered in the ruins of the Occidental Hotel, and were taken to the morgue in a small box today.
The body of Charles Shepard, the last of the three Press Democrat carriers who lost their lives in the catastrophe, was recovered this morning from a pile of ruins across the street from the press-room door. The poor boy had evidently rushed out of the building with the others, and had gotten clear across the street when he was caught by the falling walls. All the debris in that vicinity had been worked over in the effort to locate the body, but it was not until this morning that it was recovered. Four of the Press Democrat employees, three carriers and a pressman, lost their lives as the result of the earthquake. Carrier Shepard was seventeen years of age.
[T]he remains of a man were found in the ruins of the Eureka Lodging house on Fourth street. With the remains were a few coins and the remnants of a watch.
Remains of the Saint Rose Hotel on the corner of Fourth and A, looking east
Those days were a swirl of confusion, and the town’s newspapers, struggling to publish anything at all using a small newsletter press owned by the business school, reported events as well as they possibly could. But mistakes were made, even about something as serious as the finding the dead. The body of Smith Davidson, for example, was found twice, presumably in different locations. On the 21st, it was noted that “the remains of Smith Davidson were recovered this morning from the ruins of the Kinslow building above C. A. Wright & Co.’s store.” Then six days later, “A portion of a human body was found in the ruins at the entrance to the stairway leading to Mrs. Loughery’s rooming house this morning. It is supposed to be the remains of Smith Davidson.”
Then there’s the mystery of “Miss Excela,” part of the “Sensational Gun Jugglers and Fencers” act that was appearing at the Novelty Theatre that week. The April 19 death list listed “Miss Excelsa, Novelty theatre,” then two days later, “The remains of Miss Excelsa, the Novelty actress, and a little girl, identity unknown, were found this morning and taken to the morgue. The body of the latter was taken from the ruins of the Ramona lodging house.” A full profile of her can be read here: “SEEKING MISS EXCELSA.”
There is also the disappearance of Fred Thurber; nearly two weeks after the quake, the following item appeared; apparently his whereabouts are still unknown.
Who knew Fred Thurber? Inquiry has been made here for a man named Fred Thurber, supposed to be among the missing of the Alma lodging house ruins. Any one knowing whether or not he was in that house on the night of the disaster will kindly communicate with Mrs. Cunningham, Dutton avenue. The parents and two daughters of the missing man are anxious to get some tidings regarding him.
Notice on wreckage of City Hall. Detail of photograph by James O. Rue, courtesy California Historical Society
But the sad truth is that we even don’t know for certain how many people died in Santa Rosa on April 18, 1906. The report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission, which came out over two years later, cites 61 identified dead, at least a dozen “missing.” The Democrat-Republican has the death total as 65 at the end of the month – yet an adjacent item on the very same page mentions the coroner’s inquests that morning included “six unknown persons whose remains were found in the ruins.” When the next list appeared in the Press Democrat the following week, the total was now 69, with the addition of “four unknown dead,” presumably those “six unknown,” downsized for unknown reasons. (NOTE: For further details and a longer discussion, see Body Counts, Part II.)
A letter from Mrs. John Rhoades appeared in the May 3 Fayette, Iowa newspaper: “…The loss of life in the three large three-story hotels was great and can never be known definitely, as fire finished what the earthquake left, including the registers [emphasis mine]. They claim that there were over one hundred guests in each hotel. As to that I cannot say; however there were a great many rescued alive. Besides the the first-class hotels there were four second-class hotels that were also full and shared the same fate, besides six or eight lodging houses, all filled. It is estimated that between three and four hundred people lost their lives, but as I said before I doubt very much if we ever know…”
Then there was the letter that appeared in New York and Los Angeles papers claiming, “…From the St. Rose they took out nine bodies to-day. They found a little girl in these ruins. She was unhurt, but very hungry and thirsty, having been buried four days and nights.” The Democrat-Republican newspaper did not mention a dramatic late rescue or the discovery of a large number of casualties found on April 21, but no paper was published on Sunday, April 22 – was this news that fell through the cracks?
The first frontpage that was printed, just hours after the calamity, offered an advance apology: “The lists of dead and injured given herewith are necessarly [sic] very incomplete, but will be made complete as rapidly as possible. There were many narrow and thrilling escapes, but the limited facilities for publishing a paper after the awful devastation prevent even a mention of these at this time.” Sadly, the papers never got around to telling us about those “narrow and thrilling escapes,” which were too few, or printing an accurate toll of the dead, which were too many.
