Over on Facebook, a post appeared this morning in a group I belong to with a newspaper clipping from February 24, 1812. The newspaper writer wrote about an earthquake felt near Cheek’s Crossroads on the 7th of that month. I recognized that date – it was the last “big” quake in a series of tremblers called the New Madrid earthquakes – the most powerful earthquakes to strike east of the Rockies in recorded history.
The first hit on December 16, 1811, and was followed by two powerful aftershocks. Another strong quake hit on January 23, 1812, and the last big one – there were plenty of aftershocks – rattled the area on February 7. That one destroyed the Missouri town of New Madrid, caused the Mississippi River to briefly flow backwards, and formed Reelfoot Lake.
“An Old Friend” wrote in the Knoxville Gazette that morning that “the shock of an Earth-quake was felt in this neighborhood much more severe than either of the lately preceding ones.” He wrote that he’d walked by his creek in the morning and noticed that it had overflowed, but not because his mill pond had broken.
“I can explain the phenomenon in no other way than supposing that a surplus quantity of water was thrown over the breast of the dam by the oscillation of the earth during the shock,” he wrote.
Further, An Old Friend said that springs belonging to two of his neighbors – which previously flowed with “the purest streams and whose bottoms have never exhibited any appearance but that of a mirror” – were “sending forth water angry looking muddy and totally unfit for the common purposes of life.”
The writer also references the Great Comet of 1811 (C/1811 F1), which was visible to the naked eye for 260 days and at its brightest in October of that year. Prior to Hale-Bopp in 1997, it had the longest recorded time of visibility. The comet was visible during the quakes. With an amused tone, he notes that the comet, the quakes, and the Battle of the Wabash (Tippecanoe in November 1811) had brought out “whimsical ideas … [that] inspired the minds of the mass of our less intelligent, though not upon that account less respectable, brethren,” although he did note that “we cannot help thinking that the machinations & devastations of the sons of lawless power and ambition in the older hemisphere & the calamities produced & still threatened by the common & mysterious power and agents of nature in the new, combine to render the present era gloomy and portentious.”
I actually wrote about New Madrid (and I was eviscerated online because of the reference to the “big one” in California – knowing full well that no one actually believes that will happen. I mentioned it because people were again talking about it) when I worked for CNN. Here’s what I said about it in 2005:
“[The New Madrid fault line is] a 120-mile-long system of three to five faults stretching from 40 miles northwest of Memphis to southern Illinois, near Cairo.
“‘The system is capable of producing a quake near 4.0 magnitude every three years,’ said Gary Patterson, a geologist and information services director for the Center for Earthquake and Research Information in Memphis, Tennessee. ‘And they’ll cause minimal damage.’
“But New Madrid already has spawned four earthquakes this year of similar size, along with nearly 100 smaller quakes. Patterson said such activity may or may not be the precursor to a much larger quake.
“The recent activity is an anomaly, he said.
“‘It’s unusual, and we don’t have any reason to believe there is increased risk,’ Patterson said. ‘But any time you have this kind of activity in an area that has a 25 [percent] to 40 percent chance of a 6.0 or greater in the next 50 years, it will draw attention.’
“And the region is ill-prepared for a strong quake, he added.
“Under pressure
“Scientists know little about how the New Madrid seismic zone works, but in the early 19th century, it was the source of the most violent series of earthquakes known in North American history.
“The zone, named for the town of New Madrid, Missouri, is hundreds of miles from a tectonic plate boundary, which Patterson said defies the logic of coastal earthquake science.
“‘Plate tectonic theory can account for large quakes on the edges of plate boundaries, but plate boundary theory assumes a rigid continental plate,’ he said. ‘Madrid is in the middle of a continental plate, not on the boundaries.’
“Three large quakes happened in the winter of 1811-1812, and strong rumbles hit several times until near the end of the 19th century.
“These quakes were felt keenly over more than 2 million square miles — people in Boston, Massachusetts, felt one or more of the three main quakes, the first of which struck in three shocks on the morning of December 16, 1811.
“Two more large shocks struck the area — on January 23, 1812, and the largest and most devastating of all hit February 7, 1812, destroying the town of New Madrid.
“By contrast, the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, California, was felt over 60,000 square miles.
“Patterson said the incredible distance the quakes reached was largely due to the cold, solid rocks ‘that make this continent float,’ a different environment from the plate boundaries on the coast.
“‘On the boundaries, the rock is hot, molten and broken up,’ he said. The solid rock carries the movement farther from the epicenter.
“Earthquake researcher Otto Nuttli estimated 200 moderate to large earthquakes on the New Madrid fault between December 16, 1811, and March 15, 1812, and about 1,800 earthquakes of slightly lesser strength.
“The stronger quakes lifted parts of the land high or dropped them down, and drew the Mississippi’s waters in and threw them back far over the river banks. In some areas, the upheaval beneath the surface was so violent that it caused the mighty river to flow backward.
“Whole islands in the river — and entire towns — disappeared.
“The strongest quake in the area since 1895 was a magnitude 5.5 in 1968. New Madrid is ‘a sleeping giant we don’t understand very well,’ Patterson said.”
New Madrid is different because it’s not along the border of a tectonic plate, where most significant earthquakes occur. It’s in the middle of North America, and quite a few seismologists think it’s got more big quakes in it.
Me, I’m just wondering who “An Old Friend” was. And I’m wondering what the Roddyes thought about all the shaking going on.