San Francisco – Empowering women through fiction and history.

One Thing Leads To Another: The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

America is no stranger to natural disasters. We’ve seen it all: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, earthquakes. Only last month, Florida experienced two hurricanes back-to-back (Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton) and the damage and lives lost from these two disasters combined was devastating.

Whether due to Mother Nature’s temperament or human error, disasters seem to come in packs. In the case of the above-mentioned Hurricane Milton, damage was caused not only by the winds and floods it brought but also by the tornadoes that formed even before the hurricane hit the ground. Looking back in history, this is not something we can blame on climate change or global warming. One of the worst natural disasters in the history of Northern California endured a back-to-back disaster: the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. While there is no doubt that the earthquake itself caused a lot of damage in San Francisco and smaller cities along the coast, reports show most of the damage (nearly eighty percent and some sources state it was closer to ninety-five) happened because of the fires that followed.

The facts of the earthquake are well-documented, and I go into them in the author’s note included in my upcoming Adele Gossling Mysteries book. The earthquake began on April 18, 1906, at 5:12 a.m. in, ironically, the ocean. But it quickly moved to land and tore up cities along the coast, including San Francisco (though to call it the San Francisco Great Earthquake is misleading, since many smaller cities in the area, including Santa Rosa and San Jose, suffered massive damage). The magnitude of the earthquake has been debated, but most experts put it at 7.9-8.25 which stands today as the biggest quake in the area. The strong shock lasted about 45-60 seconds. While that might not seem like a long time, it was enough to completely incapacitate the entire city. The quake broke gas and power lines, damaged water pipes, and made telegraph lines useless. Houses and buildings of the time were made of wood (and still are, so they easily crumbled with the strong tremors, especially in the downtown area. There were a few buildings that withstood the disaster and survive even today in their more-or-less natural state, including the Flood Building (a majestic-looking office building on Market Street) and St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Photo Credit: Residents looking toward the downtown at the fires breaking out during the 1906 Great San Francisco Earthquake, 1906: U.S. Geological Survey/Flickr/CC0 1.0 Universal

While the earthquake did its damage to buildings, infrastructure, and pavements, leaving some places with such huge cracks that horses fell through them, many argue the majority of the disaster came not from the tremors but from the multiple fires that broke out in the city almost immediately after the earthquake. Gas lines broke all over the city and ignited fires that were difficult to stop. There’s the famous “Ham and Eggs Fire,” for example, where a housewife in Hayes Valley turned on her gas stove to make breakfast for her family soon after the earthquake. Little did she know the chimney had been damaged by the quake. The stove ignited a fire that spread throughout the downtown area. Before it was finally quenched, it had destroyed some of the city’s most important and iconic buildings, including City Hall. To add insult to injury, water lines were broken so firefighters had trouble getting water out of the pipes to put the fires out. And human error had a hand in it as well. When water was clearly not going to be the answer to putting out the massive flames, the military resorted to dynamiting buildings (in an effort to prevent the fires from spreading), but their lack of experience in this area only made the fires worse.

Photo of San Francisco downtown area after the earthquake and fires had ceased, taken from a camera attached to a kite and suspended some 1,000 feet from the air. The large street going down the center is Market Street. Note how nearly all the buildings on either side are completely destroyed.

Photo Credit: Taken by George R. Lawrence, 28 May 1906, Panoramic photographs, Library of Congress: Grook Da Ogre/Wikimedia Commons/PD US

All told, by the time the fires had subsided (and it would take four days for this to happen), they had claimed three thousand lives across the Bay Area and eighty percent of San Francisco. It took two years for the city to rebuild.

My book, Murder Among The Rubble, features this disaster and focuses on the rebuilding phase just a few weeks after the earthquake (featuring a murder, of course). You can pick up a copy on preorder now at a special price here.

I’ll be talking more about the 1906 San Francisco Great Earthquake, its aftermath, and the effect it had on the lives of the residents in my newsletter as the release date for this book gets closer in December. You won’t want to miss that! If you’re not already signed up for my newsletter, I encourage you to click here and do so. You’ll get lots of free goodies, including my book The Missing Ruby Necklace (not available anywhere else!) if you do.

The Treatment of the Chinese in San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake

Today is a special day for the people of China as it’s National Day of the Chinese Republic. On this day in 1911, a group of revolutionaries led a revolt against the Qing Dynasty. They overthrew the imperial rule that had dominated for centuries, declaring the country a republic. You can read more about the revolution here.

Why am I mentioning this? First, we are all connected to one another in some way, so knowing about the history of other countries besides our own is part of that connection. Second, I’ve come to appreciate the struggles of the Chinese not only in their own country but in others as well, especially during the early 20th century. In fact, it was researching the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the rebuilding that happened afterward for my upcoming book, Murder Among the Rubble, that led me to not only appreciate the way the Chinese were treated during this time but also to include this community in that book.

