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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
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Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
In 1889, a newspaper reports bubonic plague, the disease which once annihilated half the population of Europe, has made its way to Hawaii. Less than a year later, the plague arrives in California and sends the entire country into a panic. Everyone from the Chinese, to the medical board, is blamed for the disease’s effects as the federal government navigates its way through the crisis. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| 1889 | The bubonic plague strikes Honolulu, Hawaii—arriving all the way from Asia. |
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| 1900 | The first reported incident of plague in the continental United States is found in the Chinese slums or “Chinatown” of San Francisco. |
| June 1900 | California is placed under quarantine, until the Governor Henry Gage persuades the federal government to lift the ban. Newspapers speculate Gage’s protestation of the ban to be political rather than medical. |
| 1901 - 1920 | Despite Gage’s refutation, the bubonic plague begins to pose a national threat to American health—inciting great fear in the average American and large amounts of funding from the federal government to thwart the disease. |
