The Bancroft Library
|
The Mountain Moves
by Louise Ehrmann Titus
August 29, 1972
On the eighteenth of April, 1906, I was aroused suddenly by a violent rocking of the house, then a mighty lurch which sent my bed pushing two feet toward the end of the room; at the same time overturning the pitcher of water on the wash stand and throwing into the puddle the drawers of the dresser opposite. Books fell from their shelves as I sprang from the bed and rushed into the hall of my boarding house where other terrified women and men were crowding. Realizing then that I had on no robe or slippers, I dashed back for them and had put them on before that first lurching and rocking ceased; such was the violence of the earthquake in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.
Much has been written and told of the terrific fire in San Francisco just sixty-six years ago, but few persons now living realize what small communities within a radius of a hundred miles of that city experienced from the earthquake itself. At the time I was a young high school teacher in the picturesque little town—hardly more than a lumbering camp then—of Boulder Creek. Among its population of eight hundred were the usual small town merchants, mechanics, laborers with their families, and a goodly number of Portuguese lumberjacks who were logging the great California redwood trees of that area. Of these townspeople, like all American groups, some were more restrained and
To return to our boardinghouse group: As we hurried out of the house, the entire neighborhood was thronging into the street. A neighbor across the way had set to rise, the night before, a large pan of bread dough. As she dashed from the second floor down the kitchen stairway she slipped and fell into the overturned dough; her husband, close behind, slid also into the sticky mess. Despite the terrifying moment, the sight of that frightened man in his bedoughed nightshirt broke for a few seconds the tension of the gathering crowd. Save for convulsive quivering, the earth's violent upheaval had subsided. But the crash of smaller uprooted madrone trees, the cracking sounds of manzanita bushes, the slip and slide of earth as great redwoods swayed and tilted, halting at nightmarish angles, made women and childrem [sic] scream and men's faces grey with fear.
Fortunately, the hour—five-fifteen of a fresh, sunny April morning—was too early for fires to have been kindled in the wood-burning cook stoves common to the area. There were no gas mains to break and water was supplied from wells, so we were spared those calamities; but most chimneys were tottering or were down. I heard the crash of the great chimney in our new high school building as it lunged through the center of the structure, leaving, as I discovered later in the day, a great pile of rubble in the hall and library of the school.
Meanwhile, I had ventured back inside our house, and as I hurriedly dressed I slipped into my suitcase what money and jewelry I had, a couple of candles, a box of matches, and my Bible. Material things seemed of little importance.
By this time people had discovered that the telegraph lines were down. (Of course there was no long distance telephone in 1906.) We noticed also a thick cloud of smoke rising straight upward, at what seemed a long distance north of Boulder Creek. The high school principal had a telescope, and he determined it must be from some large town burning. As we learned later, it was San Francisco. Most of us were too frightened or too concerned with the immediate disaster of overturned pans of milk, smashed glasses of jelly, broken dishes, lamps and windows, and sagging porch steps to pay attention to distant smoke. All of our own town's buildings were wooden so that, although many were twisted and unsettled from their slight foundations, there were no falling walls though great chunks of plaster littered those houses and stores whose partitions were not "cloth and paper."
As we stood in front of our boardinghouse, which appeared to have withstood the shock better than many, we were startled by the sudden appearance of the Methodist minister, running toward us with all his might. He was a short, stocky man, wearing at the moment over his pajamas his usual ministerial garb, a greening Prince Albert frock coat and a low-crowned shovel hat. His eyes were bulging and terror distorted his face. At some yards behind him came six Portuguese lumberjacks, each brandishing a heavy stick. Out of the melee of sound I gathered the words, "You devil! You damned heretic! You would pray for `something to shake us up!"
The poor minister ran to me, crying, "Hide me, hide me quick! They say my prayer last Sunday caused this calamity!" He laid his quivering hand on my arm. "I only asked God to send us something to shake us out
My landlady, one of the Methodist flock, drew him into the front doorway and hurried the terrified man to the second floor. There a trap door led to the attic. She pulled out the ladder and pushed him up its rungs. Once he was inside the attic she removed the ladder and left him. What the poor man must have suffered, alone in that stuffy space under the roof through the frequent earth tremors which occurred all day! Suffice it to say that the Portuguese lumberjacks were diverted by their priest, who led them away to their own church. There the good father turned their wrath into piety when he showed them the newly dedicated statues (Easter had been but ten days prior to the earthquake) of Mary and Joseph, which had tottered on their pedestals but had maintained their positions without crack or chip. Father O'Hara did not miss the chance to point the moral by emphasizing the fact that every bottle of whiskey in the town's twelve saloons had fallen and broken while the blessed Saints had stood firm.
