San Francisco Earthquake Refugees

The US Army built 5,610 redwood and fir "relief houses" designed by John McLare to accommodate 20,000 displaced people. They were grouped in eleven camps, packed close to each other and rented to people for $2 dollars per month until rebuilding was completed. They were painted olive drab, partly to blend in with the site, and partly because the military had large quantities of olive drab paint on hand. The camps had a peak population of 16,448 people, but by 1907 most people had moved out of the camps, which were then re-used as garages, storage spaces or shops.

There are two 1906 earthquake refugee cottages located in the Presidio today behind the Old Post Hospital at Lincoln Boulevard and Funston Avenue. These two shacks memorialized in the Presidio are originally from Camp Richmond, a large camp that compromised 24 city blocks in the western area of San Francisco. The initial owners of these particular shacks then moved them to 34th Avenue. In 1985, the Army's 864th Engineer Battalion relocated the cottages to the Presidio.

Between 225,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless, out of a population of about 400,000. Half of these refugees fled across the bay to Oakland. Newspapers at the time described Golden Gate Park, the Panhandle, and the beaches between Ingleside and North Beach as covered with makeshift tents.

- From Presido in San Francisco  National Park Service