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/
