The Night the Mountain Fell: The Story of the Montana-Yellowstone EarthquakeChristopherson, Edmund
History
The Night the Mountain Fell: The Story of the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake
Christopherson, Edmund
Earthquakes -- Montana; Earthquakes -- Yellowstone National Park
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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account