So Long Frisco! The 1906 Quake and Fire—National Poetry Month 2026

Survivors pick through the still smoldering rubble of the San Francisco Earthquacke and Fire of 1906.

When the morning fog finally lifted over San Francisco on April 19, 1906, the air hardly cleared.  A haze of smoke hung over the rubble of the city.  Men, women, and children wandered the streets in shock.  Wagons and carriages of all types carefully picked their way through the debris carrying the wounded and the dead still being pulled from the ruins of the city.  Here and there exhausted fire horses pulled their engines to the hot spots still erupting across the city.  It was the day after the most devastating earthquake ever to hit a major American city and the fire fueled by broken gas lines, knocked over stoves, and spilled kerosene lanterns that swept the city.

Unlike the Great Chicago Fire thirty-five years earlier which was covered in the national press mostly with engraved illustrations and lithographs with a few photos of the destruction after, the San Francisco disaster was extensively photographed as it occurred, and motion pictures were being shown in nickelodeons across the country within days.  Paired with numerous first-hand accounts in the press, including the stories of celebrities like Enrico Caruso and literary luminaries like Jack London, the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire instantly became a part of American folklore.

Residents watch the spreading fires.  The relatively undamaged from homes in this picture would soon be engulfed by the conflagration.

Even in 1906 San Francisco occupied a special place among American cities.  It was the premier West Coast port and gateway to the Pacific and the Orient. The waterfront and its historic Barbary Coast were famed for Shanghaied sailors, clip joints, whore houses, and eventually the original vigilantes who tried to clean it up. It was the historic boom town of the great Gold Rush and its Nob Hill mansions became the homes of the millionaires it created.  Cheek to jowl with fabulous wealth were the opium dens of China Town, and the ramshackle slums teeming with Italian and other immigrants.  Yet it was also celebrated as the Paris of the West, aspiring to high culture in its opera houses, theatres, lecture halls, and art galleries.  It was the center of a blooming literary movement as well.

Then, of course, there was the scope of the devastation.  Striking at 4:12 am on April 18, the quake was estimated at a powerful 7.9 on Richter Scale and its aftershocks continued for days.  Tremors were along a more than 500-mile stretch of the San Andreas Fault, but much of the effected area was rural. San Francisco and other communities on San Francisco Bay suffered the most.  80% of the buildings in the city were effectively destroyed by the quake and subsequent fire and more than 3,000 people were killed, most of them in the city, with tens of thousands wounded.  It remains the deadliest earthquake in American history and the deadliest natural disaster in California history.

Clark Gable searches for Jeanette Mac Donald among the survivors in MGM's 1936 musical epic San Francisco.

The quake and fire inspired an instant spate of ballads and songs and continued to be written about it for decades, including one by Woody Guthrie.  It figures in several novels and inspired the most popular movie of 1936, MGM’s San Francisco staring Clark Gable, Jeanette McDonald, and Spencer Tracy.  It was famous both for its special effects of the quake and the usually operatic McDonald belting out the title song half a dozen times, several of them in tights on Gable’s gambling house stage.

Aside from the magazine accounts of Jack London and other local writers, one of the first cultural artifacts of the Quake was a long memorial poem published on the first anniversary of the calamity by a local poetess, Eliza A. Pittsinger then 74 years old.  The lady was an example of a common figure of her day—the gentlewoman with literary aspirations.  Such poets could be found in every American town big enough to have a mansion on a hill.  Many published volumes of verse, mostly paid for by themselves or their families.  Ms. Pittsinger proudly boasted of her collection, The Soul Victorious.  While some of these genteel dabblers had genuine talent and a handful even earned deserved literary reputations, Pittsinger was among those who were, at best, earnest.  She wrote in what she imagined was elevated poetic language in a style that was already fifty years out of date.  The result was predictably turgid.

 The poet:  Eliza A. Pittsinger.

We share it today as an interesting cultural artifact.

Poem of The Earthquake

Written on its First Anniversary 

Our Recent Earthquake was the Chief
Despoiler and Ungainly Thief
 That ever wrecked a city—
It was the Great Iconoclast
Whose deadly grip and fiery blast
 Awoke the World to pity.

