A Tour through the New Madrid Seismic Zone
The 200th anniversary of the big New Madrid shake is coming in 2011-2012 including ambitious plans for a PBS special, numerous field trips, the National Earthquake Conference, even an "earthquake trail" for the tourism industry is being considered.
This page includes a bit of geography, earthquake and general history. It is intended for those driving through the area, who want the short, easy tour. Some information comes from books including "The Earthquake that Never Went Away" of David Stewart.
You're driving south on I-55 from Cape Girardeau, ending at Blytheville.
River rerouted
At the south edge of Cape Girardeau, as you pass the Regional Airport, notice the flats you are in, with ranges of small hills running along the north and south. You are in an old shallow Mississippi River bed where, until 10,000 years ago, the river turned west. Look at your map. During the first part of the ice ages, it flowed west past Advance, to the hills near Poplar Bluff, before heading south. The Mingo Swamp, er, Mingo State Park and Wildlife Refuge, near Puxico, is a recreated remnant of how some of the area once was. During the latter part of the ice age, the water broke through and flowed through Oran and Bell City locations, on the EASTERN side of Crowley's Ridge. A few hundred thousand years ago, a shallow finger of the Gulf of Mexico (Mississippi embayment) came to this area. But that was when the entire Gulf came up to mid-Arkansas.
Side trip: Drive down highway 25 through Chaffee and Oran. Note the smooth rock outcroppings from the low hills. Imagine yourself submerged in a shallow ancient (Mississippi) River bed for these several miles. Highway 25 meets 61 at Morley. You can head on to Sikeston on US 61 for food.
Side trip: Bollinger County Natural History Museum at Marble Hill (west of Cape Girardeau) has dinosaur bones found south of town, trapped in an earthquake fault.
Thebes Gap
Side trip: Thebes Gap, English Hills, Benton Hill, Commerce Lineament. Go visit River Ridge Winery's hospitality, just north of Commerce. Take the Benton exit, go almost to the main part of Benton, and look for Route E, turning right, then east, in a residential area. It's easy to miss, the first time. You'll drive alongside hills to the north and flatland to the south. You are driving on top of the Commerce Lineament, a seismic oddity that runs in a nearly straight line from Indiana to Arkansas. In past eras, it has seen serious quake activity, that churned soils of different eras into a big mixing bowl which is the hill. Scientists hired someone to cut trenches in that hill, and studied the heavily churned cross section of soils. Sonar-type soundings confirm a big crack beneath your road.
Seismic activity here 10,000 years ago probably helped break through the "Thebes gap", which allows the Mississippi to make a sharp EAST bend from Cape, then to Cairo. Before that, the OHIO River [that's the OHIO river] was flowing where you are driving. It turned south near the Benton exit of I-55, and merged with the nearby Mississippi waters, near Marked Tree, Ar. The Ohio's path across Southern Illinois was just south of State Route 146. Find Karnak and Tamms. Geologists suspect a large New Madrid quake in 900 AD dropped the ground between these towns.
Once you get to the River Ridge winery, you can walk out (3/4 mile) to look down on the river from the top of the gap, though the view is partially obstructed by trees. The village of Commerce has no levee, and has a marker of how Lewis and Clark found the Tywappity Bottoms here. Back at I-55, Diebold Orchard sells fruit, apple cider, at the Benton exit.
A 1990 quake, a couple months before the Iben Browning media frenzy, was centered at New Hamburg, a little town just west, and along the Commerce lineament. If you visit it, you can probably eat very homestyle good food in the back of a local grocery, which is also a butcher shop for the parochial school next door. A tavern across the street is regionally famous for good food. A bed and breakfast is at the end of town, with a pretty lake. The town of Kelso, just up the road, has a steak restaurant in an old bank, beside a beautiful Catholic church. Both towns are just north of Benton.
