It's unusual when an event so spectacular as the Montana-Yellowstone
Earthquake doesn't produce some exploitable possibilities, and this one
did. The month after this August 17, 1959 series of quakes, the U. S.
Forest Service, which is proprietor of the vast and tumultuous real
estate on which the major portion of the immediate quake action
happened, announced that is was underway with plans to set up a
Geological Area to help visitors get to earthquake interest points and
to understand the tremendous earth forces which operated here.
[Illustration: Cliff and fallen rocks.]
They held the inaugural of the Madison River Canyon Earthquake Area--the
first of its kind anywhere--on August 17, 1960, the first anniversary of
the quake. Relatives of the 28 quake victims sat on the gigantic slide
as they unveiled the bronze memorial plaque mounted on the huge dolomite
boulder which had floated across the valley atop the surging debris.
This awesome and fascinating earthquake area quickly became one of the
region's top tourist attractions, with close to half-a-million visitors
in attendance during each of the first two post-quake summers, in spite
of miserable to nearly impassable access roads. This popularity is
especially fitting because the quake that's on display here was
essentially a "tourist earthquake". It happened in the scenic mountain
area which draws a brisk vacation traffic from all over the U. S. and
Canada, during the height of the tourist season. And those who went
through the adventure, the thrills, the terror, the heroes and the
helped, the survivors, and the casualties, could nearly all be classed
as tourists.
[Illustration: On this huge boulder, atop the slide, the U. S.
Forest Service erected a plaque in memorial to the victims of the
Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake. (U. S. Forest Service)]
Superb trout fishing has always been one of the area's most important
features, and, understandably, there was much post-quake concern as to
how this would be affected. While Hebgen Lake was drained to repair the
quake-damaged Hebgen Dam, Montana's Fish and Game Department poisoned
the trash fish and stocked the refilled lake with millions of rainbow
trout running in size from fingerlings to 9-inchers. Today both Hebgen
and Quake Lake--formed by the damming action of the slide at the mouth
of Madison Canyon, afford top fishing, either from shore or from boat.
Quake Lake has a made-to-order launching ramp at Cabin Creek, where the
flooded-out road runs right into the lake.
In spite of the concern by fish biologists that silting from the slide
would take the edge off fishing on the Madison below the slide area, it
kept right on providing fishermen the top-notch action that had long
earned its reputation as a blue-ribbon trout stream that compares with
fishing anywhere in the world.
Today there are excellent roads to and through the Earthquake Area.
Route 287, south from Ennis, leads directly to the huge slide at the
mouth of Madison Canyon. Here the Forest Service has built a surfaced
road up onto the slide. On top is the best vantage point to view the
whole panorama of the mountain fall--where it dropped from, how in a
matter of seconds 80-million tons of rock cut off the valley, the
sparkling blue lake it created, and the open stretch of the Madison
below the canyon. Besides, on the slide there are interpretive exhibits,
and the huge monolith bearing the plaque to the quake dead, 21 of whom
still lie somewhere beneath this mammoth pile of rock.
The relocated route runs eastward down the slide, along Quake Lake, and
through Madison Canyon. Several Forest Service people staff the formally
designated Earthquake Area during the summer season to help explain and
interpret what happened here. Definite plans for the area include a
formal visitor center, and at least one first-class campground in the
slide-lake-canyon area.
Hebgen Dam, the dam that held, straddles the upper end of Madison
Canyon. The road from here along Hebgen Lake to the Duck Creek Y has
been much improved over its pre-quake status.
The Quake Area is just as easily approachable from West Yellowstone by
taking 191 north 10 miles to the Duck Creek Y, and then driving west
along Hebgen Lake. Near the Y, the big fault runs close to the road,
through the Culligan ranch, etc.
The magnificent Raynolds Pass road, which runs south from its junction
with the Madison Canyon road three miles west of the slide, has become
an important new route to the earthquake area. The morning after the
slide, highway crews were at work on this alternate route, which for two
years substituted for the blocked, flooded, and destroyed road through
the Madison Canyon and along the north shore of Hebgen Lake while the
regular route between Ennis and West Yellowstone remained blocked. With
its exciting mountain backdrop, this new, improved road provides an
enjoyable alternative which should be included in any circle tour of
quake features.
[Illustration: Highway crews at work.]