Photo Credit: Chinatown, Waverly Place at Clay Street, 9 April 1900 (six years before the earthquake), glass plate negative: San Francisco Public Library/Flickr/CC BY NC ND 2.0

San Francisco is known as a liberal city that opens its arms to all and celebrates its diversity. But it wasn’t always this way. Many ethnic groups like the Latino and Asian communities, experienced abominable racism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Before the earthquake, the Chinese, who numbered about 15,000, were seen as instigators of corruption and vice. They were regulated to a twelve-block radius known as Chinatown and forced to live under squalid conditions. Many couldn’t find decent work and resorted to earning a living with businesses catering to the tourist trade or related to vices, such as opium dens and prostitution houses. The community was stereotyped as one without morals and willing to engage in criminal activity such as the slave trade. This stereotype was so prevalent that a film made in 1965 portraying the Chinese in Chinatown in this way garnished protest from Asian-American actors and led to the creation of the East West Players. I wrote about that here.

When the earthquake hit San Francisco in 1906, Chinatown was, like eighty percent of the city, destroyed. About two-thirds of the Chinese living there fled to Oakland (where they weren’t welcomed – if you can stomach it, read this article that appeared in the Oakland Herald and really shows the attitude toward the Chinese at the time). The other third remained in the city.

Photo Credit: Chinatown after the earthquake, 1906, Harold B. Lee Library: Picryl/Public Domain

The committee that was formed after the earthquake to oversee the rebuilding was faced with what to do with these people. The remaining Chinese were first placed in makeshift tents on Van Ness Avenue, far away from any of the main camp locations, but officials feared they would slowly migrate back to their ruined homes in Chinatown (more about why this was a concern to the committee later). So they were transferred to the Presidio to a separate camp on the other side of the reservation, far away from the main camps populated by Caucasians. Their tents were much smaller, and the food, supplies, and medical attention they received were inferior to those of the whites.

During the rebuilding phase after the earthquake, one of the biggest debates was the question of the fate of Chinatown. Logic would dictate the city would rebuild Chinatown where it had been before, just as they were rebuilding all other neighborhoods in the city. But the real estate of those twelve blocks was prime and businessmen who had been trying to get their hands on it for years saw an opportunity to steal it from the Chinese (since records of their leases would have been burned in the ires). These businessmen tried to get officials to move Chinatown to Hunter’s Point, a remote part of the city used by the Navy shipyard at the time.

Luckily, they did not succeed. The Chinese community in San Francisco, though relatively small, was not without a voice or its supporters. A delegation consisting of American-Chinese and Chinese authorities like the Consul-General of San Francisco called upon the governor to protest against the move, threatening to cut off commercial ties with China. The delegation made the following powerful statement: “America is a free country, and every man has a right to occupy land which he owns provided that he makes no nuisance.”

Photo Credit: Chinatown in San Francisco (in all its glory), taken 2 December 2007 by Tony Webster from Portland, OR: Hiku2/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0

Moved by this plea (and by the idea of losing trade relations with China), officials nixed the idea of moving Chinatown to Hunter’s Point. Chinatown was rebuilt where it had stood before the earthquake and where it still stands today. The area lost its reputation for vice after the earthquake when the city “cleaned up” such places as the Barbary Coast and Chinatown. Instead, it became a tourist attraction, rebuilt with ornamental gates, panoramas, and pagodas. It’s now one of the most popular places to visit when in San Francisco.

If you want to find out more about how the Chinese faired after the San Francisco earthquake, be sure and check out Murder Among the Rubble, coming out at the end of this year. You can pick up a copy for preorder now at a discount on all online bookstores.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

Works Cited:

“Chinese Make Strong Protest”, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 April 1906. https://sfmuseum.org/chin/4.29.html. Accessed October 4, 2024.

From Little Scandinavia to Gay Mecca: San Francisco’s Castro District

It’s LGBTQ+ pride month!

I was fortunate enough to spend a few years living in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco which borders the infamous Castro district, one of the well-known meccas for gay pride. Walking a few blocks to 24th Street was a weekly thing for my sister and I when we did all of our shopping. One block up and a few blocks toward the downtown, we would hit the Castro district with all of its color, vibrancy, and enthusiasm and all of its rainbow flags and rainbow crosswalks. It was a place full of energy.

