EXPERIENCING THE 1906 EARTHQUAKE AT PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
By
OLAF P. JENKINS, Consulting Geologist
Pacific Grove, California
Dr. Jenkins was the Chief of the California Division of Mines [and Geology] from 1928 to 1958. For 72 years he has been active in various aspects of geology and is still imparting his knowledge to others even in his 92nd year .......Editor.
Since my bed was walking all over my bedroom and I was sure that the house would land on its side, I just hung on. I had been sleeping soundly until just the very second the great temblor came. Although it seemed a long time shaking, it actually lasted only a fraction of a minute.
I jumped up to look out my little window on the third floor of our home on the Stanford University campus. The view was of the beautiful sandstone buildings of Stanford University; but now there was a great cloud of dust rising. Only when the dust started to settle could I make out that not all was there. The 100-foot stone Chimney was gone! This brought to mind the student's refrain - -
"I wish I had an ocean of rum
Of sugar a million pounds
The dear old Quad to mix it in
And the Chimney to stir it round.
And the dome of the Chapel, Mrs. Stanford's joy and pride, was gone too!
Conditions around Home
Just then my brother Hubert came crashing into my room---excited and really proud of what this earthquake had done. So I asked him to look out the window. Our house was located at Three Lasuen Street, nearly opposite the Post Office. The rest of the street was lined with fraternity and sorority houses where the inmates were now out on the lawns in various conditions of night attire, raucously laughing and talking with one another.
My brother had just dug himself out of his room, which was across the hall from mine. Above him the brick chimney had broken off at the roof line. In falling it shook the plaster off his ceiling, and it threw the bookcase against the door, which had slammed shut. The bricks slid down the roof, piling up on the rose-vine covered side porch where my sister Alice had lately been sleeping. Fortunately she had come into the house on account of recent heavy rains.
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Panorama of destruction, Stanford University. Memorial chapel in middle right.
Photos from the report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1908.
As we went down to the second floor we found our parents were safe. There was some plaster messing up the floor. On the first floor we found that my mother's china cabinet with all her finest ware had been out walking around on its castors, leaving tracks in the dust-covered bare floor she had recently varnished to shiny smoothness, but not a dish was broken. However, in the pantry between the dining room and kitchen, where all the every-day dishes were put on open shelves, the floor was covered with the broken dishes thrown from the shelves by the shake.
Down in the basement the foot of each of the two chimneys had been displaced just a quarter of an inch. Everything else in the house seemed to be in good shape --- how could it, alter having gone through such a shake?
After breakfast we decided to try living out on the lawn under the trees for awhile, at least during the day, to avoid the effects of aftershocks. We ate out there, where we could meet and talk to others and learn what all had happened. We could hear rumbling from far-off San Francisco --- blasting of buildings to clear them in front of the great fire which was reported to be sweeping over the City, uncontrolled because of complete lack of water.
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Front View of Memorial Church, Stanford University.
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Ruin of Memorial Arch, Stanford University.
Rumors of Refugees
There was a report that hungry refugees from the City were coming down the Peninsula. Hearing this the good housewives of Palo Alto set up long tables and loaded them with food --- but nobody came! The homeless --- who were now in tents --- all stayed in the City to help one another and to get ready for the reconstruction. We were told that tourists were unwanted and that inquisitive sight-seeing outsiders would be put to work with pick and shovel. Soldiers and police were taking care of the situation. Looters were to be shot on sight. On the Peninsula we were lucky and safe and we better stay home.
Damage On Campus
Near at hand we found out that when Stanford's great Chimney fell, the guard ran out and it fell on him and killed him. If he had stayed where he was, sitting in a chair at the foot of the Chimney taking care of the furnace, he would have been safe, for the chair still remained untouched. The Chimney fell across a long arcade which went down like a row of nine pins. The Chapel back of it suffered not only the collapsed dome, but the fine mosaic across its front was jerked off and now lay in slabs on the sidewalk below.
Most of the recent buildings were damaged more than the older ones. The great top-heavy arch facing the front of the University was split, but not hurled down as one would have expected; the keystones on many of the smaller arches were dropped slightly. Encino Hall, the boys' dormitory, had one particularly bad spot: a section of a room on the top story dropped straight down, carrying the rooms below with it.
Near the University buildings a bookstore which was made of brick collapsed. It was said that the mortar did not contain sufficient cement and the bricks had not been properly wetted before being set up. There was plenty of criticism of materials and workmanship everywhere we went, but the shake was more severe than most people realized.
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Wrecked arches, Geology Building, Stanford University.
Other Effects
While we were still sitting on the lawn, George Branner rode up on his bicycle and said, "Papa asked me to get you and for us both to ride out to Portola Valley to see some big cracks in the ground." George's father (John C. Branner) was head of the Geology Department as well as Vice President (later to be president) of Stanford University. George and I were schoolmates and were half way through Palo Alto High School. My brother was a junior in college studying biology, and I had pretty well made up my mind to major in geology.