Benton Hill: From the top of the "Benton Hill" of I-55, it seems you can see all the way to New Orleans across the flatland. This is the northern beginning of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Note that the road actually dips a bit at the bottom of the hill, then comes back up, at the exit. This dip probably happened during the quakes. An elliptical sand boil of several hundred feet is a bit east. In the last 30 years, paleoseismologists have gotten serious about digging into the sand boils across the NMSZ. They've found shakes dating back to 2000, even 4000 BC and further, even though the river has washed away much of the evidence.
Side trip: You can drive from the east side of the Benton exit, to Charleston, Mo., across flat farmland, and along the Mississippi. An 1895 magnitude 6.7 quake was centered out here, a few miles north of Charleston and opposite Cairo IL and "Dogtooth Bend" of the Illinois side. But... there's nothing earthquake-related, to see. This quake shook down buildings in Sikeston and messed up the top of the Cairo library, but did not claim any lives. We're overdue for another 6+ quake, which this time would very likely claim some lives. Remember, a 6.7 magnitude is twice as strong as a 6.5. Many scientists now believe the big ones of 1811-12 were high 7's.
The multi-story Cairo Custom House Museum, city library across the street, and nearby Magnolia Manor, are well worth a visit for Civil War era buffs. Cairo's dining isn't elegant, but very tasty. Tie this trip to Wickliffe, Columbus-Belmont and the ferry, further down this page, and even Reelfoot Lake.
Between Cairo and Cape Girardeau on the Illinois side ... along Illinois 3 just north of Thebes, is a scenic overview of the river making a 90 degree bend. Pull off about where the large power line crosses, and admire. This is the "Thebes gap" probably made 10,000 years ago by shaking on the Commerce Lineament. Before that, the river spilled out further west across the Bootheel. Just south is a small tourist pulloff and walkway to the river. Then take the small side road in to Thebes. See the dual-track rail bridge built in 1905, handling lots of rail traffic between Dallas and Chicago. Perhaps 35 crossings per day. It was built to handle the new motor cars, as well, but that part was never added. The use of concrete pillars was new and questionable when built, but has stood the test of timeand made it to be considered the strongest bridge on the Mississippi. Many runaway barges have struck a bridge pillar over the years with no damage to the sturdy structure.
On the hill overlooking is an old courthouse where some say Lincoln tried a case and runaway slave Dred Scott spent a night in the basement. Open by appointment only. Call southernmostillinois.com. Down the road is Horseshoe Lake, an "oxbow" lake probably made by the evolution of the Mississippi River. At Mound City is a Civil War national military cemetery. Mound City was a staging area for the north to fight the war. Boats were built and repaired on the drydock rails. It could handle 20-25 boats at once. It had a large stationary hospital (where the grain bins are, now) and a floating hospital which cared for and buried troops of blue and grey, black and white. The first Navy nurses were here, local midwives who could deal with seeing blood. More info from Cairo Custom House guides.
Side trip: The Stars and Stripes Military Museum is just south of Bloomfield, half an hour west. It and its military cemetery are relatively brand new, well-kept, and the museum is targeting a big expansion. Bloomfield is on part of Crowley's Ridge (running north-south). We have maps of it on this website. You can't read much about New Madrid Fault without reading about Crowley's ridge. Dexter restaurants are famous for their ribs.
Plutons:
Look at the road map again. Find Bloomfield, and visualize it in the middle of a 25-mile circle. We have several maps on this website of plutons along the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The largest one is the Bloomfield pluton. Basically, a pluton is lava that found its way up through the earth's crust because of seismic cracks. The lava type material usually never found its way completely to the surface, but adds to seismic instability because it weighs down the ground. None of it is visible here. See pictures of the Devil's Tower pluton in Wyoming, exposed by erosion, to visualize what we're talking about.
Sikeston: Stop by the depot museum downtown, and eat at the famous Lambert's Throwed Rolls Cafe. The municipal power plant is northwest of town off Salcedo Road. There are sand boils very near, even partially under it. Read a link on this website to author Sam Penny's version of how Sikeston would shake during a 7.9 quake. In spring, see Charleston's beautiful azelas.
