Send Currency By Wells Fargo
In an earlier post, the writer Gertrude Atherton wrote of the inconvenience of being cashless. She was luckier than most, as she had a New York banker to help her out of a desperate situation. Unfortunately, not everyone had her resources, not even someone as affluent as Eleanor Watkins 
, wife of prominent San Francisco physician James T. Watkins. She wrote a lengthy letter to relatives in Virginia a week after the quake:
Two telegrams came today – one from Aunt Virginia for $500 and one from the Bank of Marion telling me to draw on the Bank of California for $300. You are all very generous. We do not want to tax your generosity any more than we must, and we simply cannot say what we shall need. Neither of these telegrams is available in cash just now. In the first place, all the banks are burned, and the vaults may not be opened for weeks, lest their contents burst into a blaze. This happened to one vault which was opened today. In the second place, the Governor has declared legal holiday for a month, at least, and no California Bank can pay out any money. This is to prevent a run of the Banks, protesting of notes, and other legal complications, until a little order is brought out of our chaos. This lack of ready money is one of the people’s chief troubles. The others are lack of water, and lack of the necessities of life which cannot be bought here...
The only way to transmit money, as yet, is to send currency by Wells Fargo, or to send post-office order, which the post-office authorities will pay. This, I believe is different from a postal note, which is limited to twenty dollars... This is an unprecedented situation, and there are no rules to go by. Each day has new developments, and no day is like the last.
Q: Who uses the Archives? Is it open to the public?
A: The Archives has the original records of Wells Fargo from when it was established in 1852.
As a 
It's certainly worth a visit. My only nit with the show is that the museum doesn't provide a means of enjoying the 
Knowing that I’ve been on the lookout for 
Downey Office Manager David Cooley was at the office when the quake struck.
August 26th, 2005 was a Friday, the end of the work week. My trainees talked of the hurricane coming to New Orleans. They asked for my cell phone number in case work was cancelled on Monday. I nonchalantly gave it to them, along with the 
Monday morning, the 
Since the power outage, there was virtually no means of communication with anyone. Cell phones didn’t work and landlines were out. I learned later by text messaging that co-workers and friends were O.K. Now what? They expected the city to be out of commission for some time. Where would we go? I had spent the past 25 years of my life in New Orleans; the last 20 working for a local bank. I was a retail Trainer and absolutely loved my job. No one knew how to advise.
I was fortunate to be able to get back to New Orleans in November. It was then that I would put closure on the past 25 years of my life. I was one of the 20% who still had belongings that were intact. The city was like a ghost town. 80% of the city was destroyed. What tragedy! Life as we knew it in New Orleans would never be the same. There are still so many people I wonder about. Phone numbers are disconnected. We can only wonder.
The fire of ’06 burned 28,000 buildings and left over 200,000 San Francisco residents homeless—half the city’s population. Another 70,000-90,000 were without shelter in surrounding communities. People took refuge in any open space, in parks and vacant lots. Episcopal Bishop William E. Nichols witnessed the destruction of 
All night these tens of thousands fled before the flames. Many of them, the poor people from the labor ghetto, had fled all day as well. They had left their homes burdened with possessions. Now and again they lightened up, flinging out upon the street clothing and treasures they had dragged for miles. They held on longest to their trunks, and over these trunks many a strong man broke his heart that night. The hills of San Francisco are steep, and up these hills, mile after mile, were the trunks dragged.
Official camps were constructed in short order in 
Thanks to our excellent designer/blogger—and "all things San Francisco"—
One could compare the creation and installation of an exhibit to many things: redecorating a house (lots of design work and runs to Home Depot), preparing a presentation for the big boss (lots of research and after-hours work)... maybe even giving birth (I’d have to ask some experts to verify this one). San Francisco Is In Ashes came together through the hard work, directly or indirectly, of the entire Historical Services Department. The installation process, lasting a few weeks, gave our Team the chance to find out how many coffee places are open on weekends in the San Francisco Financial District (few on Saturdays; even fewer on Sundays).