San Francisco, drained the cup—
But she is bravely waking up;
 In riding past the ruin
I hear the Builder’s Hammer ring,
And rosy hope is on the wing,
And even the sidewalks seem to sing
 With many plans a brewing.

San Francisco, stand thou up!
As thou hast drained the fiery cup
 So shalt thou taste the glory!
Thou rollest up thy rugged sleeves,
And with a heart that seldom grieves
 Thy people tell the story!

They tell us of the raging fire,
The Earthquake and the funeral pyre,
 With no hope for the morrow—
Of countless numbers that did fall
Beneath the black and grewsome pall,
 With none to cheer their sorrow.

But God is good; He made them Homes
Amid the Temples and the Domes
 Around His Heavenly Mansion,
O, He is good, He took them in,
He lifted them above the din 
 By His Divine Compassion.

Thus passed that hopeless April day.
That most intensely thrilling day,
 That day of Death and Horror—
Thus passed the Earthquake and the Fire,
The pageant of the funeral pyre,
 As they sped into the morrow.

It was the darkest day of gloom,
It left the footprints of its doom
 Upon the sands of sorrow;
Its dawning was the black eclipse
That brought the poison to our lips
 That none of us could swallow.

It was an agonizing scene,
No other like it yet hath been 
 Along the passing ages--
It brough the old Pompeii down,
Awoke the World and made a crown
 For new Historic pages.

It was the drama of the World;
Our treasures were to ruin hurled
 Despoiled of all their glory—
Like horses wild the fires lept
The people toiled and many wept
For those who 'mid the ruins slept,
 But who shall tell the story?

Down came the buildings with a crash
And sudden as the lightning flash,
 Or Tempest on the Ocean;
Down came the palaces and domes
Entangled with the people's homes
 That were their chief devotion.

Pianos, tables, chairs and all
Sped forth to the destructive call
 Of dynamite and powder;
And others followed close and fast
Along where the pianos passed
 With crash growing loud and louder.

The din and clamor thundered on,
It seemed that everything was gone
 That made it worth living—
The dynamite had done its part,
It pierced our City’s tender heart
 That was so kind in giving.

The old Pompeii’s fame is gone,
She’s nothing now to build upon,
 Her Laurels are not blooming—
The monster ruin is our own,
And San Francisco on her Throne
 Will set the land a booming.

Whence came it, and what was it for?
The thinkers thought it out by Law,
By Evolution and its law,
 With others ‘twas a Warning—
O, did we need the Hand of God
To scourge us with His Chastening Rod
 Upon that April morning?

O, Evolution, mighty power,
If thou shouldst come some other hour
 We pray thee, hold thy horses!
If thou shouldst ever call again
We hope thy friendship to obtain
 To balance up our losses!

But whether this or that is right,
We made a most stupendous fight
 Against a Mighty Master;
Thousands of homes were soon destroyed,
And thousands of our men employed
 To check the great Disaster.

They toiled and did the best they could.
It brought them hope, it brought them good,
It brought them higher brotherhood,
 And better plans persuing;
They took their burdens in their hands,
They bore them through the burning sands
The smothered hopes and fiery brands
 Of Death, and Doom and Ruin.

In dynamite we found a cure—
Through desperate, ‘twas quick and sure
 To bring the grand finale; (finally)
And when our Leaders learned the way,
And made the stubborn flames obey
 They made a mighty rally.

And here the vials filled with wrath
That had been poured upon our path
 Were suddenly depleted;
The fires were broken in their force,
They blundered, took another course
 By which they were defeated.

At last a fatal charge had riven
The battle's front, its signal given,
 Twas plain the strife was over—
I stood mid the broken glass,
I saw a tuft of withered grass
 Beside some fresh grown clover.

“The fires are out, O, give us a rest,”
At last rang through the Golden West,
 Responses came still later—
Our Faithful Leaders raised their hands,
Their burnt and blistered, weary hands,
 And thanked their Great Creator.

