Early San Francisco  The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire
rivalled the Chicago fire of 1871 in the annals of urban
disasters in America. Large conflagrations were common in cities
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were
often crowded and lacked the sophisticated safety consciousness
of today. However, the totality of destruction caused by these
two disasters was extraordinary, comparable only to that of the
southern cities razed during the Civil War. Even that comparison
pales since those cities were destroyed before the period of
phenomenal growth of American cities that would mark the latter
half of the century.  By contrast, 1906 San Francisco was
already a booming metropolis -- as was Chicago in 1871, albeit
one built of wood -- having undergone a tremendously prosperous
post-Civil War period of growth and development. Also, the
destruction of the Southern cities during the Civil War was
relatively prolonged, eventually even expected and inevitable.
Unlike San Francisco and Chica