  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. 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 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 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. 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 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. MADISON CANYON EARTHQUAKE AREA
General Area Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake August 17, 1959 MONTANA-YELLOWSTONE EARTHQUAKEThe Slide(U. S. Forest Svc.) This was level ground before the quake made this 20-ft. scarp.(Mont. Hwy. Comm.) Road missing after quake.(Montana Power) These massive rocks blocked the road at Yellowstone Park’s Golden Gate after the Earthquake.(Natl. Park Svc.) Shook-up road after quake.(USFS) |
|
