490 City Blocks Ruined.

On 18 April 1906 a major earthquake shook the city by the bay, and by the following day a massive fire had consumed the remaining downtown structures. The entire business district was destroyed; an estimated 700 people had died, including 270 inmates of an insane asylum; and 300,000 were left homeless. Estimates of the property damage reached $500 million.

The Local Papers Do Not Miss a Day.

The buildings housing the city's newspapers, the Examiner, the Call, and the Chronicle, all burned. At the Chronicle twenty linotype machines crashed several stories through the flames to the basement. The three papers joined forces the first day after the disaster and printed a combined edition across the bay in Oakland called the California Chronicle-Examiner. Manufacturers speedily shipped new presses out. William Randolph Hearst, who owned the Examiner, commandeered a press just shipped to a Salt...