[Illustration: Illuminated A]
August is a busy month in the exciting mountain vacation area that
centers in West Yellowstone, Montana, and includes Yellowstone National
Park, the restored ghost town of Virginia City, the nationally famous
trout fishing reach of Madison Canyon that runs through the Gallatin
National Forest, plus dude ranches and lakes in the parts of Montana,
Wyoming and Idaho where the three states come together.
Geologically, it's a new area, where enormous forces are still thrusting
up mountains, where volcanic craters still exist, and where the heat of
the earth still spouts its imprisoned fury through the geysers that have
made Yellowstone Park's Firehole Basin famous.
At 11:37 P. M. on Monday, August 17, 1959, one of the severest
earthquakes recorded on the North American continent shook this area. It
sent gigantic tidal waves surging down the 7-mile length of Hebgen Lake,
throwing an enormous quantity of water over the top of Hebgen Dam, the
way you can slosh water out of a dishpan, still keeping it upright. This
water--described as a wall 20 ft. high--swept down the narrow Madison
Canyon, full of campers and vacationers who were staying in dude ranches
and at three Forest Service campgrounds along the seven-mile stretch
from the dam to the point where the canyon opened up into rolling wheat
and grazing land. Just about the time this surge of water reached the
mouth of the canyon, half of a 7,600-ft.-high mountain came crashing
down into the valley and cascaded, like water, up the opposite canyon
wall, hurtling house-size quartzite and dolomite boulders onto the lower
portion of Rock Creek Campground.
This slide dammed the river and forced the surging water--carrying
trees, mud, and debris, back into the campground. The campers who'd
escaped being crushed under part of the 44 million cubic yards (80
million tons) of rock found themselves picked up and thrown against
trees, cars, trailers, the side of the canyon, etc. Heavy, 4,000 pound
cars were tossed 40 ft. and smashed against trees by the force of the
ricocheting water and the near-hurricane velocity wind created by the
mountainfall. Other cars were scrunched to suitcase thickness and thrown
out from under the slide.
And the water stayed--held by the earthquake-caused natural dam. It
began to flood the lower end of the canyon. At the upper end, big
sections of the road that would take the 300 people trapped in the
canyon to safety crumpled and fell into Hebgen Lake, cutting them off
from the world outside.
[Illustration: Earthquake-blocked road]
When the quake hit, summer Alternate Rangers Fred Tim and Lamont Herbold
were on duty at the West Yellowstone entrance of Yellowstone National
Park. They had just cleared a semi-load of Pres-to-Logs. As the truck
pulled on through the gate, the plywood gatehouse shook so violently,
with the lights flashing off and on, that Herbold shouted,
"Stop the truck, you ____, you've hooked the shack!"
Truck drivers Jack and Lyle Tuttle thought the frantic way their truck
was flopping around meant the motor had broken loose from the mounts.
Driving into the Park, they were halted by huge rocks blocking the road.
Renewed shaking, with tons more rocks rolling down the mountainside sent
them scurrying for cover behind trees. Lyle took refuge in a tree,
where, he later said, the shaking seemed twice as rough.
When the quaking stopped briefly, they turned the truck around and were
happy to get out before more boulders blocked their exit.
In the confusion that followed when the first shock hit, Jerry Yetter,
who operates the Duck Creek Cabins near West Yellowstone, jumped out of
bed and knocked on all the cabin doors to warn the occupants of the
quake. Only after he'd finished the job did he realize that he was
wearing no clothes at all.
[Illustration: Blocked road]
His wife, Iris, ran onto the front porch. The porch dropped into the
basement. She climbed out, got into the car, and didn't stop until she
reached Bozeman, 90 miles to the north.
[_]
Just west of the Duck Creek Junction of highways 1 and 191, the first
shocks wakened Rolland Whitman as it sent dishes and furniture crashing
to the floor. When he couldn't reach his wife's folks in West
Yellowstone, 10 miles south, by phone, he rushed his wife, Margaret, and
their six children into the car, started out, and immediately crashed
over a 13-foot drop-off scarp that the quake had jutted up between his
home and the highway.
