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| A still from film footage of devastation after the
1906 earthquake. Photo: Jason Wright, Silver Shadows Daguerrotypes. Digitized by David Kiehn, nilesfilmmuseum.org |
As the anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake
looms this month, it seems appropriate to pause and consider our state's long
history of seismic activity. Our knowledge of quakes prior to the 20th century is scant, as the oral tradition of indigenous peoples was
largely lost after the arrival of Europeans, and the records kept by the
Spanish missionaries and later explorers through the 18th and 19th centuries
are spotty. It wasn't until the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake on April
18, 1906, that the United States established the Coast and Geodetic Survey to
track and research earthquake activity.
In 2017, collector David Silver made an almost miraculous
find at a San Francisco flea market: a long-lost roll of film showing San
Francisco immediately after the 1906 quake. Amazingly, the 9-minute reel was
intact, although at the time Silver came across it, the seller was holding the
fragile, highly flammable nitrate film and "looking through a length of it
with a lit cigarette hanging from his lips," as Silver told SFGate.
The footage of a devastated city was shot by the Miles
Brothers and pairs with their most famous work, "A Trip Down Market
Street," shot from a cable car just days before the earthquake. Film
historian historian David Kiehn made a digital copy of the footage, which was
screened at several venues this past spring. It will be shared publicly online
through the Library of Congress. You can get a glimpse of it here: https://youtu.be/Fm1XSX8Un5Q
The release of the footage was reported in many news
outlets. Our thanks to Dick Eastman, who wrote of the find in his blog, where
it came to our attention.
Copyright © 2018 by California Genealogical Society
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