In the wee hours of Dec. 16, 1811, the earth began to shake in the central Mississippi River valley. It was 2 o’clock in the morning and the few settlers in the region were knocked out of bed by a roaring earthquake now estimated to be a magnitude 7.7 on the Richter scale. An aftershock almost as powerful jolted the region just a few hours later at daybreak.
It would be a winter to remember. Another quake hit on Jan. 23, 1812, at 9 a.m., with a magnitude of 7.5. Among the eyewitness accounts listed on the Virtual Times website is that of George Heinrich Crist, who was living in Nelson County, Kentucky. After the January quake, he wrote:
“It was as bad or worse than the one in December. We lost our Amandy Jane in this one—a log fell on her. We will bury her upon the hill under a clump of trees where Besys Ma and Pa is buried. A lot of people thinks that the devil has come here. Some thinks that this is the beginning of the world coming to a end.”
Yet another quake struck on Feb. 7, 1812, at 3:45 a.m., with a magnitude 7.7. Aftershocks continued into 1813.
The epicenter of the 1811-12 quakes was the town of New Madrid, a Missouri river town located north of Fulton County, Kentucky. Scientists believe that the New Madrid seismic zone was created when the Reelfoot Rift cracked but failed to open wide into a new ocean, leaving a weak spot in the earth’s crust.
Oliver S. Boyd, Ph.D., a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said it’s hard to comprehend what people went through at the time. “The ground might have been rolling, looking like you’re on the ocean,” he said. “You know, trees would have been flipping across in the winds, maybe even breaking somewhere down near their base. You would have seen landslides along the bluffs. You probably would have thought the world was coming to an end.”
How many people died in the quakes?
Kent Moran, Ph.D., of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information, said it’s almost impossible to determine. Centralized records weren’t kept, and migration made it difficult to keep track of people. “We know boats were damaged and sunk. We’ve heard accounts of them. But we don’t know the numbers.”
The quake transformed parts of the Mississippi River into raging rapids. Obstacles on the river bottom were churned up to the surface. “What had been a navigable stream prior became an obstacle course for miles,” Moran said.
Who were the eyewitnesses to the quakes?
At the time of the first quake, the steamboat New Orleans was making its first trip down the Mississippi, Moran said. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, passengers awoke one morning to find the island the ship had been moored to the night before had disappeared.
Naturalist John James Audubon was riding his horse in the barrens region of Kentucky when he heard a distant rumbling. His horse began taking careful steps, then stopped as the earth began to shake. He wrote about it in his “Ornithological Biography”: “All the shrubs and trees began to move from their very roots, the ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake.”
The American Indian tribes of the Southeast took note of a startling prophecy made by Shawnee chief Tecumseh months before: “You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall note. I will go straight to Detroit. When I arrive there, I will stamp my foot on the ground and shake down every house in this village.”
Facts and Myths
The earthquakes were felt all over the Eastern United States, Moran said, from Canada to Florida to the East Coast. Walls were damaged at the original Kentucky state penitentiary in Frankfort.
Oliver Boyd said earthquakes in the central and eastern United States occur in “relatively old, cold and hard crust,” allowing seismic waves to travel farther. “For the same size earthquake you’ll feel it over a much greater area,” he explained.
Some stories have been exaggerated over the years. Although there is a report of a church bell ringing in Charleston, S.C., bells did not ring in Boston. Nor did the Mississippi River flow backwards. It “sloshed backwards,” Moran explained.
Today it’s not always easy to find evidence of the earthquakes. “The Mississippi River, where the earthquake occurred, has had 200 years to erase the evidence,” Moran said. The location of the original New Madrid, Mo., lies under the Mississippi.
An exception is scenic Reelfoot Lake in northwestern Tennessee, where the Feb. 7, 2812, earthquake turned a flood plain into a lake, with trees sunk beneath the water.
Could such large quakes happen again?
Jim Wilkinson, director of the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium, said the New Madrid zone averages 150-200 quakes each year. “Most of them aren’t felt,” he said.
New Madrid-size quakes have happened three or four times before 1811, Wilkinson says. “For an earthquake similar to 1811-12, there’s about a 7 to 10 percent chance in a 50-year window that it could occur again.”
For a quake of smaller magnitude, 6 to 6.5 on the Richter scale, Wilkinson gives odds of a 25-45 percent chance in a 50-year window.
Geophysicist Oliver Boyd says a strong earthquake today would be three times as devastating as Hurricane Katrina, which caused $300 billion in damage. In contrast, the U.S. Geological Survey says the Congress allocated $50,000 for disaster relief after the 1811-12 quakes.
