On the night of March 6, 1900, a San Francisco health officer reported a mysterious death to the city's Board of Health.

The body of a Chinese man with badly swollen lymph nodes have been found in the basement of a Chinatown hotel.

With the tests they had immediately available, the city bacteriologist Dr.

Wilfred Kellogg suspected Bubonic Plague.

That same night, city health authorities took drastic action, a total blockade of the city's

Chinatown.

The police department stationed 32 officers to seal off

Chinatown from the rest of the city. The residents of Chinatown were in an uproar and

the city's newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle in particular,

were skeptical about the need for such a dramatic measure.

The city also sent the suspected plague samples to the federal quarantine station on Angel Island.

Dr Joseph Kinion was the chief medical officer in charge of testing the sample,

but his early results were inconclusive.

Faced with all these circumstances, the City's Board of Health decided to end the

lockdown just three days later. That wasn't the end though.

Kenyon samples eventually did confirm that the plague had come to San Francisco.

And in the middle of May, four more people died in Chinatown.

All signs suggested that these were plague deaths.

And on May 29, 1900, San Francisco's Board of Health passed a resolution.

The city would cut off an area bounded by Kearney, Broadway, Stockton, and California

streets. In other words, Chinatown. The very next day the

San Francisco police sent 53 officers to enforce the decree. Eventually the

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