Back to I-55, south toward New Madrid. Look for spots of noticeably whiter soil. These may well be sand boils. The interstate seems to dart around some swampy places.
New Madrid observation deck
Exit at New Madrid. Find the museum, on the levee at the end of the main street. Remember that the entire town sank about 12 feet during the Feb. 7, 1812 quake, where nearby sections of land rose as much as 30 feet. After having an earthquake burger (top bun split in the middle), find the observation deck on the Mississippi.
The original site of New Madrid is now halfway out into the river. We are standing at the top of the big loop on your map, with river flowing from left to right. This loop was once called Bessie's Bend. A little town of Bessie was in the neck of the bend. Boat travelers would spend the night in the hotel, exiting the boat on the eastern shore. Then they would board the next morning on the western side, less than a mile away, but the boat had gone twenty miles around the bend, saving them some time.
Mark Twain wrote of an interesting feud on Kentucky Bend, or Bessie's Bend. A church was built exactly on the Tennessee-Kentucky line in the middle of that loop. A serious feud between two families continued for years. Members from both families would take their places for Sunday morning worship, one on the Kentucky side of the building, the other on the Tennessee side. When they bowed in prayer, those nearest the isle, with guns, kept their eyes open and watched the other side, for protection. See Wikipedia "Kentucky Bend".
28 boats lost over the falls
Back to the observation deck. To the right, six miles down river, are smokestacks from a power plant and aluminum plant. Those smokestacks and the Marston Rest Area of I-55 mark the approximate center of the largest earthquake ever to hit the continental US (Feb. 7, 1812). To the left, the earth to the south and west had pushed up several feet, and caused a waterfall. Even though the water ran backward for only a few hours, author David Stewart says the falls here lasted for a few days. Flatboats were the norm, almost helpless to quickly maneuver. Stewart says 28 of 30 boats capsized and were swamped with almost total loss of life. Witnesses from where you are standing could hear frantic screams of the boatmen. Another, lesser, dam and waterfall were just downstream, and may not have lasted as long. The second dam was less than a kilometer from where you are standing. See maps on this site showing Reelfoot Fault creating the Reelfoot Lake dam, and jaggedly crossing the top part of the loop.
Read from the Enigma paper, done by expert Eugene Schweig and others in 1996.
The Ohio River ice jam broke up at Louisville falls about the time of {the January quake). [Nolte (1854) reports that earthquakes "loosened the ice"], and many boats that began the trip to New Orleans at the falls had reached New Madrid and tied up for the night of 6 February 1812.
At 03:45 on 7 February the main dip-slip event of the entire sequence began. It created one waterfall or rapids and two flow barriers on the Mississippi River's Kentucky bend; an additional falls may have formed on the bend's western limb by deformation in the hanging wall.
The hanging wall rose beneath the river from 12 km to 17 km upstream of New Madrid. This created an uplift that obstructed flow near island #10 [bottom of the first river loop] and a downdrop falls or rapids downstream of the island [the 2:00-3:00 position of the river loop]. This combination was the most severe river disruption; it generated the great upstream wave and retrograde current so graphically described by Speed (1812) and the "patron" (Shatler 1815). Both travelers' flatboats would survive being swept over the downstream falls.
The second intersection of Reelfoot Fault with the river was immediately downstream of the town New Madrid (within 1 km). It uplifted the riverbed by one-to-several meters, accounting for the large wave and retrograde current at New Madrid, independently described by Bryan (1848) and Nolte (1854).
One Sunday in December, 1990, predictions of a climatologist of a 50-50 chance of a quake brought a national media frenzy to town. This webmaster was there when CNN was broadcasting live each hour from in front of the museum, saying the "big one" hadn't happened yet. If it had, all would have been in grave danger. We counted 45 news vehicles, neatly parked downtown, with telephone hookups neatly ran. A sheriff's deputy wondered why CBS alone needed five large satellite trucks. But a St. Louis University seismologist told us the seismograph was even calmer than usual during this time.
