I’d heard of New Madrid many occasions nevertheless it took an American Queen riverboat cease within the Missouri city to listen to the entire story.
The river city’s title is tied perpetually to tragedy. New Madrid was on the epicenter of a seismic shift 200 years in the past so violent that the Mississippi River appeared to run upstream.
To study extra about earthquakes, the New Madrid Historic Museum is a good place to start out. An interesting merchandise on show from the earthquake is Alfred the petrified snake. The snake was dug up from the Lilbourn Indian mound greater than half a century in the past. For the reason that snake was coiled and able to strike, it’s thought the snake could have been there because the earthquake.
Alfred the petrified snake.
You’ll want to stroll throughout the road from the museum and get your image taken on the New Madrid Fault Line.
Well-liked photograph spot.
Based in 1789 and named for Madrid, Spain, the city was simply an outpost when greater than 1,000 earthquakes struck the area throughout the winter of 1811-1812. The strongest quake measured 8.0 on the Richter Scale and reportedly rang church bells as far-off as Boston and Toronto.
The earthquake continues to be probably the most highly effective ever to strike the US exterior of the West Coast.
8 Evening – Memphis to St. Louis – American Queen
The primary Mississippi River steamboat, the New Orleans, simply occurred to be within the space throughout her maiden voyage from Pittsburgh to her namesake metropolis. Passengers onboard reported a wierd roar, boiling white waters, geysers of mud taking pictures out of fields, collapsing riverbanks and full timber floating down the river.
The bottom shifted so violently that parts of the Mississippi River itself close to New Madrid really flowed north briefly because the slabs of earth gyrated and settled.
The earthquake that struck on Feb. 7, 1812, not solely fully destroyed New Madrid, it additionally badly broken homes and collapsed chimneys as far-off as St. Louis. In Kentucky Bend, a phenomenon often called uplift created momentary waterfalls.
Some good did come from the earthquakes, nevertheless. Blocked streams backed up and finally created the fishing paradise of Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee.
The quake additionally helped solved an area crime. Lilburn and Isham Lewis murdered a person named George Lewis on Dec. 15, 1811. The 2 murderers hid the physique in a chimney.
With no physique, there might be no fees. Six weeks later, the tremors triggered the chimney to crumble, revealing the ugly proof.
Mississippi River in New Madrid at file low however American Queen nonetheless in a position to dock.
Images by Jackie Sheckler Finch
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