A ringing sound went up the hills,
And even now its memory thrills
 My soul with deep devotion;
It was the sound of joy and peace,
And never may its music cease
 So long as ‘tis our portion.

We leave the Subject now to Time,
To Fate and Fame and future Time
 We leave our cups of sorrow.
We leave our ruin by the way,
And that which lies a wreck to-day
 Shall bloom again tomorrow.

Farewell to Earthquake and to fire!
Farewell to black and grewsome pyre,
 To Babel and its clamor!
Hail to our City built anew!
Hail to Her Loyal Sons, and True
 That speed the Builder's Hammer

Farewell to dangers lurking near!
A last good-bye to dread and fear,
 Good-bye to tragic story!
All hail to Life when clamors cease!
Our souls shall than be crowned with Peace,
 Our eyes behold its glory!

•     •    •    •

Amid the homes now lost and gone
That fate has placed her hands upon
Mine own was saved; I prize it more
Than ever home had I before;
Tis situated on a hill
Where all is quiet, calm and still,
 With charming scenes imblended—
It is not sumptous nor large,
But ‘tis my Castle and my Charge,
My port of safety in the storm,
And blessed heaven mid the calm,
WITH ALL ITS CHIMNEYS MENDED

—Eliza A. Pittsinger

Author of The Soul Victorious who resides at 57½ Prospect Ave., San Francisco

 

A Great Cathedral and Little Black Churches Burn--Poems by e.e. cummings and Carl Sandburg--National Poetry Month 2026

The tragic fire that burned the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 2019, not only reaped international donations to save that cultural icon, but it also shed light on the dire need of  Black Baptist churches in St. Landry Parish Louisiana—St. Mary Baptist in Port Barre and Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist in Opelousas.  The fires were apparently set a White supremacist, the 20 year-old son of a local Sheriff’s Deputy.

In the wake of the Paris fire, Twitter appeals quickly raised more than $1.8 million dollars through the Seventh District Baptist Association’s  official Go Fund Me page. 

Apparently, it is possible to care about and hold in your heart more than one thing.  Weeping for one does not preclude sorrow over the other.  And that includes the fire at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount which blazed at the same time as Notre Dame. 

I turn today for words from two of my favorite American poets.

e.e. cummings.

e.e. cummings was the son of a Unitarian minister who was often at odds with his father over God and religion, especially after his experiences in World War I as a volunteer ambulance driver who was put in a French concentration camp on unfounded suspicion of being a spy.  A loss of faith common among those who survived the charnel house of Europe.  In the 1950’s he began to reflect on and embrace his father’s faith.  This is one of his most famous verses of that period and seems perfectly apt in light of by the Cathedral fire and the destruction of humble houses of worship.

i am a little church

i am a little church(no great cathedral)

far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children

whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing

birth and glory and death and resurrection:

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic

world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature

-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to

merciful Him Whose only now is forever:

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

—e.e. cummings

Cark Sandburg.

Carl Sandberg, that old Universalist and Socialist just seems more relevant year by year.  Consider this.

At the Window

Give me hunger,

O you gods that sit and give

The world its orders.

Give me hunger, pain and want,

Shut me out with shame and failure

From your doors of gold and fame,

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,

A voice to speak to me in the day end,

A hand to touch me in the dark room

Breaking the long loneliness.

In the dusk of day-shapes

Blurring the sunset,

One little wandering, western star

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait and know the coming

Of a little love.

—Carl Sandburg

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn--National Poetry Month 2026

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson at 35

Ralph Waldo Emerson  commemorated the Battle of Concord Bridge, in which his grandfather Rev. William Emerson served, and which took place at the very doorstep of the Old Manse, both the residence of his ancestor and his own home.  In addition to the Obelisk monument that he dedicated fifty years later, verses of his poem were later inscribed on the famed Minuteman statue.  In Lexington, an equally famous statue memorialized Captain Parker grandfather of Unitarian preacher and theologian Theodore Parker.