Meanwhile a committee for relief work had been hastily formed. A weary runner had rushed into town to tell of a landslide on a nearby mountain which had buried sixteen of the twenty lumbermen sleeping in tents near their cutting acreage. While he rushed for help, he left three men working desperately to uncover their buried companions. Alas! tragedy stalked that morning.
At intervals mournful little processions moved into the town. By midafternoon sixteen luckless bodies lay as decently cared for as the townspeople could do, since there was no undertaking establishment nearer than Santa Cruz, fourteen miles away. That community was inaccessible,
All day the people of our little town milled in Main Street or huddled on the hillsides. Elderly ladies, too terrified to return to their homes, sat on boxes or upturned kegs, their feet firmly planted on planks. They were determined not to be caught in cracks that might open in the earth. Illogical as this might seem, no one could persuade them that the earth might not crack. Hadn't they the evidence in the numerous gaps, some six inches wide, in their own gardens?
By noon, rumors were spreading that a volcano was erupting—hence the smoke to the north; and that a tidal wave had washed away the coastal towns. There was no way of verifying or refuting these rumors since telegraph wires were broken or fallen and no trains could crawl through the blocked tunnel.
By evenfall the few hardy souls who had ventured out by horseback over the high hills and picked their way through tangled woods returned to tell of the cracked and swaying walls of houses, yawning holes and shattered windows in the stores, Post Office and county buildings in Santa Cruz. But, worst of all, a bridge across the Pajaro River was down, and all traffic on the main railroad line north to San Francisco and south to Los Angeles was stopped for no one knew how long.
A wave of terror swept over the little town as we realized that we were virtually trapped in our narrow canyon, with no escape save by horseback over the steep, heavily-wooded mountains and deep ravines either to the east or west.
Nighttime came and with it more frequent tremors, though each
"For God's sake, don't strike a match! Teachers should be an example!" barked my Principal. "Why do you think Father O'Hara and I rounded up every group and explained the danger of fire? We forbade the lighting of any matches; candles and lamps are a tremendous hazard." The thought of fire, added to the confusion of possible landslides and mention of those silent figures lying in the Elks' Hall, had subdued the most belligerent fellows. Coffee again became a minor concern.
The major question now, "Was it safe to venture indoors for sleeping?" After much discussion my group compromised by hauling couches and beds onto the porch, from which we could reach the ground easily if need be. Other less hardy souls pulled armchairs and mattresses into the yards. By ten o'clock the little town was quiet, though I doubt if many really slept.
The more reasonable people of the community realized that each
By dawn the next morning people were stirring about. The quakes were much less frequent. During the first day temblors had occurred at intervals of an hour or so apart. Only six or seven/jolts heavy enough to shake down broken branches or loosened glass happened through the night. We were getting used to the mere quivers. Courage came with this stabilizing of the earth's surface. The wiser ones of the town began at once to organize "cleaning up squads," and with the much longer intervals between quakes we entered the houses.
By late afternoon of the second day the town council issued an order that very small fires might be kindled out of doors for cooking purposes provided all fires were completely extinguished by nightfall. That second night, most people slept in their houses. I was awakened only once by a sudden jolt.
Forty-eight hours after the terrific convulsion life was assuming its more normal tenor. Men with horses and wagons or on horseback had begun making their way out over the mountain through which the tunnel had collapsed. By the next day these same men returned with repair equipment and experienced telegraph linesmen, some medical supplies and, most welcome of all, mail. Quickly we lined up at the Post Office. Those of us with post boxes had our keys in readiness, but alas, just as I reached forward to insert the key in my box, my hand trembled so that I dropped the key. Down it went between the cracks of the wooden sidewalk,
Boulder Creek's experience was typical of many communities in out-of-the-way places in California. Their damage from the actual earthquake in proportion to their size was far greater than that experienced by San Francisco, where fire wrought the terror and destruction. Sixty-six years later, many great redwood trees standing throughout the forests of the Coast Range still bear witness to the cataclysmic upheaval which shook California that clear, sunny morning of April 18, 1906.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1s2004d5&brand=oac4
Title: California miscellany : additions, bulk 1829-1981: Louise Ehrmann Titus, The Mountain Moves, 1972
By: Titus, Louise Ehrmann
Date: 1972
Contributing Institution: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Copyright Note: Copyright status unknown. Some materials in these collections may be - protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the - reproduction, and/or commercial use, of some materials may be restricted - by gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and - publicity rights, licensing agreements, and/or trademark rights. - Distribution or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond - that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the - copyright owners. To the extent that restrictions other than copyright - apply, permission for distribution or reproduction from the applicable - rights holder is also required. Responsibility for obtaining - permissions, and for any use rests exclusively with the user.