Back out near Highway 61 in the southwest part of town is a large sand boil - near a service station. On the internet, check how many small quakes have happened just in the last week, around New Madrid. An occasional week may have none, but they will average almost one a day.
Almost anyone who lives in or near New Madrid will tell you they feel some occasional shakes, but regard them like a passing train or a thunderstorm. One expert believes the New Madrid Faulting is more than a Billion years old. The continents pushed and pulled twice, stretching the region 600 million years and 200 million years ago, accounting for the double directions of fault lines you see on a NMSZ map. Compare the many maps of the NMSZ on this site to your roadmap to see when you are in the heaviest area of the NMSZ.
David Stewart points out a large sand fissure at mile post 44 under I-55, the railroad and river levee. He says the railroad has a big problem keeping the rails aligned because the daily trains taking coal to the power plant cause mechanical liquefaction. No amount of gravel brought in, seems to help. The sand fissure under I-55 is 1.5 miles north of the Marston rest area. There are several sand boils just south of the two plants.
I-155 Bridge
The bedrock below Pulaski County, Illinois, north of Cairo, is at 28 feet. If you happen to be at the east side of the I-155 Caruthersville-Dyersburg river bridge, note the gentle, peaceful-looking hills. This is the junction of two main segments of the New Madrid Fault. The bedrock is down 28-hundred feet. River-bottom soil can amplify the effects of a quake, six-fold. On the east side of the bridge, take state route 181/79 north toward Ridgely. After 10 miles, it curves. That's Cottonwood Point. A fault segment that also bears that name, starts here, and continues SW past Blytheville, to Marked Tree, AR.
One theory why the rock is so far down... Seismologist Roy Van Arsdale believes that way, way back, the bottom half of what is now the Mississippi River, passed over a "hot spot" that helped erode the area, leading to the "Mississippi embayment" - a shallow finger of the Gulf of Mexico, that came up to Cairo.
Read elsewhere on this site of a hapless fellow in a river bottom near Buffalo, NY, who thought he was "having a fit" when the shaking originated very near -here-. The bridge's deepest pylons go down less than 100 feet. Liquefaction has different forms, and even the beating of helicopter blades can cause it. A State of Missouri bridge engineer in 2006 told us in an email:
The main truss spans are supported deep caissons that bear on dense sands 50 to 90 feet below the river bottom. There was a partially completed seismic retrofit study in 1995 that projected a cost of $32M. (The upgrade was not done because of cost.)
Little Prairie
Find the big grain elevator on the river at Caruthersville. The town of Little Prairie was halfway across the river in front of it. The grain elevator is 10 stories tall, and is a landmark for several miles around. Little Prairie flooded without warning during the first quake, in mid-December. Stewart says,
Crevasses were everywhere. Sometimes cracks would open and then slap shut, spouting groundwater over the tops of tall trees. Sometimes the ground would part beneath a large tree, splitting the trunk from the bottom up. Then about noon another great shock hit the town, and the ground began to liquefy and the town began to sink. Some 100 people gathered their belongings and children on shoulders and walked eight miles through cold, waist-deep waters, never knowing when they might trip over a buried stump or fall into an unseen crevasse. They reached higher ground near Hayti.
Jan. 23rd quake wipes Point Pleasant
The epicenter of the January 23rd quake is listed as east of Portageville. It wiped away the town of Point Pleasant, not far south of Marston. The people there had already fled. Point Pleasant is still on the map, but a mile west of where it once was. The epicenter of this one is less clear than of the others. Some say it may have been near Carmi in southern Illinois, where a two mile crack was found with two-foot vertical displacement, and wagonloads of pure white sand piled on the surface.
The Beach
Between Hayti and Kennett is a 136-acre sandboil, known as "the beach". It's near Deering. We believe we can see it on Google Earth, but you'll have to ask local directions.
