"The people of San Francisco were very proud of their city hall, because of the originality and beauty of its architecture, and was certainly a deviation from the hackneyed style and a happy one. It was erected 1892-95 at a cost of over $,000,000.00 and contained a free public library with 153,ooo voluntes. The earthquake of April 1906, and the conflagration caused by it, left little of this proud structure. But the history of the building up of San Francisco is a guarantee that it will rise out of its ashes and ruins more beautiful than ever, for to make the site of San Francisco suitable for a large city an immense amount of work had to be done in cutting down hills and ridges, filling up gullies and gulches and reclaiming the mud flats on the bay. San Francisco's prosperity does not rest on the production of California gold any longer, for although the state yields more precious metal annually than any other state, the yearly value of its marketed cattle, wool, cereals, fruits, sugar and wines is twice as great, and forms the real commercial basis of the great city of the Pacific Coast."