San Francisco was founded in 1856, but it was the gold rush that followed that sparked a huge rise in the population and wealth of the city. By 1906 the number of people living in San Francisco had grown to 410,000.
The area was no stranger to catastrophe, having been built on the San Andreas fault line. Indeed, October 1868 saw the city suffer the Great Hayward earthquake.
However, despite the destruction, any structural or civil engineering lessons that could have been learnt were largely ignored. Building codes went unpublished and what did exist included no seismic provisions (unlike today’s buildings). And, 38 years later, these factors contributed towards one of the most tragic events in San Francisco’s history.