Emerson had just concluded his brief career as a Unitarian minister as he found himself at odds with a lingering traditionally Christian orthodoxy.  Based on readings in German Romanticism and other sources he was just beginning to formulate what became known as Transcendentalism.  He was beginning to be noticed for his sermons, essays, and lectures but was not yet famous outside of the precincts of Boston, Harvard, and his hometown.  He wanted to be known principally as a poet, but few of his verses were ever as widely popular as this one, which was uncharacteristic of his more cerebral efforts.

Paul Revere's ride as immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In 1860 Emerson’s good friend and almost exact contemporary Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his most famous poem Paul Revere’s Ride—better known as The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere about the events of the evening before that Battles of Lexington and Concord as the Boston silversmith rode to alert the countryside of English plans to march out from the city to capture Patriot arms and leaders.  In his long poem, Longfellow took certain liberties with the exact details.

Emerson’s comparatively terse description of the battles more closely aligned with the facts.

On April 19, 1775 British Regulars set out, supposedly in secret, to seize Patriot arms, including cannon, at Concord and if possible, round up leaders like Sam Adams and John Hancock.  But the intelligence operation of Dr. Josiah Warren was tipped off about the immanent movement, perhaps by the New Jersey born wife of British Commanding General Thomas Gage, a Patriot sympathizer.  

A 1775 print by Amos Doolittle, an eyewitness, show the British entering Concord.

Paul Revere, William Dawes, and relays of dispatch riders roused the countryside. Patriot militia, known as Minutemen, had time to arm and assemble.  As the main body of troops got bogged down crossing the swampy ground after their landfall from crossing the Bay by boat, they became aware by hearing signal bells and gunfire that the militia was being rallied.  Lt. Colonel Francis Smith in overall command dispatched Major John Pitcairn and six companies of light infantry ahead on a quick march to Concord.

In Lexington Col. John Parker (the grandfather of Unitarian preacher and abolitionist Theodore Parker) mustered his home guard militia at a tavern on the Town Green. These men were not designated as Minutemen, who were ready to rally and be dispatched as ordered, but rather were a “training band” for local defense.  As the Regulars noisily approached, Parker and his men spilled out of the tavern and formed ranks on the Green. A company of Royal Marines charged toward the Green, shouting as they came while Pitcairn and three companies took position on the Patriot flank.

Seeing his men outnumbered Parker ordered them to withdraw in an orderly fashion. He never said, as legend records it, “Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” 

An accurate depiction of the physical scene and disposition of forces on Lexington Green as the local Militia under Capt. Parker take mass fire from the British Regulars.

At some point an officer, possibly Pitcairn, rode forward and ordered the men to lay down their arms and disperse, possibly also calling the men “you damn rebels.” In the confusion, possibly because Parker, who suffered from tuberculosis, could not be heard by all of his men, the militia began a slow retreat carrying their arms while some still stood in rank.  Both sides were under orders to hold fire.

Then a shot was fired from an unknown source.  Neither group of men facing each other on the Green fired. Speculation has been that a bystander—40 to 100 residents were gathered to watch the scene—may have fired from behind a hedge or from inside the tavern. The Regulars responded first with a rattle of individual fire. Return fire was desultory and ineffective. Then devastating volleys tore into the militia ranks sending the men running for their lives. 

Some were shot in the back. At least one, a cousin of Parker’s was run through by a bayonet by the charging troops.  Some troops turned fire on surrounding buildings, sending witnesses scrambling and were preparing to enter homes when Col. Smith came up and ordered the men to cease fire and assemble.

Eight militia men were killed and ten wounded, including a Black slave serving in the company.  One Regular was injured, and Major Pitcairn’s horse took two balls.

The Redcoats rearmed and resumed their march toward Concord. Revere, who had been captured and released by a patrol, was able to get Adams and Hancock out of the village to safety.  Meanwhile militia from Lincoln and Concord gathered in the latter town. They quickly received word that musket fire had been heard in Lexington and that the Regulars were advancing. Unsure of what to do as more militiamen filtered in from the surrounding area, a column of about 250 men advanced down the road to Lexington to check on the situation. About a mile and a half out they came in sight of the Redcoat column.  Recognizing that they were outnumbered more than two to one, they fell back to Concord in relatively good order staying just out of musket range from the troops.

