Edmund Christopherson

“ 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. ”

“ Glaciers carve them down. Volcanoes pour out their molten rock. Rivers and floods scour their erosive paths. Sediments slide and settle.
The enormous masses which great internal earth forces have raised up to mountain height, create counter stresses. These forces build up for years, sometimes for centuries or longer.
Eventually something has to give. When this happens on a grand, or spectacular scale, we call it an earthquake.
Stress, caused by the quake, resulting from slump of surficial material caused the attractive curving of this fence along Highway 287 east of Hebgen Dam. ”

“ 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 popularity is especially fitting because the quake that’s on display here was essentially a “tourist earthquake”. It happened in the scenic mountain 85 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.
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I’d hate to think of the casualties if the quake hit in a really populated area,” Potter said.
“The mountains, which obstruct short-wave signals and set up all sorts of radio blind spots, made it difficult to get any sort of ground radio communication going. It was impossible from the ground, to signal to Ennis or to Hebgen Dam from West Yellowstone. The radio amateurs did a tremendous job of helping those first few hours—they set up a standby network and kept it clear for emergency messages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Montana-Idaho, Wyoming area where the quake hit is a big, sprawled-out area where it’s easy to get the feeling of isolation when everything’s normal—the roads open, the phone lines and lights working.
In one shattering blow, the earthquake cut most of this area’s access and communication. Big sections of the Yellowstone Park roads were blocked by slides and boulders. The road north of West Yellowstone was impassable. Big hunks of the road between the Duck Creek Y and Hebgen Dam had crumbled and slipped into the lake causing four major breaks and several minor ones. ”

“ Natural disasters, like the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake, are perhaps the best test of our Civil Defense readiness. Until the quake, CD Director Hugh Potter wasn’t at all sure that he had an outfit at all. ”

“ Hebgen Lake Hebgen Fault Red Canyon Fault
Although the quake caused much settling of the earth packed against the downstream side of Hebgen Dam’s concrete core, the relatively slight displacement of the sod cover is interpreted to mean that all three tidal waves passed over the dam before this earth subsided and separated from the core. Thus the water would have begun its race down the valley before the heavy earth-settling shocks hit the dam area.
Those who support the high-water-at-the-moment-of-the-slide theory point to the great volume of water damage way below the slide. ”

“ We discovered that the high frequency bands the Civil Defense uses (150 megacycles) are useless in mountain country, especially in the day time. Lower frequencies, 34.82 and 46.86 megacycles did get through.
“All that first day or so, we relied on the Highway Department plane, which was radio-equipped, to get messages across the quake area. It stayed in the air all day.
“The mountain altitude (at the dam the elevation is 6,550 ft.) , presented aviation difficulties, too. Smaller helicopters couldn’t make it, and some of the bigger jobs were tricky to fly in the less dense mountain air. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just how common are mass earth shakeups like the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake, anyhow?
Geologists tell us they’re frequent, with a dozen or more major quakes, and thousands of minor tremors happening each year.
Earthquakes are the natural outcome of the fact that the earth, while seeming substantial and changeless, is constantly, if most gradually, in the process of change. Mountains are thrust up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You can get the heck of a lot done if you know the right guy to call.
“There isn’t a CD department that didn’t check in right away to find out if they were needed.
“We’re especially lucky to have the U. S. Forest Service (the big slide happened in the Beaverhead National Forest) in our area. Their experience and constantly organized readiness to meet the threat of forest fires right now makes them an ideal outfit for any emergency. Forest Service firefighting squads, transport, equipment, and information about the area are all set up to move in a matter of minutes. ”

“ The other quake casualties include Mr. Purley Bennett and children, Tommy, Carole and Susan of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, who, along with Thomas Stowe of Sandy, Utah, were found below the slide. Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Stryker of San Mateo, California, were killed by the boulders at the Cliff Lake Campground. Mrs. Myrtle Painter of Ogden, Utah, and Mrs. Margaret Holmes of Billings, Montana, died of quake injuries in the Bozeman Hospital.
The final Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake death toll stands at 28. ”

“ 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)
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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. ”

“ Ost, who’d been camped in Rock Creek Campground, said that he had counted 21 trailers between the mouth of the Madison Canyon and the spot he camped. The undertaker in Ennis, Charles Raper, put his estimate at 100 to 160.
Brauer found that Marshal George Hibert of the town of Ennis had been on a fishing trip in the vicinity of the slide area on Monday, August 17, and for some inexplicable reason decided to cut the trip short, leaving the area at 9:30 o’clock that night, about two hours before the quake. He guessed, from his observations, that there could be 100 people under the slide. ”

“ With Sheriff Brooks’s warning fresh in mind, Stevens says, “Every turn we got off that bench, I thought we were going to meet swimming water.”
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These huge boulders crashed down onto Cliff Lake Campground killing the Lloyd Strykers of San Mateo, California, without disturbing the food on their campsite table. (U. S. Forest Service)
As they moved up the valley, they got the message that a couple of people had been killed in the campground at Cliff Lake, to the south of the Madison, so when they hit the Raynolds Pass road, they headed that way. ”

“ According to the Society of Military Engineers, surveys from benchmarks outside the earthquake-affected areas show that the earth in the Hebgen Dam Quake area near Hebgen Dam has settled between eighteen and nineteen feet from its level before the quake. ”

“ General Keith R. Barney of the Army Corps of Engineers called offering any help needed. The governors of Idaho and Wyoming and three Canadian provinces asked if there was anything they could do. Idaho’s highway patrol actually came up and helped keep things under control in the West Yellowstone area.
Several search and rescue outfits called, offering aid. A combined Army, Navy and Marine Corps Reserve unit from Butte gathered their medical equipment and ambulances and sped to the Ennis side of the slide as a voluntary, unpaid action. ”

“ When a call went out on the regular radio for housing for the Ennis evacuees, several hundred accommodations were phoned in to a local Butte station. Another abortive suggestion that men on horseback might be needed to search some of the impassable back country brought over a hundred volunteers in less than an hour. A Bozeman station was overwhelmed with offers in response to an announcement that station wagons would be needed at the airport to ambulance the wounded to the hospital. ”

“ Some shadow was cast on this as absolute confirmation by the Montana Power Co.’s explanation that stop-logs have been lost from time to time before the quake.
Those who, in spite of such evidence, oppose the theory that the high water reached the slide area first just don’t feel that the water could have made it all the way down the canyon in so short a time. They feel that it would have taken at least 40 minutes for the big waves to traverse the seven miles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the slide he met two men walking in from the outside. They told Ost that the river bridge was 15 miles upstream, past the dam, and advised him to keep the group where it was until helicopter help came.
The plane message about the fire was still a mystery. It remained so for several months, until Ost finally got it explained. The message had been one of several dropped from 57 a plane by a Forest Service guy, Otto H. Ost, in 1957 to instruct a ground crew to proceed to a fire a couple of hundred miles from the Madison Canyon. ”

“ You can tell the Forest Service your problem and quit worrying.
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“Another important outfit is the Montana Forestry Department, which is set up to administer and protect the state’s forests. Its boss, Gareth Moon, is head of the CD’s Rural Firefighting Section.
“We have a good, mobile law enforcement outfit in the Montana Highway Patrol. The Montana Fish and Game Dept. men, in emergency, serve as an excellent backwoods force. ”

“ Mountain has gone into lake on opposite side. Cracks 6 to 8 ft. across the road. Slide is estimated to be 1⁄2 mi. long and 300-500 ft. deep. Water rising fast. About 50 cars stranded in the area. Estimated 150-200 people. The only way out by helicopter.”
Potter immediately called Johnson Flying Service, a pioneer regional flying outfit in Missoula, 200 miles from the slide, and ordered a helicopter for rescue work. He also asked for helicopter assistance from Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, 190 miles to the north. ”

“ The fact that timber from the face of the mountain is spread in relatively uniform fashion over the entire surface of the slide is interpreted to mean that there was little tumbling action—that the slide moved as a single, if shattered, mass. ”