On the night of the quake Mrs. Grace Miller, a widow who, in her
seventies, is still sprightly enough to run, single-handed, the Hillgard
Fishing Lodge cabin and boat rentals on the north shore of Hebgen Lake,
found herself suddenly wakened about midnight. She didn't know what was
happening, but she felt she had to get out of the house. She threw a
blanket around herself. The door was jammed, and she had to kick to get
it open.
[Illustration: Fleeing a cabin.]
Outside the door she saw a big, 5-foot crevice. As she leaped across it,
the house dropped from under her into the lake. More crevices kept
opening in the moonlit ground as she walked away from the lake. "Rabbits
were skedaddling in every which direction," she said, but her Malamute
dog, Sandy, was so frightened he wouldn't even notice them.
After quite a spell of hiking in the nightmare-like night, she found
refuge along with about forty other people at Kirkwood Ranch, which
itself was considerably damaged, but a safe distance from the lake. She
was safe there, while next day skin-divers, alerted by worried friends,
searched her floating house for her body.
Later next day she boated past her 9-room home--which contained
everything she owned, floating on the lake.
"I hope it stays upright," she said. "My teeth are still on the kitchen
counter, right next to the sink."
When she arrived at the dam, she greeted an acquaintance with, "I've
been a pretty tough old bird, but I wouldn't want to go through that
again!"
[Illustration: Mrs. Grace Miller's house, which dropped into Hebgen
Lake, floating along what used to be Route 287.
(U. S. Forest Service)]
In a forest fire lookout on top of 10,300-ft.-high Mt. Holmes in
Yellowstone Park, the first shock threw Penn State College student David
Bittner out of his bunk.
"By golly, they'll believe me this time," he said with satisfaction as
he picked himself up off the floor.
Several days earlier he'd phoned a report of substantial tremors, but no
one would take his report seriously.
Charles Godkin, chef at the Frontier, and his wife, Ruth, a waitress,
were driving home at 11:37.
"We must have a flat," she said as the car thumped and shook along the
road.
When Godkin got out to look, the ground was bucking so strenuously that
he could hardly stand up. Back at the Frontier, he found steak plates
all over the floor. In the establishment's walk-in freezer he found the
floor covered with mayonnaise--a foot deep!
[_]
At the Emmett J. Culligan place, dubbed the "Blarneystone Ranch," the
Santa Barbara water softener tycoon spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars building a refuge from the possibility of atomic attack.
Ironically, the main fault of the earthquake rammed through one end of
his building's cement block foundation, raising the ground 15 ft.,
twisting and cracking the whole 150-ft. length of the building.
Ironically, too, Culligan's spread was perhaps the only one reputed to
be covered by earthquake insurance.
His caretaking family, John and Doris Russell, were trapped in their
cottage and had to crawl out and pass their children through a chin-high
15-inch square window.
[_]
At the proud dude ranch, Parade Rest, where Bud and Lu Morris capitalize
on the area's superb fishing, the shock toppled chimneys atop the
massive log buildings and sent the guests scurrying outdoors.
Huddled around a huge campfire in the courtyard, where it seemed safer,
they felt bewildered and helpless as the ground continued to heave and
writhe throughout the night. For hours, the shocks continued at the rate
of one every minute.
By morning the kitchen was a shambles--"like a cabin a grizzly bear had
worked over. Dishes, flour--everything crashed to the floor. The only
thing to do was to clean it up with a broom and shovel," Lu Morris said.
[Illustration: The fault scarp running through the Culligan place.
(U. S. Geological Survey)]
[Illustration: This ground was level before the quake.
(Christopherson)]
Elsewhere throughout the earthquake area, crockery and goods in glass
containers were at a premium; drug stores, bars, groceries were
shard-piled shambles.
[Illustration: Antique shop after earthquake]
After the quake, the proprietor of the antique shop next to the West
Yellowstone Post Office took one look at the disheartening spectacle of
his shop and took off. The shop floor was strewn with a fortune in
broken antique glass and dishware.
