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The 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes were a series of intense
intraplate earthquake An intraplate earthquake occurs in the ''interior'' of a Plate tectonics, tectonic plate, in contrast to an interplate earthquake on the ''boundary'' of a tectonic plate. They are relatively rare compared to the more familiar interplate earthqu ...
s beginning with an initial earthquake of moment magnitude 7.2–8.2 on December 16, 1811, followed by a moment magnitude 7.4
aftershock In seismology, an aftershock is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger earthquake, in Epicenter, the same area of the Mainshock, main shock, caused as the displaced Crust (geology), crust adjusts to the effects of the main shock. Large earthq ...
on the same day. Two additional earthquakes of similar magnitude followed in January and February 1812. They remain the most powerful earthquakes to hit the contiguous United States east of the
Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in great-circle distance, straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Can ...
in recorded history.Historic Earthquakes New Madrid Earthquakes 1811–1812
United States Geological Survey
The earthquakes, as well as the
seismic zone In seismology, a seismic zone or seismic belt is an area of seismicity potentially sharing a common cause. It can be referred to as an earthquake belt as well. It may also be a region on a map for which a common areal rate of seismicity is assume ...
of their occurrence, were named for the
Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...
town of New Madrid, then part of the
Louisiana Territory The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Missouri Territory. The territory was formed out of t ...
and now within the U.S. state of
Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
. The
epicenter The epicenter (), epicentre, or epicentrum in seismology is the point on the Earth's surface directly above a hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or an underground explosion originates. Determination The primary purpose of a ...
s of the earthquakes were located in an area that at the time was at the distant western edge of the
American frontier The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the Geography of the United States, geography, History of the United States, history, Folklore of the United States, folklore, and Cultur ...
, only sparsely settled by European settlers. Contemporary accounts have led seismologists to estimate that these stable continental region earthquakes were felt strongly throughout much of the central and eastern United States, across an area of roughly , and moderately across nearly 1 million sq mi (3 million km2). The
1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 AM Pacific Time Zone, Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli inte ...
, by comparison, was felt moderately over roughly . The earthquakes were interpreted by
Tecumseh Tecumseh ( ; (March 9, 1768October 5, 1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the Territorial evolution of the United States, expansion of the United States onto Native Americans in the United States, Native American ...
's pan-Indian alliance, to mean that Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet must be supported.


Events

* December 16, 1811, 08:15 UTC (02:15 am local time): M 7.2–8.2, epicenter in what is now northeast
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...
. It caused only slight damage to man-made structures, mainly because of the sparse population in the epicentral area. The future location of
Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Situated along the Mississippi River, it had a population of 633,104 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tenne ...
, experienced level IX shaking on the
Mercalli intensity scale The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS) measures the effects of an earthquake at a given location. This is in contrast with the seismic magnitude usually reported for an earthquake. Magnitude scales measure the inherent force or ...
. A seismic
seiche A seiche ( ) is a standing wave in an enclosed or partially enclosed body of water. Seiches and seiche-related phenomena have been observed on lakes, reservoirs, swimming pools, bays, harbors, caves, and seas. The key requirement for formatio ...
propagated upriver, and Little Prairie (a village that was on the site of the former Fort San Fernando, near the site of present-day Caruthersville, Missouri) was heavily damaged by
soil liquefaction Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses Shear strength (soil), strength and stiffness in response to an applied Shear stress, stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other s ...
.The Enigma of the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812
Johnston, A. C. & Schweig, E. S. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Volume 24, 1996, pp. 339–384. Available on SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Modified Mercalli intensity VII or greater was observed over a area. * December 16, 1811 (aftershock), 13:15 UTC (07:15 am local time): M 7.4, epicenter in southeast Missouri. This shock followed the first earthquake by six hours and was similar in intensity. * January 23, 1812, 15:15 UTC (09:15 am local time): M 7.0–8.0, epicenter in the
Missouri Bootheel The Missouri Bootheel is a Salient (geography), salient (protrusion) located in the southeasternmost part of the U.S. state of Missouri, extending south of 36°30′ north latitude, so called because its shape in relation to the rest of the sta ...
. The meizoseismal area was characterized by general ground warping, ejections, fissuring, severe
landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides ...
s, and caving of stream banks. Johnston and Schweig attributed this earthquake to a rupture on the New Madrid North Fault. This may have placed strain on the Reelfoot Fault. * February 7, 1812, 09:45 UTC (03:45 am local time): M 7.4–8.6, epicenter near
New Madrid, Missouri New Madrid ( ; ) is a city in New Madrid County, Missouri, United States. The population was 2,787 at the 2020 census. New Madrid is the county seat of New Madrid County. The city is located 42 miles (68 km) southwest of Cairo, Illinois, a ...
. The town of New Madrid was destroyed. In
St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...
, many houses were severely damaged and their chimneys were toppled. This shock was definitively attributed to the Reelfoot Fault by Johnston and Schweig. Uplift along a segment of this reverse fault created temporary
waterfall A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in seve ...
s on the Mississippi at
Kentucky Bend The Kentucky Bend, variously called the New Madrid Bend, Madrid Bend, Bessie Bend, or Bubbleland, is an exclave of Fulton County, Kentucky that is encircled by the states of Tennessee and Missouri. The exclave is a portion of a peninsula defin ...
, created waves that propagated upstream, and caused the formation of Reelfoot Lake by obstructing streams in what is now Lake County, Tennessee. The maximum Modified Mercalli intensity observed was XII. The many more aftershocks include one magnitude 7 aftershock to the December 16, 1811, earthquake which occurred at 6:00 UTC (12:00 am local time) on December 17, 1811, and one magnitude 7 aftershock to the February 7, 1812, earthquake which occurred on the same day at 4:40 UTC (10:40 pm local time).
Susan Hough Susan Elizabeth Hough (born March 20, 1961) is a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey in Pasadena, California, and scientist in charge of the office. She has served as an editor and contributor for many journals and is a contributin ...
, a seismologist of the
United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...
, has estimated the earthquakes' magnitudes as around magnitude 7.


