Eye-witness geology

Dust from Antelope

The Fort Tejon Earthquake of 1857

Donald B. Eisman

A story about an earthquake that turned a quiet lake into a raging sea and snapped branches from trees appears in a curious book, Historic facts and fancies, a collection of tales of 19th century California printed by the California Federated Women's Clubs. The book is undated, but, to judge by references in the stories, it must have been printed in 1913 or shortly thereafter.

The earthquake is probably the southern California Earthquake of 1857, sometimes called the Fort Tejon Earthquake. All authorities agree this was one of the biggest quakes within California's recorded history, and at least one expert thought it was the biggest, even larger than the massive event that wrecked San Francisco in 1906.

The story in Facts and fancies is apparently a transcript of remarks by one J. M. Barker before the Bakersfield Women's Club, date also not given. Barker says that in 1857, when he was 25, he lived on a cattle ranch on the Kings Kiver near Tulare Lake. He continues:

One morning in the month of November, 1857, l started out on horseback in company with an old Englishman, my nearest neighbor, to search for some horses of ours that had strayed away. We shaped our course to skirt the shores of Tulare Lake, between what is known as Cross Creek and Kings River. At this time Tulare Lake was a very large sheet of water, about one hundred miles in length by thirty miles in width at its widest place. For a couple of miles from the shore, the waters in the shallows were covered with burnt tules and other refuse matter unfit for use for man or beast, until a distance of two miles from the shore was reached.

We knew that our horses would not drink from the lake, but there were sloughs and holes of water in depressions outside of the lake, where the water was clear and fit for use.

To one of these water-holes, which was surrounded by a fringe of tall willows, we directed our course in order to look for tracks of our missing stock. As several of them were shod, we knew if we found the shod tracks that we were on the right trail.

There was a keen frost, and when we reached the water-hole a thin film of ice was seen upon the water. l dismounted and led my horse by the bridle, and walked to the edge of the water. Just as l reached it, the ground seemed to be violently swayed from east to west. The water splashed up to my knees; the trees whipped about, and limbs fell on and all around me. I was affected by a fearful nausea, my horse snorted and in terror struggled violently to get away from me, but l hung to him, having as great a fear as he had himself. Of course, all this occupied but a few seconds, but it seemed a long time to me. The lake commenced to roar like the ocean in a storm, and, staggering and bewildered, I vaulted into the saddle and my terrified horse started, as eager as I was to get out of the vicinity. I found my friend, who had not dismounted, almost in a state of collapse. He eagerly inquired, while our horses were on the run and the lake was roaring behind us, "What is this?" I replied, "An earthquake! Put the steel to your horse and let us get out of this!" and we ran at the top of our speed for about five miles.

We observed several hundred antelopes in a state of the wildest confusion and terror. They ran hither and thither, creating a great dust, stumbling and falling over each other in mortal fear. It is their habit at this season of the year, while rearing their young, to congregate in great numbers for mutual protection from coyotes and other vermin; the males also herding in bands by themselves until the new grass starts.

We returned the next day and found that the lake had run up on the land for about three miles. Fish were stranded in every direction and could have been gathered by the wagon-load. The air was olive with buzzards and vultures eager for the feast, but the earth had acquired its normal condition.

We can only imagine what the consequences would have been if a great city had stood upon the eastern shore of the lake.

The San Andreas fault has been the subject of much investigation in the past and will undoubtedly continue to be so in the future. As the map shows, the fault zone is underwater near San Francisco, between Bodega Bay and Fort Ross, and once more between Point Arena and Point Delgada. At Cape Mendocino the fault zone veers to the west and apparently joins the Mendocino Escarpment under the Pacific Ocean. From San Gorgonio southward, a number of roughly parallel faults are collectively called the San Andreas fault zone. Prior to 1906 none of these geological phenomena were an issue. After that date, earthquakes and the role of faults became more clearly understood, but there is still much to learn.

In 1857, Tulare Lake may not have been as big as Barker said it was, but it certainly was much bigger then than it is today. The depth of water in the lake and the size of the lake varied annually, depending on the amount of runoff carried by the Kings, Kaweah, and Tule Rivers. The flood control and irrigation dams that have been built upstream, and the many levees and drainage canals constructed since then divert the water that used to flow uncontrolled into the lake.

Barker's last comment is an interesting example of how a layman came to an appreciation of the difference between an earthquake as an event in nature and an earthquake as a destroyer of manmade objects. Each has to be measured separately, and this, in general, is what the magnitude scale does for the natural event and the intensity scale for effects. It's possible for a big earthquake to do only a modicum of damage because population and construction are sparse; conversely, a small quake can cause a great deal of local damage if it is centered in a densely settled area. To argue that a city on the east shore of Tulare Lake would be earthquake-safe simply because no city has ever been destroyed there over-looks the fact that no city has existed there during a local major earthquake.

Unfortunately, no one knows the magnitude of the 1857 quake, and the reason is simple: the seismograph had not yet been invented. Attempts to estimate its magnitude are hampered by the fact that what little is known of the event comes from unscientific sources.

One could question whether Barker's account does in fact refer to the big quake of 1857. He says the commotion occurred in the morning, the same time of day as the big quake. But his date is wrong. The big earthquake occurred on January 9, whereas Barker speaks of November. However, the man must have been close to 80 when he told his story and could have confused the end-of-the-year rainy season with the beginning-of-the-year wet season. In fact, one of the most frequently cited accounts of the big shake was written by a man who placed it in 1856.

