1906 Sherman Ranch Monitor Lizard Rampage
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake was felt throughout the Bay Area. The shaking was especially severe at Sherman Ranch and the lizard houses were badly damaged. Agitated and angry lizards, frightened by the shaking and the falling debris, escaped their pens and went on a rampage throughout the ranch buildings and main ranch house. A fire broke out which destroyed the ranch house and badly damaged the lizard houses; more critically, the stores of fuel for the kerosene-fired heaters used to maintain temperature in the lizard houses caught fire and were completely consumed.
Despite her best efforts, Henrietta Sherman and her ranch hands were unable to obtain any additional fuel for the heaters; when the heat wave broke three days after the quake, it was impossible to keep the temperature high enough in the damaged lizard houses. All the lizards died that night. Henrietta, based on a hunch that the monitor lizard business was a dying industry, chose not to try to rebuild the business. To her great chagrin, lizard leather became extremely popular in 1910 and remained popular until the Great Depression.
Published under the terms of the CC BY 3.0 license.
![[Fictopedia]](Fictopedia-Logo.gif "The Fictopedia logo, the name displayed in brackets"){kind=logo}