Eyewitness accounts

John Bradbury, a fellow of the
Linnean Society The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature collec ...
, was on the Mississippi on the night of December 15, 1811, and describes the tremors in great detail in his ''Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810 and 1811'', published in 1817: Eliza BryanLetter of Eliza Bryan found in
Lorenzo Dow's Journal
', Published By Joshua Martin, Printed By John B. Wolff, 1849, p. 344. Accessed September 17, 2009.

September 21, 2009.
in New Madrid,
Missouri Territory The Territory of Missouri was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from June 4, 1812, until August 10, 1821. In 1819, the Territory of Arkansas was created from a portion of its southern area. In 1821, a southe ...
, wrote the following eyewitness account in March 1812: John Reynolds, the fourth
governor of Illinois The governor of Illinois is the head of government of Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its we ...
, among other political posts, mentions the earthquake in his biography ''My Own Times: Embracing Also the History of My Life'' (1855): The Shaker diarist Samuel Swan McClelland described the effects of the earthquake on the Shaker settlement at West Union (Busro), Indiana, where the earthquakes contributed to the temporary abandonment of the westernmost Shaker community.


Geologic setting

The underlying cause of the earthquakes is not well understood, but modern faulting seems to be related to an ancient geologic feature buried under the Mississippi River
alluvial plain An alluvial plain is a plain (an essentially flat landform) created by the deposition of sediment over a long period by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A ''floodplain'' is part of the process, bei ...
, known as the Reelfoot Rift. The New Madrid seismic zone is made up of reactivated faults that formed when what is now North America began to split or
rift In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben ...
apart during the breakup of the supercontinent
Rodinia Rodinia (from the Russian родина, ''rodina'', meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago (Ga) and broke up 750–633 million years ago (Ma). wer ...
in the
Neoproterozoic The Neoproterozoic Era is the last of the three geologic eras of the Proterozoic geologic eon, eon, spanning from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago, and is the last era of the Precambrian "supereon". It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic era an ...
era (about 750 million years ago). Faults were created along the rift, and
igneous Igneous rock ( ), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. The magma can be derived from partial ...
rocks formed from
magma Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma (sometimes colloquially but incorrectly referred to as ''lava'') is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also ...
that was being pushed towards the surface. The resulting rift system failed to split the plate, but has remained as an aulacogen (a scar or weak zone) deep underground. In recent decades, minor earthquakes have continued. The epicenters of over 4,000 earthquakes can be identified from seismic measurements since 1974, originating from the seismic activity of the Reelfoot Rift. Forecasts for the next 50 years estimate a 7–10% chance of a major earthquake like those of 1811–1812, and a 25–40% chance of a quake of magnitude 6 or greater. In a report filed in November 2008, the U.S.
Federal Emergency Management Agency The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Exec ...
warns that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid seismic zone could inflict "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States", further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and particularly Tennessee, where a 7.7 or greater magnitude quake would cause damage to tens of thousands of structures affecting water distribution, transportation systems, and other vital infrastructure.