After retreating to a ridge at the end of town the Militia officer in charge, Col. James Barrett, surrendered the town and was allowed to retire with his men still in arms.  They took up positions just across Concord’s North Bridge where they could monitor Redcoat movements while they gathered strength.

The Regulars, now under tight discipline, conducted an orderly search of the town and nearby farms. Most of the arms and all the powder had been moved and/or well hidden. All the troops were able to find were three old 24 lb. cannon, far too heavy for use in the field but potentially useful for laying siege to Boston. They disabled those guns. They also turned up some gun carriages, which were destroyed, about 500 rounds of musket balls, and barrels of salt pork and flour for rations. The lead and provisions were tossed in the mill pond but were retrieved later.

At this point Col. Smith split his forces. He sent detachments to secure the South and North Bridges leading to the town.  The bulk of the men sent to the North Bridge, four companies in all under Captain Pearson were sent a mile and a half ahead to search Col. Barrett’s farm, which is where Loyalists had reported most of the missing military supplies were hidden.  Inexperienced Captain Walter Laurie was left with two companies of raw light infantry to defend the bridge.  Col. Barrett ordered his men to advance down the road to the bridge but to hold their fire. By now he had 400 men with five full companies of Minutemen and the local militias of Acton and Bedford reinforcing the Concord men.  Laurie had only 90 men to face them. 

The rapidly gathering Militia surprised the British by holding their ground at Concord's North Bridge and repulsing the British advance with heavy losses.

He ceded a commanding hill to the Patriots.  Barrett’s men in a long column and confined to the road by ground that was boggy from the spring floods continued to advance and Laurie pulled his men back across the bridge.  Laurie formed his men in a position for “street fighting,” i.e. concentrating fire down a lane between buildings where he should have fanned out so his men could fire on the Colonists confined to the road from both sides. After tense stand-off with the two sides facing each other over the river, a British officer discharged a pistol setting of a ragged burst of fire. Then the Regulars got off an organized volley down the road killing the two privates in advance of the patriot column.  But instead of breaking ranks, the militia responded with well-aimed volleys.  Four of the eight officers and sergeants leading the Regulars were shot and injured.  Three or four privates were killed or mortally wounded and eight others injured.

The panicked Redcoats broke and fled back towards Concord where they were met by a force of Grenadiers coming up under Col. Smith himself.  Captain Parsons and the men at Barrett’s farm were now cut off from the main force.  After a tense standoff, Barrett allowed Parson’s men to pass unmolested and join the main body under Col. Smith. After pausing in town to continue the fruitless search for the missing arms and to eat lunch, Col. Smith turned his command back up the road back to Lexington and Boston.

But the delay allowed more colonial troops to arrive. The militia ranks grew to 1,000 then to 2,000 in units from across a broad swath of Massachusetts. They harried the retreating British and engaged in several stand-up fights with them.  The Redding militia engaged the troops as they retreated over a small bridge at Merium’s Corner. 

Militia units organized a leapfrog ambush of the retreating British inflicting heavy losses from fire behind stone walls and trees all the way to Cambridge.

Gathered Patriot militias from surrounding communities hectored the retreating Red Coats by ambush under cover for almost the entire distance to Boston inflicting heavy casualties.  The exhausted troops finally found shelter in Charleston under the guns of Royal Navy ships and with reinforcements sent by Gage from Boston.  An attempt to fortify the surrounding hills was begun but abandoned.  

Within days 15,000 militia not only from Massachusetts but from throughout New England arrived to surround and lay siege to Boston. These units would be mustered into the new Continental Army by Congress and placed under the command of Virginian George Washington.

Eventually the siege succeed, and the British were forced to evacuate the epicenter of Colonial resistance, Boston.  

But it all began on a Spring day recalled by Emmerson.

A contemporary illustration of the Concord Monument where Emerson read his poem.

Concord Hymn

 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

    And fired the shot heard round the world.

 

The foe long since in silence slept;

    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

    Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

 

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

    We set to-day a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

    To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Composed for and read at the dedication of the Obelisk, a monument to the battles of Lexington and Concord erected at Concord in 1837.