Court House Door

The Ninth Circuit Federal Court/Post Office building was newly built at the time of the 1906 earthquake, and aside from some settling, evident in this doorframe, it survived well. More impressively, it was saved from the fires by determined effort, losing not a single piece of mail. In the days after the quake, the post office forwarded mail without charging postage or insisting on proper envelopes. Messages written on shingles, scraps of cloth and other unusual "letters" with the San Francisco postmark are rare artifacts of that crisis period.