Aftermath

The quakes caused extensive changes to the region's topography.
Subsidence Subsidence is a general term for downward vertical movement of the Earth's surface, which can be caused by both natural processes and human activities. Subsidence involves little or no horizontal movement, which distinguishes it from slope mov ...
, uplift, fissures, landslides and riverbank collapses were common. Trees were uprooted by the intense shaking; people drowned when subsided land flooded. Reelfoot Lake was formed in Tennessee by subsidence of 1.5 meters to 6 meters in some places. Lake St. Francis in eastern Arkansas was expanded by subsidence, with sand and coal being ejected from fissures in the adjacent swamps as water levels rose by 8 to 9 meters. Waves on the Mississippi River caused boats to wash ashore; river banks rose, sand bars were destroyed, and some islands completely disappeared. Sand blows occurred in Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas, covering farmland. The continuous underlying rock mass, uninterrupted by fractures or faults, conducted the seismic waves from the earthquakes over great distances, with perceptible ground shaking as far away as Canada. Intense effects were widely felt in Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri. The number of people who died is unknown; as a frontier area, the region was sparsely populated, and communications and records were poor. The predominantly wooden buildings resisted collapse, though the intense shaking caused many chimneys to fall, wood structures to crack, and trees to fall on buildings, particularly in the epicentral area during the first earthquake on December 16, 1811. A Methodist chaplain traveling with
Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before Presidency of Andrew Jackson, his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses ...
on his Natchez Expedition of 1813 recorded in his journal: "The fishers issuresproduced in the earth about Madrid look awful on both sides of the River and the earth continues to shake at times, fears are ascertained that the worst is to come, it is said that there where about one thousand inhabitants in the Town of New Madrid previous to the Earth Quake – but many alarmed went off that at this time there only about 300." Rated at VII on the Mercalli Intensity Scale, the New Madrid earthquakes remain the strongest recorded North American earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains. The earthquakes strengthened the
Shawnee The Shawnee ( ) are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language. Their precontact homeland was likely centered in southern Ohio. In the 17th century, they dispersed through Ohi ...
prophet
Tenskwatawa Tenskwatawa (; also called Tenskatawa, Tenskwatawah, Tensquatawa or Lalawethika) (January 1775 – November 1836) was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American religious and political leader of the Shawnee tribe, known as the P ...
after the defeat at the
Battle of Tippecanoe The Battle of Tippecanoe ( ) was fought on November 7, 1811, in Battle Ground, Indiana, between United States Armed Forces, American forces led by then Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and tribal forces associated with Sh ...
and the destruction of Prophetstown, with local Native Americans seeing it as a vindication of his teachings and of the warnings of his brother
Tecumseh Tecumseh ( ; (March 9, 1768October 5, 1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the Territorial evolution of the United States, expansion of the United States onto Native Americans in the United States, Native American ...
.


Gallery

Image:NMSZ_Erdbeben.jpg, Reelfoot Rift and NMSZ Image:NMSZ_Vergleich.jpg, Damage-range comparison between a moderate New Madrid zone earthquake ( 1895, magnitude 6.8), and a similar Los Angeles event ( 1994, magnitude 6.7).


See also

* List of earthquakes in the United States * List of historical earthquakes


References


Further reading

* Jay Feldman. ''When the Mississippi Ran Backwards : Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes'' Free Press, 2005. * Conevery Bolton Valencius, ''The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes'' The University of Chicago Press, 2013. * Conevery Bolton Valencius, "Accounts of the New Madrid earthquakes: personal narratives and seismology over the last two centuries," in Deborah R. Coen, ed., "Witness to Disaster: Earthquakes and Expertise in Comparative Perspective," *Science in Context*, 25, no. 1 (February 2012): 17–48. *


External links


The Enigma of the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812
Johnson, A.C. and Schweig, E.S. (1996) ''Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences'', Volume 24, pp. 339–384. SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

to ''The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes'' by Conevery Bolton Valencius.

(links to maps, history, predictions, etc. from the Arkansas Center for Earthquake Education)

(dozens of contemporary accounts of the earthquake, provided by Hanover College) *USGS, Summary of 1811–1812 New Madrid Earthquake Sequence, at https://www.usgs.gov/natural-hazards/earthquake-hazards/science/summary-1811-1812-new-madrid-earthquakes-sequence?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
The "Hard Shock:" The New Madrid Earthquakes.
The History Guy {{DEFAULTSORT:New Madrid Earthquake, 1812 1811 earthquakes 1812 earthquakes Earthquakes in the United States Natural disasters in Arkansas Natural disasters in Illinois Natural disasters in Kentucky Natural disasters in Missouri Natural disasters in Mississippi Natural disasters in Tennessee December 1811 January 1812 February 1812 1812 in Missouri Territory Tecumseh