In the spring of 1959, as he tells it, Lemuel Garrison, Superintendent
of Yellowstone National Park, looked at some bids for new housing in the
Park which included extra steel as a protection against the possibility
of earthquakes.
"Heck," he said, "We're not in an earthquake area."
Today, Yellowstone's famous earthquake has become an important addition
to its already fabulous attractions. The Park took the quake in its
stride. By June 1, 1960, in spite of road damage of $2,600,000, and
building damage of $1,700,000 resulting from the quake, Yellowstone
Park, its roads, and other facilities were ready for its normal summer
rush.
In clearing a slide which blocked the road near Firehole Falls, south of
Madison Junction, the road crew discovered one near casualty--a bear.
The bruin had evidently sought shelter in a hollow below the road
shoulder, and became trapped when the slide closed his exit. It was
several days after the quake when the crew heard the bear's attempts to
crawl out of his artificial cave. They lowered a tree trunk, still
bearing branches, into the hole and retreated while the bear scrambled
out.
Word of the quake plus the initial belief that the epicenters of seven
of the eleven major shocks were located in the famous Firehole Basin
caused widespread anxiety as to whether the tremendous forces loosed
might have interfered with nature's intricate underground plumbing which
keeps the geysers, hot pools, and mud pots spouting, burbling and
burping.
Studies by a horde of seismologists, geologists and other earth
scientists who swarmed into the Firehole Basin in the months after the
quake show that during the night of August 17 the hot spring activity in
this area changed more than during the 87 years since a park was created
out of the mysterious, steaming country which had been known as
"Coulter's Hell." The scientists termed these changes as "profound and
far reaching." These changes in thermal features are, and will be, in
years to come, tremendously interesting.
The majority of these changes came with, or just after, the initial
quakes. The earthquake acted as a trigger to start eruption in hundreds
of springs, nearly half of them erupting for the first time in their
known histories. The whole place blew, then subsided.
There was considerable juggling of the intervals and playing times of
some of the better-known geysers. Great Fountain, Riverside, Daisy,
Castle, and Oblong shortened the length of their eruption intervals, but
they play nearly twice as frequently as they did prior to the quake.
Sapphire, a minor geyser, became a major geyser, but has subsided to a
status somewhere in between. Clepsydra Geyser went frantically wild, and
has erupted continuously since the quake.
[Illustration: The quake gave Yellowstone Park's famous Morning
Geyser in lower Geyser Basin a shot in the arm. Normally erupting
once a day, after the quake it blasted off every four hours.
(National Park Service)]
Steady Geyser just up and quit. So did Grand Geyser. Giantess Geyser,
located just across the river from Old Faithful, habitually shook the
ground in the vicinity every time it erupted. Right after the quake it
blasted off and kept blowing for a continuous 100 hours, instead of its
usual 30-hour run. The Fountain Paint Pots became so active, and spread
so, that they took over what used to be an asphalt-paved parking area.
In the midst of these changing patterns, Old Faithful goes on in much
the same way, except for perhaps a slight increased interval between
blasts. Studies of 14,317 eruptions were clocked, with an average
interval of 63.8 minutes. The shortest interval was 33 minutes, in
1948-51, the longest is 93 minutes, measured in '55.
But none of these changes are static. Just when Grand Geyser, having
been dormant for five months, was considered dead, it moved into a
sporadic blasting phase.
These quake-caused fluctuations in thermal features, plus strong
curiosity as to the earthquake's effects in the surrounding area, Sup't.
Lon Garrison feels, will make Yellowstone's post-quake years bigger than
ever.
[Illustration: _MADISON CANYON EARTHQUAKE AREA_]
QUAKE LAKE
Smokejumpers
SLIDE
destroyed road
5 bodies found
19 presumed buried under slide
helicopter took victims here
Quake Exhibits
Old Madison Valley Fault
RAYNOLDS PASS
Raynolds Pass Road (replacing Madison Canyon road knocked out by
Quake)
CLIFF LAKE
2 fatalities
RED CANYON FAULT
HEBGEN LAKE
HEBGEN FAULT
Road fell into Lake
Improvised road
Sandspout
4 Air Force Helicopters
WEST YELLOWSTONE
Injured transferred from helicopter for flight to hospital
[Illustration: General Area Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake August 17,
1959]