Big Lake, west of Blytheville, was formed in 1811-12. It handles overflow storm water from the entire Bootheel. The Bootheel drained pretty well before then 1811-12 quakes. Then millions of dollars of drainage work in the early 20th century again made many acres of farmland valuable.
Chickasaw Bluffs - eastern side of the Mississippi River
Bluffs line most of the river between Hickman, Ky., and Memphis. See Wikipedia for location of the four bluffs. Memphis is on the "fourth Chickasaw Bluff". Chickasaws did not hand over their land until after the 1811-12 quakes. The quakes caused landslides at various places. Once a landslide starts, the spot is never completely "healed" from further potential damage.
Columbus Belmont Park
Control of the Mississippi River was strategic to winning the Civil War, in the early 1860s. Confederate forces thought they were entrenched high on a very scenic bluff overlooking the river at Columbus, Ky. They tried to block the river with a huge chain, which broke and sank under its own weight. The "rebs" also had a camp at Belmont, Missouri, on flatland just across the river. General Grant was stationed at Cairo, IL, brought some troops, burned the Belmont camp and cut supplies to the "rebs" up on the hill, and fairly easily cleared out the problem. The park is a beautiful place to visit, or camp for a few days. It has literal trenches the troops used, and a restored building museum that was used as a hospital.
Also, read on the internet about the battle of Island 10, at the bottom of the New Madrid loop. (Links and pics are on this site.) The "Yanks" did some daring moves, sneaking metal gunboats past island 10 in the middle of the night, during a thunderstorm, to help open the river.
Hickman Dorena Ferry
Operates across the Mississippi between a remote area near East Prairie MO, and Hickman, Ky. Your wait is likely less than half an hour. $10 per car. See the "Big Oak Tree State Park", nearby on the Missouri side. Check to be sure the ferry is operating. Visit the "tour de corn" in June, and bring your bike. An East Prairie restaurant installed a train whistle on its roof for nostalgia after the train tracks left. They'll sound it for you.
Big quakes were on three days
The 1811-12 sequence had a few thousand smaller quakes over 4-6 months. The largest ones were on three days, one in December, one in January and one in February. The December day had three big quakes each a few hours apart. Some researchers count one or two of those as aftershocks, which is why you may get confused reading how many "big" ones there were.
A form of earthquake lightning is seen around strong earthquakes. Look up "earthquake lights" on Wikipedia. Experts have five theories on what causes it. Traveler William Leigh Pierce on the Mississippi, two weeks before the first New Madrid big quake, said, "one half hour before sun-rise, two vast electrical columns shot up from the eastern horizon, until their heads reached the zenith." Such lights were seen in Savannah, Georgia, at the same time those folks felt the first NM quake.
Look at a US map. At Owensboro, Ky., west of Louisville, the first steamboat was docked for the night when the first NM jolt felt like the boat suddenly grounded. That was 215 miles from the epicenter. At Knoxville and Savannah, it rattled the china, even felt like being on a boat in rough seas. In the Mississippi valley, people said the soil rose and fell in 2-3 foot waves, behaving exactly like ocean waves. Few settlers were in the New Madrid region yet, and virtually none, further west of the Mississippi. Read eyewitness accounts.
Tourism links
www.visitsemo.com
www.visitsikeston-miner.com
www.throwedrolls.com
www.charlestonmo.org
eastprairiemo.net
www.dorena-hickmanferryboat.com
www.parks.ky.gov/findparks/recparks/cb
www.dexterchamber.com
shawneeheartland.com
www.southernmostillinoishistory.net
www.caruthersvillecity.com
www.reelfoottourism.com
www.new-madrid.mo.us
www.visitmo.com
starsandstripesmuseumlibrary.org
www.westkentucky.com
www.ozarkvacation.com/nearkansas
www.tnvacation.com/vendors/northwest_tennessee_tourism_council
Thebes rail bridge
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