"The ground just got up and bucked like a horse," one West Yellowstone
citizen put it.
The only man who was enthusiastic about the earthquake from the start
was geologist Irving J. Witkind of the U. S. Geological Survey, who was
living in a trailer on a rise to the north of Hebgen Lake, above the
Culligans and Parade Rest, while he surveyed and mapped the area.
When the first shock hit, he figured his trailer had somehow broken
loose and was rolling down the hill. He charged out, intent on stopping
it. From the way the trees were swaying in the absence of any wind, he
knew it was a genuine earthquake. He hopped in his jeep and headed down
toward the lake. He saw the scarp that the Whitmans soared off just in
time to stop.
"It's mine! It's mine!" he shouted as he got out of the jeep and
realized the full measure of his fortune. His words will echo wherever
geologists gather in years to come. Professionally, his
once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes fortune in being on the scene of a major
quake meant as much as discovering an unfound Pharaoh's tomb would to an
Egyptologist.
At Mammoth, the old army post which is still headquarters for
Yellowstone Park, Superintendent Lon Garrison was sitting up in bed
reading when the quake hit. His wife and daughter were watching TV when
the big chimneys and rocks from the massive old 1909-built masonry
buildings began crashing through the porches and roofs.
"We got out and fast. We prided ourselves on being cool. It wasn't for
an hour or so that I remembered that I was still wearing my Park Service
uniform coat over pajama pants."
Every time there was a new tremor, the coyotes, abundant thereabouts,
would let out a fresh howl. The phone lines to Old Faithful and West
Yellowstone weren't working. The quake had taken them out. The 18,000
people who were overnighting in the Park when the quakes began were on
the edge of panic.
"What can we do?"
"How can we get word out?"
"Can we get out?"
[Illustration: At Golden Gate, south of Mammoth, in Yellowstone
Park, the road was blocked by this deluge of rock loosened and
shaken down by the quake. (National Park Service)]
Everyone wanted answers to these questions at once.
At Old Faithful, 800 people were in the recreation hall enjoying a
college talent program. In the best entertainment tradition, the MC
played it cool, continuing his patter while the Park Rangers opened the
doors. Everyone exited in good order.
But there was to be little comfort that night. Everyone who'd made it to
bed got up after the first shock.
At the massive, log-built Old Faithful Inn, the timbers gave out loud
creaking and popping noises as the structural torment continued.
"We had to evacuate the building," Superintendent Garrison said. "Hot
water from a broken pipe in the attic was running down the floor of the
east wing. Half an hour later the fireplace and chimney crashed through
the dining room floor, activating the sprinkler system. The water damage
was horrible.
"A few hours earlier, with the dining room full, the casualty list would
have been gruesome.
"As it was, our only casualty was a woman who sprained her ankle leaping
out of bed after the first tremor.
"Later in the week a ranger, exhausted from quake duty, skidded on a
rain-slick pavement and went off the road.
"We feel that God had his arm around us all the way."
The quakes continued with especial violence at Old Faithful. Evacuees
from the Inn sat out the night, wrapped in hotel blankets, in their cars
and in the big, distinctive Yellowstone Park Co. busses, trembling with
fear at each new quake.
At the new Canyon Village, guests were reassured by the big-voiced man
who, in the midst of the turmoil, marched up to the reservations desk
and demanded accommodations for an additional two nights.
Canyon, too, was the place where, they say, another guest left a note on
his pillow for the chambermaid, saying,
"An awfully rough bear stayed under my cabin last night. Had an awfully
hard time sleeping. Better tell the night man to do something about it."
[Illustration: The force of the quake shook this retaining wall
loose--threatening the Gibbon Falls Road in Yellowstone Park.
(National Park Service)]
As the shocks continued, the summons to exodus was clear. Quake-broken
roads blocked all the exits from West Yellowstone except the route, 191,
through Idaho south to Pocatello. For the rest of the night it was
bright with the lights of cars streaming away from the earthquake
country to the solid security and comfort of the outside world.