Photo Credit: A crosswalk in the Castro District painted with the colors of the rainbow flag, 13 October 2014: Pinpinellus/Wikimedia Commons / CC BY SA 4.0

But the Castro district (often referred to as “the Castro”) didn’t start out that way. In fact, its beginnings are much more humble. In the 19th century, the area was inhabited mainly by working-class immigrants of Scandinavian origin. Their hard work and love of their new country and the city are well documented in the 1948 film I Remember Mama. The film is based on the true story of a Norwegian family trying to make ends meet in early 20th century San Francisco and get used to the modernizations of American culture, including putting one’s money into a bank (a major theme in the film).

This Scandinavian enclave lasted until the mid-20th century. Several things turned the tide for the Castro. The 1950s marked a great shift in American living when people, eager for a safe and sane life after World War II, sought the suburbs and their own houses with a picket fence. Families fled San Francisco for the more sedate cities of the Bay Area like Pleasanton, San Jose, and Walnut Creek. Many Scandinavian families from the Castro moved out of their homes, leaving them empty, and the city was eager to fill these homes, so buying or renting a home was reasonable (hard to imagine in San Francisco) at that time. This coincided with many gay servicemen being released from the army and looking for a gay-friendly place to live. Later in the late 1960s, when San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district (just bordering the Castro) became wild with drugs and violence, many gay people there escaped into the more livable Castro district.

In the 1970s, the Castro was a haven for gay activists, the most famous being Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay politician to serve on California’s Board of Supervisors. In the 1980s, the Castro saw a darker side when the AIDS/HIV epidemic hit the nation, but today, it stands as the symbol of gay culture and pride. This year marks the first since the COVID pandemic when all the festivities associated with Pride Month in San Francisco will be out in full force and as this article makes clear, San Francisco still remains a safe place for LGBTQ+ people to live and thrive just as it was in the mid-20th century.

Release Day Blitz for False Fathers (Waxwood Series: Book 2)!

False Fathers Front Cover Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Portrait of a Young Man, Ferdinand von Wright, 1860s, portrait, oil on canvas, Finnish National Gallery: BotMultichill/Wikimedia Commons/PD old 100 expired

Title: False Fathers

Series: Waxwood Series, Book 2

Author: Tam May

Genre: Historical Fiction/Coming of Age

Release Date: December 28, 2019

Sometimes no father is better than a false father.

At nineteen, Jake Alderdice is shy, contemplative, and passionate about art. With the death of his grandfather, shipping magistrate Malcolm Alderdice, he becomes the new family patriarch and heir to Alderdice Shipping and Alderdice Luxury Liner. After two years of mourning, he is ready to add to the family honor just as all the Alderdice men have, but as an artist, not a shipping magistrate. His plans are delayed with his mother announces the family will be retreating to Waxwood, now a fashionable resort town favored by the San Francisco elite, for the summer, fulfilling her father’s dying wish to “go back”.

On the train, he meets Harland Stevens, an enigmatic but charming older man, who has come to Waxwood as chaperone and guide to his college-aged cousin Roger and Roger’s friends. Mr. Stevens, or, as he tells Jake, “just Stevens”, takes an interest in the young man’s ambitions, and introduces him to the town’s most prominent gallery owner. But when Jake takes his paintings for appraisal, the man delivers a fatal blow — Jake’s mythology-inspired paintings are too original for the market of realistic landscape paintings favored by Gilded Age patrons.

Stevens seizes the devastated and wandering Jake and counsels him toward a more aggressive but moralistic path to manhood inspired by Teddy Roosevelt and Thoreau. Jake proves himself to be more studious and serious than Roger and his friends. Impressed with the young man’s determination to take over his grandfather’s business, Stevens introduces him to The Order of Actaeon, a secret society built upon those ideals favored by his idols.

But the path to emotional maturity and masculine identity is, Jake learns, a complex thing in the Gilded Age. Will his journey free him from the Alderdice family illusions, half-truths, and lies that have kept him a child, just as it did his sister Vivian’s six years before? Or will it lead him into the world of Actaeon, where the hunter becomes the hunted?

You can pick up your copy of the book at a special promotional price at the following online retailers:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

B&N

Apple iBooks (iTunes)

Excerpt

The afternoon sun had arrived with its vengeance of rising heat. Jake took out his handkerchief and wiped at his forehead. At the same time, he felt something inside him shiver. He couldn’t help but think of what Vivian would have said, if she had heard the tale. He knew she would have found it one more reason to avoid Stevens, as the story would have struck her as another way in which Roger had been right about the way in which Stevens and his father engineered their will against the will of others.

“I suppose your father understood you.” He put the handkerchief away and made a shot through the hoop in front of him.

As Stevens set down his mallet down, Jake felt the weight of his expectant eyes. “I thought you would change your mind.”

“Change my mind?”