A hefty mass of melted and misshapen “stuff," now cooled and fused together, is awfully fascinating: “What is it?” (coins and other metal objects in the Wells Fargo Express building); “How much would that have been worth?” (impossible to say accurately); “Where is it now?” (unknown, but surely melted down. People of 1906 had no idea how interesting it would be 100 years later).
In looking through our vast collections on the ’06 earthquake, I was surprised and horrified to see one statistic that stood out for me: Over 15,000 horses were estimated to have died in the catastrophe. In a time when horse power drove the economic strength of San Francisco, that was a huge impact on the city and its ability to 
An hour after the earthquake, Dr. Edward Topham, chief surgeon of St. Mary’s Hospital at First and Bryant Streets climbed to the hospital’s roof and observed a dozen fires burning all around the downtown. As injured citizens streamed into the hospital, he and another doctor walked north on Second Street to Mission to the headquarters of Wells Fargo & Co.’s Express. They had three hundred horses and nearly as many wagons housed in large stables on Folsom Street.
Patients were carried downstairs and hefted on mattresses into the wagons. The Wells Fargo wagons hauled the injured to the foot of Brannan Street, where the captain of the old Sacramento River steamer Modoc had been persuaded to tie up at the Pacific Mail Dock. By 5 pm, about the time the overladen Modoc landed the refugees in Oakland, St. Mary’s Hospital and surrounding blocks had been obliterated by fire.
Sharing a stove must have also been a problem for the refugee cook. Take, for example, a dish called 
An interesting but sometimes unexpected feature of the 
Now that things have been settled for over 90 decades, thinking about 
For weeks after the quake, guards watched over the sealed cash and record vaults of Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank on Montgomery Street. Finally, when it was determined that the vaults were cool enough to handle, workers were brought in to open them and retrieve their contents. Frederick Lipman, the cashier, had been waiting anxiously for this. Previously, he was told by the bank’s vice-president that all the books were destroyed:
Ledgers that had been stacked tightly merely charred around the edges, their pages so dense and so heavy that the superheated air could not penetrate them. The books and about $3,000,000 in gold and silver were carried out of the vaults and transferred to the new operating quarters a few blocks down Montgomery in the Union Trust Building.
BTW, I did try out that "aluminum foil" blanket I found in my "Disaster Shack" kit with my dog, Gracie. We sat in the garage for a bit—where it was about 40 degrees—and it really did keep me quite warm. I was surprised. Gracie didn't care for the crackling sound it made, and we looked like we were sitting in a Jiffy Pop Popcorn bag—but it worked! I have a feeling we'll learn there are some 
Before the Fire Department became pro in the 1860s, it was all volunteer. Despite overblown legends, there WERE 
In Lilly Coit’s time, as modern methods were in development, fire fighters used glass orbs called fire grenades. Firemen would come barreling into the structure armed with these grenades and lob them into the flames. The enclosed salt water solution would ostensibly smother the blaze. Or people bought them and kept them around the house as an antique version of the fire extinguisher—in a 
The 
As part of the 
The Walk Through the Ruins has over 75 images, all from the Wells Fargo archives. The originals range in size from Brownie snapshots to professional 8”x10” photographs. Seeing these photographs blown up onto a large flat screen, scrolling by as you sit in front of them, feels amazingly different than having the small originals resting motionless on a table-top. I have noticed visitors sitting in front of the exhibit for more than an hour at a time, practically hypnotized. Visitors can really take in the whole scene: the smoke in the air, the debris on the ground, the neatly arranged tents that now take the place of home and hearth… and the people.
Structural deficiencies, from ruptured gas lines to falling pieces of furniture, are a major cause of injuries during earthquakes. To address this, 
As with most days in the spring, around 10 AM, fourth grade students arrive ready for a guided tour of the 