A young woman named Jessie Loranger wrote to her sisters a couple of days later, “Clarence went to the cemetery this afternoon & worked like a man digging a trench and helping to bury seven corpses. Tonight he has blisters on his hands but feels he has done his duty. A great many don’t do their part. Pa painted the names on boards for marking the grave. He used a little brush of Sybilla’s and a little paint Charlie had at home.”
Also from the letter of Mrs. Rhoades: “There were forty bodies buried here yesterday [the first Sunday after the earthquake].”
As both of the local undertaking parlors were destroyed by the earthquake, Coroner Frank L. Blackburn brought up a number of coffins from Petaluma…
Seven of the bodies of the unfortunate victims for whom no private arrangements could be made were interred in one big grave Friday afternoon, for the present at any rate.
Even while the town was furiously shaking, fires were starting on Fourth Street. On the corner of B Street in the Shea building, Mrs. Martin ran into the hallway during the quake and saw flames visible through a glass door. She smashed the glass only to find a roaring fire underway, presumed fed by a broken gas line. Smoke soon billowed from the building.
Frank Muther jumped out of bed on the first shock. Grabbing his clothes, he dressed as he ran as fast as he could to downtown, two blocks away. As Santa Rosa’s Fire Chief, Muther had a reputation for being first at the scene, but he was also owner of cigar factory and store on Fourth Street and he headed there first. Like the rest of the block, his business (near the current location of “Tex Wasabi’s”) was in a two-story wood building that was badly damaged and nearly unrecognizable from the loss of its ornamental cast iron and brick façade, yet it was still standing. From the vantage point of his roof, he gazed upon his ruined town as dawn was breaking.
Fourth street before the 1906 earthquake, looking west from courthouse square. 1) The Shea building at the corner of B Street, where fire was reported while the quake was still underway. 2) The roof where the Fire Chief Frank Muther stood as he scanned the devastation. Visible to the far right is the hose and bell tower of the Fifth St. firehouse. 3) The Occidental Hotel. (Image courtesy Larry Lapeere)
The top story of the courthouse had crumbled, taking with it the great two-story-high cupola that capped the building, along with the life-size statue of the goddess of justice that stood sentinel upon the dome’s peak.
On Fourth St. between Mendocino and D Street, everything was gone. All those fine brick buildings were so much dust — the old Athenaeum, Santa Rosa’s opera house that could seat 2,500, the town’s post office, the long row of little stores, even the grand new Masonic Temple that wasn’t quite finished. The Fifth Street side of the block was lost, too, which included the two largest livery stables. Probably most of the horses quartered there were dead, but that wouldn’t be the greatest tragedy in that block; there were rented rooms above some of the stores, so there also would be people buried there in the rubble.
Muther made a command decision that it would be better to let the fires burn themselves out in the collapsed brick structures, and the quicker they burned up, the less risk they posed to the parts of town that might still be saved. He decided to concentrate fire fighting efforts on trying to save wood frame buildings, like his own.
But fires were springing up everywhere. Flames were coming from two stores near him, and his entire block was already doomed. Santa Rosa’s Fifth Street firehouse was right across the alley from Muther’s store, and the alley was filled with materials ready to burn. Muther saw that flames were just starting to reach behind the stores to the sheds and piles of wooden boxes that were stacked as high as a man could reach. The fire was spreading down the alley fast, towards the firehouse.
Now just a few minutes past dawn, people were streaming into downtown. Some were storekeepers wanting to protect their shops or at least salvage their wares; others came to help, and some certainly to gawk. Seventeen year-old Obert Pedersen arrived on his bike and was stunned to see “the whole thing was down.” People who lived in the rooming houses above the stores were trapped in the wreckage and screaming for help. Pedersen helped rescue several who were pinned on their mattress, trapped by a falling ceiling or a collapsed headboard of their own bed. He also helped carry corpses to a makeshift morgue setup on someone’s front yard.
One of three known photographs taken while post-earthquake fires were underway. Taken from the marble and granite works on the corner of Fourth and Davis, looking west (Bancroft Library)
Luther Burbank was among the early to arrive at the scene. “Electric wires were sputtering,” he recalled in 1911, “gun powder and various chemicals were exploding; the gas had sprung a leak at the gas works and other places had caught fire; gunpowder, chemicals, cartridges, and shells were exploding, and fires were breaking out in a dozen different places…with fires advancing unchecked, people were crawling out through the rubbish, bleeding and half dressed, covered from head to foot with lime and sickening dust.”
