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The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco, one of the West's great cultural and industrial cities. This study examines the growth of California's print culture before the earthquake, focusing on the development of San Francisco's print culture by studying its literary movements, print industry, and libraries. This thesis presents the recovery of California's literary figures, publishers, print industries, and libraries in the wake of the disaster and analyzes the relative importance of San Francisco's print culture to California before and after the earthquake.
Though the earthquake affected newly established libraries up and down the coast, the devastation was concentrated in San Francisco. The destruction of the state's largest city left California without its primary center of print culture when three days of firestorms destroyed San Francisco's libraries, publishers, and printing shops. Each component of the city's print culture recovered at a different pace, according to the available resources.