A charming silent film entitled A Trip Down Market Street enthralls viewers with its revealing display of life as it was in San Francisco, U.S.A., at the turn of the 20th century. Filmmakers had mounted a hand-cranked camera on the front of a moving cable car and trained it on the bustling thoroughfare ahead. The film’s subjects included horse-drawn wagons and early-model automobiles, as well as shoppers and newsboys carrying on their daily affairs.

What lends the film more poignancy is the likelihood that it was filmed in April 1906, just prior to the deadly earthquake and fire on April 18 that claimed thousands of lives and nearly destroyed that part of the city. Probably, some of the vibrant faces captured on film had mere days to live. “I just see the people there,” says Scott Miles, a descendant of one of the filmmakers, “and they don’t know what’s about to hit them. And you can’t help but feel for them.”

One survivor of the 1906 earthquake called it “the most terrible disaster that ever befell a state or city.”