The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire | Page 7

green
verdure which has long been one of San Francisco's chief attractions.
Beneath the whole of San Francisco is a rock formation, but
everywhere on top of this extends the sand, the gift of the winds. This
is of such a character that a hole dug in the street anywhere, even if
only to the depth of a few feet, must be shored up with planking or it
will fill as fast as it is excavated, the sand running as dry as the contents
of an hour glass. When there is an earthquake--or a "temblor," to use
the Spanish name--it is the rock foundation that is disturbed, not the
sand, which, indeed, serves to lessen the effect of the earth tremor.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CITY.
Leaving the region of the hills and descending from their crescent-
shaped expanse, we find a broad extent of low ground, sloping gently
toward the bay. On this low-lying flat was built all of San Francisco's
business houses, all its principal hotels and a large part of its tenements
and poorer dwellings. It was here that the earthquake was felt most
severely and that the fire started which laid waste the city.
Rarely has a city been built on such doubtful foundations. The greater
part of the low ground was a bay in 1849, but it has since been filled in
by the drifting sands blown from the ocean side by the prevailing west
winds and by earth dumped into it. Much of this land was "made
ground." Forty-niners still alive say that when they first saw San
Francisco the waters of the bay came up to Montgomery Street. The
Palace Hotel was in Montgomery Street, and from there to the ferry
docks--a long walk for any man--the water had been driven back by a
"filling-in" process.
This is the district that especially suffered, that south of Market and
east of Montgomery Streets. Nearly all the large buildings in this
section are either built on piles driven into the sand and mud or were
raised upon wooden foundations. It is on such ground as this that the
costly Post Office building was erected, despite the protests of nearly

the entire community, who asserted that the ground was nothing but a
filled-in bog.
In none of the earthquakes that San Francisco has had was any serious
damage except to houses in this filled-in territory, and to houses built
along the line of some of the many streams which ran from the hills
down to the bay, and which were filled in as the town grew--for
instance, the Grand Opera House was built over the bed of St. Anne's
Creek. A bog, slough and marsh, known as the Pipeville Slough, was
the ground on which the City Hall was built, and which was originally
a burying ground. Sand from the western shore had blown over and
drifted into the marsh and hardened its surface.
When the final grading scheme of the city was adopted in 1853, and
work went on, the water front of the city was where Clay Street now is,
between Montgomery and Sansome Streets. The present level area of
San Francisco of about three thousand acres is an average of nine feet
above or below the natural surface of the ground and the changes made
necessitated the transfer of 21,000,000 cubic yards from hills to
hollows. Houses to the number of thousands were raised or lowered,
street floors became subcellars or third stories and the whole natural
face of the ground was altered.
Through this infirm material all the pipes of the water and sewer
system of San Francisco in its business districts and in most of the
region south of Market street were laid. When the earthquake came, the
filled-in ground shook like the jelly it is. The only firm and rigid
material in its millions of cubic yards of surface area and depth were
the iron pipes. Naturally they broke, as they would not bend, and San
Francisco's water system was therefore instantly disabled, with the
result that the fire became complete master of the situation and raged
uncontrolled for three days and nights.
Although the earthquake wrecked the business and residential portions
of the city alike, on the hills the land did not sink. All "made ground"
sank in consequence of the quaking, but on the high ground the upper
parts of the buildings were about the only portions of the structures
wrecked. Most of the damage on the hills was done by falling chimneys.

On Montgomery Street, half a block from the main office of the
Western Union Company, the middle of the street was cracked and
blown up, but during the shocks which struck the Western Union
building only the top stories were cracked. Similar phenomena were
experienced in other