We took the old Alpine Road. When we got to the edge of Portola Valley we turned north, for the ground in places was all churned up. We came across a great oak that had been split in two; the upper branches were still intact, but the lower trunk and roots had been pulled apart, the west half going north while the east half was pulled south. We were on the great Portola fault (now known as the San Andreas fault). A little way farther on there was a country store or house where the front porch had been carried north, separating it from the rest of the house, for the fault crack ran between them.
I was already quite familiar with all this country, especially Alpine Road where it climbed Black Mountain, for it went to some of my favorite camping places. A few days before the earthquake I was on this mountain road with some other boys to examine the road damage caused by the recent heavy rains. We now found that landslides had torn out the road. I can remember where the slides exposed some small coal seams and clay beds on which they had moved. Later, we read in the newspaper that the earthquake had caused the slides and that cattle had been trapped in a valley because landslides closed off the front of the steep sided valley. No doubt the earthquake helped the slides along, but the heavy rains had started them.
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Offset of Alpine road 5 miles west of Stanford University.
Continuing our journey of exploration along the great fault, we saw most of the examples of earthquake disturbance that were to be photographed and published many times over in various books.
Near Searsville Lake the road was torn up as if a giant plow had been down the middle of it. Displaced fences were quite common. One particularly impressive thing we saw was where the huge water main, leading from Crystal Springs Reservoir to San Francisco and built right along the fault line, had been torn apart in places. Where it crossed the fault from east to west this strong pipe was jerked and pulled apart several feet; but where it crossed from west to east it had been rudely telescoped several feet. The force that it took to do that destruction simply amazed us. It was certain that anything in line of the moving fault had to give and that feature many people found hard to believe. Very few people at that time had given a single thought to earthquakes, and even now it takes a lot of explaining to get the fact across.
Later, I went out to my father's fruit ranch near what is now Los Altos and found that the ground had been scraped by oak limbs all around the base of great oaks. The ranch hand said the ground rolled in waves across the orchard. This was just from the shake, not the displacement along the fault line.
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Live oak uprooted by earthquake, west of Searsville Lake.
1906, An Historic Year
The year of the great California earth-quake, 1906, has become a milestone in the State's history. We often refer to happenings as occurring either "before 1906" or "after 1906." The impression it made on me has never waned. When I used to ride on the SP Lark to Los Angeles I would wake up in the night being shaken around rudely in my berth and I was sure it was an earthquake. Once in the back-woods of Tennessee, while I was sleeping in a rickety old country house, I woke up sure that I was experiencing another earthquake; but I found the shaking was only a large razor-backed hog scratching an itch on his back against the house support directly under my room.
The other day, while looking in my library for good reading matter, I found my copy of a book entitled "The California Earthquake of 1906" edited by David Starr Jordan (president of Stanford University in 1906). I reread the book from cover to cover and I was so fascinated that I could not put it down. This book was given to me shortly after it appeared in 1907, only one year after the great earthquake. I so cherished it that I took it with me to Tennessee when I got my first job in 1913 making a map of that state.
The eight collected articles in the volume are: The Earthquake Rift of April, 1906, by David Starr Jordan, President Stanford University; Geology and the Earthquake, by John Casper Branner, Vice-President and Professor of Geology, Stanford University; The Destructive Extent of the California Earthquake of 1906; Its Effect Upon Structures and Structural Materials within the Earthquake Belt, by Charles Derleth, Jr., Associate Professor of Structural Engineering, University of California (Berkeley); The Investigation of the California Earthquake of 1906, by Grove Karl Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey; Local Effects of the California Earthquake of 1906, by Stephen Taber, Stanford University; Preliminary Note on the Cause of the California Earthquake of 1906, by F. Omori, Sc. D. Member of the Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee, Tokyo, Japan; The Great Earthquake Rift of California, by Harold W. Fairbanks, Ph. D.; and The Temblor: A Personal Narration, by Mary Austin, Author of "Little Rain," "The Flock," etc.
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Offset of 8 feet in fence on Folger ranch, near Woodville.
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Offset in 30-inch water-pipe by fault. Northwest of San Andreas Lake.
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Thrust of 30-inch water pipe by fault, northwest of San Andreas Lake. Amount of telescoping is 58 inches.
Of the eight articles comprising the volume, all but the one by Charles Derleth, Jr. had first been published elsewhere. Apparently it was the idea of the publisher, A. M. Robertson of San Francisco, to bring various points of view under one cover. The book of about 400 pages includes 140 illustrations, largely photographs.
Now all the authors are gone, for it has been over 70 years since the book was written; but for me it seems only yesterday. The simple and beautiful descriptions were put down immediately after the earthquake. They all expressed exactly what these famous scientists, engineers, and writers actually observed and experienced. I find that very few of today's geologists have ever seen the book. Now with the interest in earthquakes, and especially the San Andreas fault, this book should be of value to our present society.