“I had no idea what it was,” Cunningham said. “The night of the quake was absolutely unbelievable,” said Cunningham. The havoc began shortly before midnight when visitors and locals alike were rudely awakened by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake. The Old Faithful Inn was full. A powerful earthquake that struck the Hebgen Lake area near Yellowstone National Park in 1959 also left a powerful mark on a 7-year-old boy who was asleep in his Idaho Falls home. Photo: Horst Rademacher. The 1959 Hebgen Lake Earthquake measured a magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale. This is a worthwhile stop on the way to West Yellowstone and the West entrance to the National Park. The Air Force sent rescue helicopters to take out the seriously injured while a highway construction crew working to the east jumped into action.“And so, by late on the 18th [of August], there was a road, more or less, where cars could drive out,” said Owen.Fifteen year old John Owen was living an adventure. Buildings were damaged, roads were destroyed and lives were lost. “We couldn’t walk anywhere.”. He was in a vacation cabin with his family that night and still remembers being jolted awake. But 19 people never made it out. The good news for tourists? PART II: Waves and tremors at Hebgen Lake threaten dam. And the tourists would return to what is now the most popular entrance to Yellowstone National Park. He radioed his report to another man south of Ennis who would then pass the message up the line. Afterwards, 4.5 to five minutes. To the west the only road in was under a 250 foot pile of debris, while to the east the road had disappeared into Hebgen Lake.“In the middle of the morning, a plane flies over and a couple of smoke jumpers come out,” recalled Owen.“It was like rescue from the sky,” said Girvin.The jumpers brought medical supplies, food and a radio, leading to one of John Owen’s most memorable photos.“One guy’s taking a real careful step, but in the background, the mountain over here, there’s dust falling down. Back on Aug 17, 1959 a 7.5 earthquake triggered a massive landslide which dammed up the Madison River just below the Hebgen Lake dam. The quake's epicenter was located along the north shore of Hebgen Lake almost directly beneath Cabin Creek campground. It was preceded by a magnitude-6.3 foreshock, and followed by more than 350 aftershocks over the next four days. He and his wife had narrowly escaped from their home. It swept one man away, never to be found, and it ripped the clothing right off one survivor. It was very emotional, but it brought closure to her.”Under about 100 feet of water is the site of the old Rock Creek Campground. The ground in the foreground, where the visitors stand, dropped by almost 20 feet in this normal fault earthquake While no buildings were lost to the 1959 quake, it was an eye opener for the park.“I think that really did impact how we manage our historic structures, as far as making sure that we go back and retrofit these buildings to protect them for the future,” said Murphy. “It lasted for a good minute,” said Brook Cunningham who was at the lake that fateful night. “But the coverage was all over England on the televisions, so I knew exactly where they were talking about.”. He was not the least bit frightened.“It took me a while till I realized the significance of the disaster here at the slide, for me to calm down a little bit,” he said.Some, like Irene Bennett and her son, the only survivors from a family of six, took decades to get over the trauma. During the first few days after the earthquake, most springs began to clear, but several years passed before clearing was generally complete. Quake Lake. His father told him it was an earthquake and then they heard something. Old Faithful Inn survived. Firehole Canyon Drive is a one-way scenic road today. He was in a vacation cabin with his family that night and still remembers being jolted awake.“I was thrown off the couch onto the floor,” Owen said, recalling the fateful night. “And before long there was just a stream of cars coming in,” Owen said. But that 1959 earthquake did impact the geyser. Categories:   Some can still be seen, where the water left them in place locals call the Ghost Village. “The earthquake dropped the road about 12 to 15 feet straight (down), just a cliff,” said Yetter. At 11:37 pm on August 17, 1959, a massive earthquake shook the Hebgen Lake area in the Madison Range in southwest Montana. At the same time, the slide completely blocked the flow of the Madison River. Many people from West Yellowstone went to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help restore the river and repair roads and buildings. Then the geothermal features in the park went wild. “Probably 35 years and they’ve never been back to this area,” Girvin said. Fearing the Hebgen Dam would burst after the quake, the owner of the resort where the Owen family was staying told his guests to flee to nearby high ground. Even the park’s iconic geyser felt the quake. And while a 7.3 magnitude quake brought down a mountain, brought a permanent change to travel into West Yellowstone and brought an abrupt end to the summer season of 1959, that very event is now another draw for tourists coming to West Yellowstone. The main residence of Hilgard Lodge is almost wholly submerged in Hebgen Lake after the Aug. 17, 1959, Yellowstone National Park … The tourists simply went away. At 11:37 p.m. a 7.3 magnitude earthquake devastated Hebgen Lake, Montana, located in Yellowstone’s northwestern region—in comparison, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti registered at a 7.0 magnitude. Even sixty years after the Hebgen Lake earthquake, the fault scarp is clealy visible in the forest near Cabin Creek camp. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 80 million tons of rock slid off a mountain blocking the river and created Earthquake or "Quake" Lake. When the quake hit, rocks fell on the road, closing it. 250 people made their way to what was later named Refuge Point. “He put his wife in the car and headed toward town.”. The good news for tourists? The massive 7.3 quake took 28 lives and changed the landscape just west of Yellowstone National Park along the Madison River.MTN News reached out to survivors of the event who remember that night and the days that followed. This 190 feet (58 m) deep and 6 miles (9.7 km) long lake was indeed created after an earthquake that struck on August 17, 1959, killing 28 people. The run-up of lake water on the shores drowned people who were sleeping in nearby cabins and huts. That night a chain of natural events turned this peaceful vacation spot into a devasting death trap in which almost 30 people perished. “You could actually hear the noise from the waves going back and forth.”. “We walked up to the memorial boulder and they pointed out where they were camped. At least 19 people were buried alive in this giant slide. A photo from Aug. 18, 1959, shows a cabin submerged a day after the earthquake. They were, however, deemed to be inactive and to pose no danger to the reservoir. That’s a big wave that runs from one end of the lake to the other. The Hebgen Lake earthquake—the largest and deadliest earthquake recorded in Montana and the Intermountain West—occurred at 11:37 p.m. (local time) on Monday, August 17, 1959. Old Faithful has always remained just that - faithful. The slide – the third blow in the chain of events that fateful night - also wiped out the state highway to the west, effectively trapping the hundreds of campers and locals in the area of devastation. Like ghosts these leafless trees stick out of Earthquake Lake sixty years after the lake was created by a giant landslide. The earthquake had a particular effect on Hebgen Lake, which had been created along the Madison River with the creation of the Hebgen Dam. It happened on August 18, 1959. Luckily it was nearly midnight, so no one was hurt.”. “Well, of course, sure we get these shocks and people worry about that, but not too much, you know,” said Seeley. In August, 1959, he was camped on the north end of Hebgen Lake with his father when the ground started to shake. The most spectacular effect of the quake was a huge slide from the south wall of the Madison River Canyon. Several geologic fault lines parallel the north shore of the lake. Magnitude measurements of the earthquake varied from 7.3 to 7.8 placing it as one of the strongest earthquakes in North America and the most severe in the Rocky Mountain area. The earth continues to shake along the old fault lines, but as time goes by those that remember Aug. 17, 1959 disappear. A mother and one child who survived while her husband and three other children perished. In fact, a beauty contest had entertained guests earlier in the evening. 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