M A S T E R P A G E
NewMadrid Narrative
(A1912Account of the 1811-1812Earthquakes)
2.4b
The First Day
At 2:30 on the morning of December 16, 1811, a tremendous earthquake occurred whose epicentral region is thought to have
been just west of the location of present day Blytheville, Arkansas, a city that did not exist at the time. Had it been there, it
would have been devastated totally, as evidenced by the numerous earthquake boils and fissures that visibly surround the
city today. The Richter surface wave magnitude is thought to have been 8.6. President James Madison, 800 miles (1280 km)
away in the White House in Washington, DC, was shaken out of bed by the quake.
Many aftershocks immediately followed, some probably magnitude 6.0 or greater. At least two more of the December 16
shocks are thought to have equaled 8.0 on the Richter scale.
Then, some time around 11:00 a.m., another great shock occurred in the vicinity of present-day Caruthersville, which to the
residents there at the time seemed worse than the first. This one is thought to have been another magnitude 8.0. However,
present-day Caruthersville wasn’t there at the time. It was not founded until 1857. In 1811 another village occupied that site.
It was called Little Prairie, Missouri.
The River Rampages, and Towns Disappear
The Mississippi River was churned into a virtual maelstrom, with miles of banks caving in, boats being swamped and sunk,
and even entire islands disappearing along with their human occupants.
Two towns disappeared at this time. One settlement to disappear on December 16, 1811, was Big Prairie, Arkansas. At the
confluence of the Mississippi and St. Francis Rivers, the town site liquefied and sank, but slowly enough for all residents to
safely escape. There were about 100 people there at the time. The Mississippi River now occupies that site.
Another community destroyed that day was Little Prairie, Missouri, near present-day Caruthersville. Eyewitness accounts of
the horror tell us of people being violently thrown from their beds in the middle of the night. It had been a bright full moon,
but shortly after the shock everything became pitch black because of the dust. People were injured and bleeding, and some
were even knocked temporarily unconscious.
The earth continued to jerk and rumble through the darkness until daylight, when, around 8:00 a.m. the second hard shock
hit the area. Throughout the morning more shocks continued, with the ground heaving and cracking, sometimes opening and
then suddenly slamming shut, spewing ground water over the tops of tall trees. In some places the ground literally exploded,
blasting debris high into the air, raining sand and carbonized wood particles down upon the heads of those nearby, while
leaving a deep crater in the ground where smooth land had been before. Sometimes the earth formed spreading crevasses
beneath the bases of large trees, splitting their trunks from their roots upwards beyond the levels of their limbs. At one point
during the morning a great fissure began to form within the town. The townspeople stood around that pit and watched,
horrified, as dark, viscous fluids gurgled from beneath the earth while gaseous fumes and the smell of sulfur and brimstone
filled the air.
Many were thinking that the end of the world was at hand and that the very gates of hell itself were opening up to take their
village. Amidst the terror, after the third great shock around 11:00 a.m., the soils of their settlement began to turn into
quicksand, with dark waters oozing from the pores of the earth. As their whole town began to sink their streets and cabins
were flooded, not from the river, but from the ground itself.
Escape from Little Prairie
Hastily, the residents of Little Prairie gathered what meager possessions they could hold, lifted small children to their
shoulders, and waded westward. Looking ahead of themselves, they could see the rising waters far off on the horizon. For
eight miles (12.8 km) they waded through waist-deep waters, never knowing from one step to the next if they were going to
plunge headlong into an unseen crevasse or trip over a buried stump, all the while surrounded by snakes, coyotes, and other
wild creatures swimming for their lives in that turgid flood. During their escape, they did not know if they would live
through the day or not, but all did survive.
The First Day Was Over, but the Worst Was Yet to Come
What has been described, thus far, was only the first day of the Great New Madrid Earthquake series. More and bigger
tremors were yet to come. At about 9:00 a.m. on January 23, 1812, another of the really big ones hit. This was probably
centered north of Little Prairie and south of Point Pleasant, a small settlement there at the time. It is thought to have been an
8.4 magnitude earthquake.
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