official or as a diplomat, what is it? is there one thing you can point to? cassandra good: when i was studying in graduate school, studying political history, monroe's name did not come up as often as the other founders. now that i have worked on his papers and see he is everywhere, i find that fascinating. steve: the associate editor for the papers of james monroe, thank you very much. cassandra good: thank you. >> at you were watching of tv.ican history c-spans every weekend on three. follow us on twitter for our schedule of programs and to keep up with the latest history news. weekend, we featured the city of santa rosa, california. florida called -- horticulturist

lived there.k hosted by our comcast cable partners, c-span taff recently visited places showcasing the history. learn more about santa rosa this weekend here on history tv. in terms of property damage and life lost per capita, no town in america had ever been as affect that by an earthquake as was in 1906. it is generally known it to the population of the world as the san francisco earthquake and fire. got shuffled aside, but the damage was staggering. if as many people had died in san francisco is died in santa rosa, 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. petaluma, the egg industry, 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. most people were, you know, 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 because we had a brick yard. 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 mortar 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. these buildings, they were made of brick and when the earthquake hit, they just fell in on themselves.

that is where most of the people died. 100 people die here. at least 100 people we know have it died inknow love those earthquake. know of died in those earthquake. that is staggering. people were 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. help came in from outside and one particular man who got his son to drive him, who was visiting from kansas, got his son to drive him to petaluma to a bank, cashed a check for

$5,000 and brought a check back and gave it to people to clean up. to get the bodies out. build it back up. and the money that was left, he divided among the churches to help people. people went back into business the minute they could. one 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 their and set up, literally, a trunk sale, doing business selling merchandise from there. things were rebuilt. 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 building 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 was a number of things, now it is 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. because, it did grow up again. earthquake, the business district went from a where we are now to the west. to the railroad depot, three blocks. the earthquake gave the town a chance to redesign itself for the automobile, which was new.

there was a man named frank doyle who was the paternalistic figure. he became a paternalistic figure in the early 1900s. he went to every merchant in town and talked 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 much more apt to be able to be a modern, more modern, pattern by -- more modern by 1907 standards town. other cities looking at what santa rosa was doing were impressed. one in particular referred to santa rosa as the pluckiest town and the rest.

>> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring santa rosa, california. torecently traveled there learn about its history. learn more about santa rosa and other stops on our tour at cspan.org/citiestour. >> you're watching american history tv on c-span 3. follow us on twitter. for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> each week, american history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. located on the national mall in washington, d.c., the national gallery of art was a gift to the american people from andrew mellon, who served as treasury secretary from 1920 to 1932.