The day of the San Francisco earthquake , Henry Pittock , publisher of '' The Oregonian , '' was a guest in the hotel . Although not injured by falling debris , Pittock said that his suitcase was " flattened like a pancake . " Journalist Ashton Stevens was also a guest , and he wrote , " When the ceiling came down on the top floor of the Occidental Hotel we fled with barely enough clothes for panic modesty . " Author Gertrude Atherton had stored some of her belongings at the hotel , and when she arrived to claim them after the earthquake , all she could find were 40,000 words of the yet unpublished manuscript , '' Ancestors ''
San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
Occidental Hotel