“About needing guidance,” said the redhead. “You needn’t be abashed. Other young men such as yourself have come to me when they needed a father too.”

“I didn’t say I needed a father.” Jake looked at the tussled grass at his feet. “I only meant I would be grateful for any ideas you have for me about my new undertakings.”

“As you wish,” said Stevens, though his eyes sparkled in the sun.

About the Author

Tam May grew up in the United States and earned her B.A. and M.A in English. She worked as an English college instructor and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher before she became a full-time writer. She started writing when she was 14, and writing became her voice. She writes fiction about characters who find their future by exploring their personal past influenced by the time in which they live.

Her first book, a collection of contemporary short stories titled Gnarled Bones And Other Stories, was nominated for a 2017 Summer Indie Book Award. She is currently working on a Gilded Age family saga. The first book, The Specter, is now available, and the second book, False Fathers, will be out in December, 2019. She is also working on a historical mystery series featuring a turn-of-the-century New Woman sleuth. Both series take place in Northern California.

She lives in Texas but calls San Francisco and the Bay Area “home”. When she’s not writing, she’s reading classic literature and historical fiction, watching classic films, or cooking up awesome vegetarian dishes.

Social Media Links

Website

Blog

Facebook

Facebook Readers Group

Facebook Blog Page

Twitter

Instragram

Goodreads Author Page

Amazon Author Page

BookBub Author Page

a Rafflecopter giveaway

How Small-Town California Inspired Waxwood, The Series

The old Southern Pacific train depot in Benicia. It used to be the entrance of the town and the last stop before passengers boarded the ferry that took them to the East Bay and San Francisco. I was told in the visitor’s bureau that the depot was placed there in 1902 and was functional until the 1940’s, when cars began to replace train travel in that area. Personal photo.

Last year, I was able to visit the San Francisco Bay Area, one of my favorite place of all time. During my trip, I saw Benicia, a small little town that I had researched quite extensively and I wrote a blog post about it here.

At the time, Benicia was the inspiration for the location of my upcoming historical mystery series, The Paper Chase Mysteries. What I didn’t realize until after I started to revise my upcoming book The Specter, was that parts of Benicia had infiltrated into my idea of the town of Waxwood, the town on which my Waxwood Series is based.

Element of Benicia make Waxwood a character as much as any other of the human characters. It’s a small, quiet, little town with the kind of slow-paced rhythm you would expect from small-town America. Right on the Carquinez Straight, it has a small pier where you can walk and enjoy the view of the hills and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge. People are laid-back and friendly. There’s a rich art community there with local artists displaying their work in small shops down First Street.

Here’s Vivian’s first impressions of Waxwood from The Specter:

By the time Vivian stepped off the train at the Waxwood station, early afternoon had settled in. She saw immediately what Mrs. Moore meant about there being “nothing there.” Compared to the city, Waxwood was half-deserted and nearly pitiful in its emptiness. She could see only the train tracks trailing a bay whose size was paltry compared to the one bordering the city. And yet, Vivian was at ease in this small village with its slowly moving waters and nearly deserted street. Even the station agent’s expression seemed bucolic as he smiled at her from his caged window.

Not an auspicious view for a town, perhaps!

As I mentioned above, Waxwood is a character in the series. It’s not just the place where the Alderdice family goes for their summer vacation, or the place where other characters in the series end up. Waxwood is as alive and changeable as the characters themselves.

The Waxwood Vivian visits in Book 1 of the series, which takes place in 1892, is not the same Waxwood she sees six years later in Book 2. Like all of America in the Gilded Age, Waxwood goes through some rapid changes. It becomes more commercialized, more touristic, less quaint and quiet. It has its own ominous presence and ghosts, much like the characters in the series. In this way, it mirrors the evolution of the characters, especially Vivian.

Why did I name the town Waxwood? The idea of the wax wood trees (which do not exist in real life, as far as I know) intrigued me. In The Specter, Vivian encounters the forest with another character, Ruth:

The hill they had ascended, though not so very steep, was crowded with tall trees with umbrella tops and a strange, glossy wood. Vivian slipped off one of her gloves. Her hand moved to touch the shiny tree. The matted sheen felt almost rough to the touch and a little sticky.
“The surface softens with the sun and hardens with the moon,” Ruth said. “It’s why they call them wax wood trees.”

Certain elements have always fascinated me and wax is one of them. Wax can be both pliable and unyielding, it can be creative, molded and shaped into anything you like. And it can be dangerous, as when a candle tips over with the potential to set a curtain or a room on fire. The wax wood forest has its own significance in the series, which is the subject for another future blog post.

To find out more about The Specter and pick up your copy at a special preorder price, you can go here.

To find out more about the Waxwood Series, go here.