studies remained strictly limited to organic and soil chemistry study and analysis. In 1903, an agricultural bill sponsoring a state agricultural school to give first-hand experience for future farmers passed the legislature. Pardee vetoed the bill, explaining that he was not hostile to the idea of an agricultural school, but wanted a less vague proposal. The Legislature drafted a more detailed bill, the University Farm Bill, in 1905. In it, the bill specified that a future state agricultural school would need a location already irrigated, with provisions for ideal soil and climatic conditions, as well as water and land rights. Pardee agreed, and signed the bill into law. For the next year, an agricultural commission sponsored by Pardee investigated more than fifty sites from Glenn County to Fresno. In 1906, Pardee announced that he decided upon Davisville in Yolo County, located nearly fifteen miles southwest of the state capital of Sacramento. Opened to students in 1908, the School of Agriculture quickly became one of the premier centers of agricultural study in the state. In 1959, the Regents of the University of California granted the school campus autonomy, designating it UC Davis. The state of California's forests also came under Pardee's agenda. Shortly after the beginning of his administration, Pardee, with the help of Gifford Pinchot, ordered a joint state and federal commission to inspect and survey California's forests. In 1905, a State Forestry Act was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, creating a Board of Forestry to monitor and supervise logging, land usage, and forest fires. The act, along with Pinchot's advocacy, helped influence President Roosevelt to transfer federal forest land over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, later becoming the National Forest Service. Pardee's own Board of Forestry would later evolve into the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. 1906 San Francisco earthquake In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, a magnitude 7.7 to 8.3 earthquake struck along the San Andreas Fault, with an epicenter two miles (three km) from San Francisco, near Mussel Rock in neighboring San Mateo County. While cities as spread as Santa Rosa, San Jose and Palo Alto suffered considerable damage, San Francisco remained hardest hit, with resulting fires destroying much of the central core of the city. As telegraphed reports slowly filtered into the Governor's Office in Sacramento, Pardee mobilized the California Army National Guard to be dispatched