On the western end of Fourth Street, Mr. Duffy lay trapped in the ruins of the New Saint Rose Hotel. His quick wits had saved his life; instead of rushing down a collapsing hotel stairway, he threw his body next to the substantial mahogany dresser in his room, which protected him as the three-story building pancaked. It was five hours before rescuers were able to pinpoint his location, despite his shouts for help. He was lucky; after he was pulled out, he told newspapers that he saw arms waving from amid the debris, but there was so much other noise on the street that their screams could not be heard. “Just then, as I looked, the flames swept over them and cruelly finished the work begun by the earthquake. The sight sickened me and I turned away.”
Duffy was presumably describing the horrific death of Miles Peerman, a former Santa Rosa constable. A religious magazine published a detailed account: ” [He] was held down by wreckage in the Carither’s building [NE corner of 5th and B] in plain view of the people. They did their best to dig him out, but the heat of the raging fire became so intense that they could no longer stay by him. He then begged them to shoot him. So he was burned to death fully conscious of his approaching fate.”
Detail of State Earthquake Investigation Commission map of fire and earthquake damage. Areas colored solid red were buildings destroyed by the quake, areas cross-hatched were destroyed in the following fire. 1) The courthouse. 2) The Athenaeum and post office. 3) The fire station. 4) The Shea building, across the street from the Occidental Hotel. 5) The Hotel Saint Rose. (Image courtesy David Rumsey Collection)
Fire chief Muther also led his two crews in rescuing victims – one trapped man later described the gratitude he felt as cool water began trickling through the debris as the flames were approaching his position – and the firemen were lucky that their horses and both steam engine rigs at the Fifth St. firehouse were unharmed. Not so fortunate was the situation they faced. The fire hydrants were all but useless; the city’s cast iron pipe system was already notorious for poor water pressure due to leaks (see “Santa Rosa’s Water System Wars,”) and now there were cracks from the earthquake and underground explosions in the gas mains – nearly a year later they would uncover a water pipe bent like an archer’s bow. The desperate firemen resorted to sucking what water they could from Santa Rosa Creek. And then there were the streets themselves, which were almost impassible. Fourth Street, 75 feet wide, was reduced to a footpath down the middle because of all the debris from buildings on both sides. At times, the firemen had to unhitch the horses and pull the rigs by hand. The fires burned for at least two days.
One of the best accounts of this day came from Jessie Loranger, who came downtown to watch the destruction of Santa Rosa with her family. “The sight that met our eyes was terrible. Fire was raging in a half a dozen different places. Men were digging and chopping in the ruins of what had been hotels and lodging houses trying to get out those buried beneath the falling timbers and debris. As we went down B Street at Mrs. D. N. Canther’s, the body of a man lay on a door covered with a sheet on the lawn near the gate. Women were crowded everywhere crying and everyone near the fire had household goods packed to go as soon as the flames got nearer. Although men worked with all their might the water pipes were broken and a very small amount of water was available. Chas. [her husband], in helping with the hose, got his eyelashes burned off. The heat was overpowering and all that saved the town was the absence of wind.”
Like so many others, 8 year-old Ernest Spekter and his family stayed outdoors that night and was unable to sleep. They lived in Occidental, which was also badly damaged by the quake, his family’s home knocked off the foundation. As darkness fell they joined neighbors on “Indian Hill” (now Sugarloaf Summit), the highest point in West County. From there they could see the lights and smoke of San Francisco burning to the south and Santa Rosa burning to the east. It was a night of a terrible red sky.
SOURCES: Frank Muther testimony in Fountain v. Connecticut Fire Insurance Co. and Loomis v. Connecticut Fire Insurance Co., The Pacific reporter, Volume 117 pp 630-648 (1911) and quoted in California Supreme Court Decisions, Volume 158, pg 766-744 (1911). Obert Pedersen: San Francisco Chronicle Earthquake 75 year anniversary (1981). The San Francisco Earthquake Horror (1906). Burbank recollection from Nov. 14, 1911 excerpted in Sonoma Historian, 2006 #1. Peerman death from Monroe H. Alexander, “The Earthquake in Santa Rosa,” California Christian Advocate, Dec. 27, 1906. History of Sonoma County, Tom Gregory (1911). Jessie Loranger letter quoted in The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906. Spekter description from Press Democrat July 5, 1976.
Remains of the Saint Rose Hotel on the corner of Fourth and A, looking east. This photo was reportedly taken at 8 AM. (Sonoma county library). A view of the same location a day or two later can be seen here.
