One of the iconic events of California history is the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Countless books have been written about the terrible crumbling of the earth, followed by an even more destructive firestorm. Here is an atypical one - San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906. Personal Recollections by James B. Stetson. James Stetson was a successful merchant who became interested in the city's cable car business. He was named President of the California Street Cable Railroad in 1888, a position he still held in 1906 when the earthquake struck. Rather than providing another history of the events that followed, or interviewing others, Stetson jotted down his own experiences and recollections. He notes going over to the powerhouse and finding it damaged, but the cable cars intact. A visit the following day found the workers unable to run the boilers to power the cars because of a lack of water, and no horses available to tow the cars away. By the third day, fire left everything in ruins. He surveyed the situation and observed it seemed impossible to ever get the operation running again, and yet five months later, he succeeded in doing just that. Stetson privately published his recollections two months later, apparently primarily for family, making this a scarce piece. Item 244. Priced at $175.
Earthquakes did not begin in California in 1906. Item 124 is Earthquakes in California (1888), by Edward S. Holden. This a separate printing of an article from the May 1889 issue of the American Journal of Science. It covers the specific times and locations of tremors in California during the year 1888, along with showing where various seismometers were located. $40.
Item 30 is an extensive account of the first European expedition into what is now the American Southwest: The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, by Pedro de Castaneda, translated by George Parker Winship. Francisco de Coronado was not a mere explorer. He was interested in riches, great wealth said to exist in the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. It soon became apparent that most of those seven cities were nothing but poor Indian communities, but Coronado retained faith in an Indian guide who spoke of one great city, known as Quivara. Coronado pushed on, crossing from Mexico into present-day Arizona (and the first European look at the Grand Canyon), New Mexico, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and finally Kansas. Dorothy could have told him there is no pot of gold in Kansas. Coronado returned a poorer and beaten man, yet his expedition, and the less than exact certainty of his route and which tribes he met, make his story a great legend. Author Castaneda accompanied the assemblage of some 1,600 men that dwindled to a small number by the time Coronado threw in the towel. This edition was published by the Government Printing Office in 1896, and includes not only Winship's translation of Castaneda's work, but eight other contemporary accounts and much other information about the journey. $350.
