all weekend, american history tv features the city of santa rosa, california. for the-- renowned culturist lived there. he developed hundreds of plants including the restaurant to go. posted by comcast business, we recently visited position locating -- showcasing the city history. c-spanbout it here on america tv. property damage and life last per capita, no town in america had ever been as affected by an earthquake as santa rosa was in 1906. the earthquake in 1906 is primarily known a san francisco, santa rosa got shuffled aside. but the damage here was absolutely staggering.

if it is people had died in san in santa rosa,ed there would have been 75 thousand dead. santa rosa was, at the time of the earthquake, 52 years old. 52 years from the time the community was founded. it had become a very prosperous town. in terms of northern california towns, the railroad had been here for 30 years, in fact we had to railroads and were about to have a third. it was the farm town for a very, very important agriculture area that was rolling -- growing quickly. very diverse. prince, apples, hops, a huge crops here. the chicken industry. eggs. apples in sebastopol. it was the shipping point. there were canneries here.

it was a very forward-looking town with a lot of prospects. the 1906 earthquake took place just before dawn. i think it was 5:12 a.m. know,eople were, you people like bakers, were up and around, but not many other people. and, it devastated the downtown. what happened was that we had been really smart in the 1880's yard.e we had a brick we are coming along. we made our own brick and we made them out of soil along the creek. it turned out to not be good. particularly, the motor turned out not to be good. but the town had burned a few times in the 1860's when it was a shock town and the city fathers decreed downtown buildings will be built in brick and this was the work they built

them of and it did not hold. made buildings, they were of brick and when the earthquake hit a just fell in on themselves. that is where most of the people died. 100 people die here. at least 100 people we know have died in this earthquake. that is staggering. horrified. there are a group of letters i called the jesse letters. written by a young woman who lived here and she was writing to her sister in sacramento. she talked about walking downtown and seeing the dead bodies in the wreckage and seeing the devastation to the community. outside and from one particular man who got his son to drive him, who was visiting from kansas, got his son to drive him to petaluma to fornk, cashed a check $5,000 and bought a pack and gave it to people to clean up.

to get the bodies out. build them. and the money that was left, he divided among the churches to help people. back into business the minute they could. ,ne store, which is now a pr later appear, is now barnes & noble, was down in this direction destroyed. that they got some goods out in hr and and set up, literally, a trunk sale, doing business selling merchandise from there. rebuilt.re there were two downtown buildings. well, three downtown buildings in those days. railroad square was part of the downtown that survived. the one behind me, the empire building, which was a bank holding in those years, built in 1904, badly damaged but came back. down the street to the east, the --ed building, which barnett

these two survived both earthquakes. down at the railroad tracks, a stone building. one of our signature stone buildings built by stonemasons. italian stonemasons in the early 1900s. it is a western hotel. now a number of things, including a coffee house and a beauty parlor and lots of other things. we have pictures of it. one relatively but it was replaced and it is still there. how did the earthquake shape santa rosa? santa rosa grew up again. -- earthquake,ic the business district when february are now to the rest. to the railroad depot, three blocks. to the rest. to the railroad depot, three

blocks. it changed because of the item above. the earthquake gave the town a chance to redesign itself for the automobile, which was needed. there is a man named frank bill who was the paternalistic figure. a paternalistic figure in the early 1900s. he went to every merchant in town and talk them into giving several feet of their frontage in order to widen the street so they would be a depth about to the automobile, which shows a great to offer site so that the time came out of the earthquake apt to be able to be a more modern, pattern by 1907 standards, town. other cities looking at what santa rosa was doing were

impressed. -- run referred to santa rosa as the luckiest town in the west. kiest town and the rest. >> throughout the weekend, we are featuring santa rosa, california. learn more about santa rosa and other stops on our tour at c span.org/citiestour. weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. american artifacts takes viewers into historic sites around the country. a mexican-american cultural center in los angeles, open to the public and april of 2011. american history tv visited to learn about the history of mexicans and southern