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Additional resources for this issue of History Now
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San Francisco
Books:
I'll start with broad studies of San Francisco, including
one co-authored by Robert Cherny, who wrote the essay
you've just read:
Cherny, Robert, and William Issel. San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power,
and Urban Development. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1986.
Kahn, Judd. Imperial San Francisco: Politics and Planning
in an American City, 1897-1906. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1979.
Lotchin, Roger W. San Francisco, 1846-1856: From Hamlet
to City. New York, Oxford University Press, 1974.
Here are some good recent studies of major ethnic groups in early San Francisco:
Chen, Yong. Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, c2000.
Burchell, R. A. The San Francisco Irish, 1848-1880. Berkeley: University
of California Press, c1980.
Daniels, Douglas Henry. Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of
Black San Francisco. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980.
These recent books on the 1906 earthquake and its aftermath
will be good starting points for this topic:
Fradkin, Philip L. The Great Earthquake and Firestorms
of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2005.
Hansen, Gladys C., and Emmet Condon. Denial of Disaster:
The Untold Story and Photographs of the San Francisco
Earthquake and Fire of 1906. San Francisco: Cameron
and Co., 1989.
Kurzman, Dan. Disaster!: The Great San Francisco Earthquake
and Fire of 1906. New York: W. Morrow, c2001.
Tobriner, Stephen. Bracing for Disaster: Earthquake-Resistant
Architecture and Engineering in San Francisco, 1838-1933.
Berkeley: Bancroft Library and Heyday Books, 2006.
Winchester, Simon. A Crack in the Edge of the World:
America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906.
New York: HarperCollins, c2005.
Here is a reprint of Charles Morris's well known 1906
report on the earthquake:
Morris, Charles, ed. The San Francisco Calamity by
Earthquake and Fire. Introduction by Roger W. Lotchin.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c2002. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, c2002.
The following book may be a bit hard to find, but it's an excellent collection
of essays on various aspects of the 1915 San Francisco Exposition.
Benedict, Burton, ed. The Anthropology of World's Fairs: San Francisco's Panama
Pacific International Exposition of 1915. Berkeley, CA: Lowie Museum of Anthropology,
1983.
With the growing interest in environmental history, there's no shortage
of books on the Hetch Hetchy Dam. These are the most recent:
Righter, Robert W. The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial
Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University
Press, USA, 2005.
Simpson, John W. Dam!: Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy
and Yosemite National Park. New York: Pantheon Books, c2005.
The San Francisco earthquake has inspired dozens of dramatic
films and documentaries. The centennial of the disaster
was marked by these videos: National Geographic's
The Great Quake and, from PBS, American Experience's
The Great San Francisco Earthquake.
Websites:
You may want to start with the United States Geological
Service's site about the 1906 earthquake:
http://quake.usgs.gov/info/1906/
Wikipedia does very well on topics covered in this essay.
You might want to start with the articles on the 1906
and 1989 earthquakes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loma_Prieta_earthquake
And this one on the Hetch Hetchy Valley and the controversy
over dam construction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy
There are some absolutely terrific websites to help
you map further online work on San Francisco and its
history:
California History Online, mounted by the California
Historical Society, provides images and text linked
to a timeline of state's history. Excellent starting
point for any aspects of this state's history:
http://www.californiahistory.net/
Be warned, though that their "NEW" keyword function
doesn't work well. (It didn't work at all for me, but
perhaps that was my fault). Still, with a little maneuvering
and clicking, you can find useful materials. The trick
seems to be to look at the interactive timeline and
click on the period that interests you. Read through
the titles of essays and find what you need.
At the "Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco,"
scroll down to the list of subject entries under "San
Francisco—Earthquakes" and be prepared for links
to wonderful images and text on the history of earthquakes
before and after the 1906 disaster. While you're at
this site, be sure to check the other subject headings
– crime, business, the arts:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/index0.html
The Virtual Museum's "Education" segment is currently
under construction. Be sure to check back later.
The San Francisco History Association website's "Links"
page is a well-designed guide to other websites:
http://www.sanfranciscohistory.org/links.htm
I think you'll also find the commercial zpub.com San
Francisco History Index useful:
http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/index.php
It has a fine basic section of text, images, and links
to earthquake material:
http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/1906earth.html
The commercial "San Francisco Memories" site has a good
section on the 1915 Exposition. Even though it's still
under construction, it's already a winner. There are
great images there, including a wonderful picture of
the Tower of Jewels:
http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/ppie/history.html
Don't forget to follow the San Francisco Memories index
through the later twentieth century for materials on
the 1989 quake and other aspects of San Francisco history
after the quake and the exposition. You'll find essays,
photos, timelines, maps, and charts.
For lesson plans, be sure to look at the following page
from the recently-launched "Exploring the West"
site at Stanford -- there is a section devoted to urban
growth in the Bay Area:
http://exploringthewest.stanford.edu/units/urbangrowth.html
The elementary school teachers among you should start
with the link below to "Angie's Corner" -- sound practical
suggestions focusing on grades 4-6:
http://teams.lacoe.edu/documentation/classrooms/angie/
california/teacher/teacher.php
Our friends at PBS's American Experience series have
come through for us again with The Great San Francisco
Earthquake, mentioned above. The website for this
film has the high quality teachers guide we've come
to expect from these folks:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/earthquake/tguide/index.php
I'll close with a summary of what's in store for you
at another site that's served all of us so well –
American Memory. This Library of Congress site has several
segments of specific relevance to studying San Francisco
at the turn of the twentieth century. As a start, the
collection's paper prints of early movie film includes
more than two dozen films of San Francisco before, during,
and after the earthquake and fire, 1897-1916:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/sfhome.html
"California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives
of Life in California, 1849-1900" offers subject
entry access for San Francisco and almost anything else
you choose:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html
"Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920"
provides good materials for studying controversies over
natural resources in California:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html
The Bancroft Library at the University of California
at Berkeley is responsible for the splendid section
called "The Chinese in California, 1850-1925:"
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/cubhtml/
For tips on how to use any or all of these materials
go to American Memory's "Learning Page" and use the
box in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to
search for "Hetch Hetchy" or "earthquake" or any other
term that strikes you. You'll be delighted by the results:
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/
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