New Madrid, MO Earthquake - 1811 by Mike Brown, Rockdale Reporter

200 Years Ago, Something Was Going On

by Mike Brown, Editor

Rockdale Reporter - January 29, 2011

When I started to write the “100 years ago” column for the editorial page this week, I

told one of my colleagues I was going to write two, in an attempt to get one ahead going

into the new year.

I said “two, hundred years ago,” but it came out “200 years ago” and that’s what

everybody heard. We thought that was mildly amusing and joked, “yeah that would be some

short column, Rockdale wasn’t here yet and nothing was going on in the U.S. 200 years

ago this week.”

But me, being me, had to go look it up. Turns out that 200 years ago this week our 35-

year-old country was in the middle of the biggest historical event hardly anyone ever

mentions.

They called them the New Madrid (MAD-rid) Earthquakes after the town in Missouri which

was near the center.

To this day, they remain the most awesome and most widespread earthquakes in the history

of the United States.

Between December 1811, and March, 1812, there were scores, if not hundreds, of

earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault.

There were four main ones, two on Dec. 16, 1811, one each on Jan. 23 and Feb. 7, 1812.

Each of those quakes was probably between 7 and 8 on the not-yet-invented Richter Scale.

Other famous quakes in U. S. history have been more powerful (Alaska, 1964) or killed

more people (San Francisco, 1906) but what made New Madrid so unbelievably awesome was

that its quaking went on, literally, for months.

In fact, it’s believed a quake from the New Madrid series was felt in Illinois in 1855.

If that’s correct, the earth didn’t totally settle down for 44 years.

And the size (see map) was unbelievable. It’s recorded the New Madrid quakes rang church

bells in Boston and the fledgeling city of York, Ontario, which was to grow into

Toronto.

Sidewalks cracked in Washington, D. C. Residents of Pittsburgh and Norfolk, Virginia,

were shaken out of their beds.

Chimneys fell down in Maine. Yes, Maine.

Travellers experienced waterfalls on the Mississippi River. One account at the time told

of a riverboat crew which was unsure whether to continue its journey down river because

the captain was certain New Orleans had probably sunk into the Gulf of Mexico.

The quaking changed the map. It created Reelfoot Lake, said to be the only large-scale,

non-manmade lake in Tennessee.

Witnesses swore the Mississippi flowed backward until Reelfoot Lake was full.

Then there’s Kentucky Bend. That’s a little chunk of Kentucky that’s surrounded by a

270-degree bend of the Mississippi River in the states of Tennessee and Missouri.

That’s right. It doesn’t touch Kentucky at any point but it’s part of that state.

The earthquakes made the real estate that way. The states didn’t quit arguing about who

owned what until 1848.

Of course people died in the New Madrid quakes but it’s virtually impossible to estimate

how many. Fortunately, the area was extremely sparsely populated in 1811-12.

If a similar event happened today it would be horrific for the city of Memphis,

Tennessee, just downstream. Someone who lived there once recorded a song titled “All

Shook Up.”

For comparison, the 1906 San Francisco quake, the most famous one in American history,

covered about 6,200 square miles.

The New Madrid quakes covered 50,000.

Geologists are divided over whether the New Madrid event could happen again. Some say

the seismic activity is over, others say it’s still active.

One thing is certain, there most definitely was something going on exactly 200 years

ago.

mike@rockdalereporter.com

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram