The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire caused enormous losses; insurance companies paid out approximately $235 million in claims — the largest single insurance event in history to that point — and transformed catastrophe loss adjustment.

The earthquake shook a city that was home to Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and a vibrant literary culture; London wrote an immediate eyewitness essay; the disaster became a site of elegiac, apocalyptic, and social-realist writing about American urban modernity.