San Francisco’s population was approximately 410,000 people at the time of the earthquake, so this Southern Pacific evacuation, noted below, alone would account for the movement of more than fifty percent of the population by rail. Given that an additional 20- to 30-thousand were evacuated by the Navy from the area of Fort Mason, this may be one of the largest evacuations in history. It should be noted that these figures do not account for passengers fleeing the city from the Ferry Building on the ferries to Oakland. An August 1906 Southern Pacific news release placed the total number evacuated by the company at 300,000.