On August 17, 1959, just a few minutes before
midnight, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake shook me from my bed in East Helena,
Montana. I do not recall the
incident. My mother told me this. I was three at the time. That earthquake killed 28 people. Most of the victims perished when half of a
mountain in the Madison Range collapsed onto them as they slept or sat by campfires
at a campground along the Madison River not far from West Yellowstone, Montana.
Though I do not recall the quake, I do recall sitting
in the back of my family’s station wagon when my father drove the lot of us down
to investigate the scene not long after the quake. I vividly recall the buckled highway near Hebgen
Lake about nine miles above the landslide.
I remember looking at an overturned car and some trucks thrown from the
roadway and saying “those look just like my Tonka trucks!”
At this date, the lake formed by the blockage of the
river is about six miles long and reaches a depth of 190 feet at the deepest
point. A few of the trees that were only
half-submerged by the sudden formation of the lake remain dead-standing. As that girl and I drove along the shore of
Earthquake Lake two days ago, we spotted two fishermen on a small boat slowly
threading through a few of the upright trees in the water. Just two men in what is now a calm mountain lake.
Posted is a photograph I captured two days ago (still
showing the bare rock exposed by the collapse of the mountain) and a photo I
found at the National Museum of the Forest Service website where I gathered
most of my information.
--Mitchell
Hegman
Interesting!
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