sleep.” The shaking soon stopped.
When they awoke early in the morning, the rest of the
campground was abuzz. An earthquake had caused the
shaking in the middle of the night. And the
campground that they’d not been able to stay at had
been obliterated by a huge rockslide.
Meanwhile, in Boise, Idaho, in our household the
closet doors had rattled and the baby’s crib squeaked
as it shook during the night from the tremors.
It wasn’t until the next day that we learned how close
my paternal grandparents had come to finding an early
rocky grave. The bodies of the 28 campers of the
doomed campground would never be recovered.
Nine years later, I was able to visit the site. I was astounded that the campground had been buried by a huge rockslide that had been heaved from across the valley from the opposite side. It wasn’t a slide of rocks that came down from above the campground. To this day, I’m haunted in remembering looking across the newly formed lake with dead trees standing upright in the valley at the naked side of the mountain whose former slope was now under my feet as I stood over the buried campers. No pictures can impart the sense of devastating power in that scene. Indeed, aerial pictures don’t adequately show the distance the landslide traveled.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yellowstone+earthquake+1959&btnG=Search
Hebgen Lake Earthquake:
It gives an especially ominous meaning regarding the
volcanic history of Yellowstone:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yellowstone+supervolcano&btnG=Google+Search
volcanic history of Yellowstone:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yellowstone+supervolcano&btnG=Google+Search