That account was by Stephen Barton, editor of the Visalia Iron Age, who, in 1876, described the quake in a "History of Tulare County," which ran serially in that newspaper. Barton's description of ground displacement along what would later be named the San Andreas fault figures in nearly every attempt to estimate the size of the quake. In the 1950s, two highly respected earth scientists, evaluating Barton's story and other evidence, came to somewhat different conclusions on the size of the earthquake.

Harry O. Wood, in an article in the January 1955 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA), was not inclined to doubt Barton's statement that fault displacement occured as far southeast as the Colorado Desert. Wood put the extent of fault displacement at a minimum of 275 miles (p. 60, 64). Elsewhere, he had described the shock as "outstanding," a classification that would mean a magnitude of at least 7.75. He called it "one of the five largest and strongest on record" in California (p. 47).

"While relatively few matters can now be demonstrated," Wood wrote (p. 65), "it is the judgment of the writer, long and carefully considered, strengthened by studies in the field along the affected part of the outcrop of the fault zone, that this 1857 earthquake was definitely stronger and probably larger than the similar shock in 1906, possibly considerably larger. That there are also strong suggestions of still greater shocks at earlier times along this segment of the fault should not be overlooked......

Seismologist Charles F. Richter, in his Elementary Seismology (W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1955), was somewhat more conservative than Wood had been. Richter, inclined to doubt displacement into the Colorado Desert, said Barton had probably not clearly distinguished "the actual displacement of 1857 . . . from the topographic features of the San Andreas Rift" (p. 475). Richter continued (p. 451- 52):

"In 1906 actual strike-slip was observed along 190 miles of the Rift from Point Arena southeastward. It is probable that in 1857 there was a nearly equal extent of faulting, presumably terminating at San Gorgonio Pass; Allen's findings cast further doubt on the questionable references to displacements on that occasion extending farther east."

Richter felt the 1857 and 1906 events were similar in other ways and concluded: "The magnitudes of the two events cannot have differed greatly" (p. 475).

Whatever its magnitude, the 1857 earthquake produced extremely high intensities. Sidney D. Townley and Maxwell W. Allen, in an earthquake catalog in the January 1939 BSSA, stated (p. 34) that, if Barton's description of fault movement was accurate, "the intensity could not have been less than X" on the Rossi-Forel Intensity Scale, the maximum on that scale.

In the San Joaquin Valley northeast of the Tulare Lake basin, Barton wrote, houses and trees vibrated furiously, the earth itself rolled like the sea and animals and birds fled in terror. Farther south, at Kern Lake, according to the Stockton Argus, the water in the river was forced back and rose over the banks about four feet.

Damage was apparently most severe at Fort Tejon, some 100 miles southeast of where Barker was. Adobe buildings were badly damaged; plaster, walls and chimneys fell. The Pasadena Star News, in a biographical item published in 1933, quoted Benjamin D. Wilson, who had been mayor of Los Angeles in 1851, as saying that "not a structure at the fort was left standing intact." Other reports said the ground opened in a wide rent for 30 or 40 miles, large trees were broken off near the ground, cattle rolled down hillsides and the road to Los Angeles was blocked by immense landslides.

An interesting effect was noted at the southeast end of the Carrizo Plain, where a round corral, which apparently straddled the fault trace, became an s-shaped non-corral. The size of the conal and the amount of displacement there are, unfortunately, not known exactly. The displacement has been estimated at 30 feet (Robert Wallace, Proceedings of the Conference on the San Andrea: fault, 1965, pJ4).

The big shock was accompanied by foreshocks and after-shocks. Wilson wrote: "A chimney at John Reed's, at La Puente, killed one of his domestics, a woman who was planning to steal away because of the earthquakes then fresh in the memory of every one. Wilson said "at least one aged person in Los Angeles alone was killed." (Wood, p. 49)

It was reported that houses toppled in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles River overflowed, the ground opened in the beds of the San Gabriel and Santa Clara Rivers, hot gas billowed out of a mountain near San Fernando and, in several places streams began flowing where no water had run before.

The quake was even felt severely in San Francisco. In fact, Wood seemed to think shaking must have been perceptible in virtually all of California and well into Mexico. He based his argument on the fact that Edward S. Holden, director of the Lick Observatory when he published an earthquake catalog in 1595, assigned a Rossi-Forel intensity of IX to Fort Yuma, Arizona and VI to Sacramento. Wood argued (p. 64): "Even if, as may be possible or even likely, these estimates should be reduced considerably, it is obvious that the shock must have been perceptible far to the southeast and to the northwest of these places."

The area of southern California most severely affected in 1857 has earthquakes with some degree of regularity. A recent one that got a press notice came on February 27, 1969. On the San Andreas fault near the Palmdale Reservoir, it had a magnitude variously reported at between 3.2 and 4.3. It pales to insignificance beside the 1857 event, yet it got a lot of people excited. The area has had many little earthquakes, but Wood wrote that "there can be no doubt that this 1857 earthquake was the largest and strongest shock which has occurred in south-central and southern California since the occupation of this region by white men" (p. 65). Writing 15 years ago, he concluded, somewhat ominously, "It is nearly one hundred years since its occurrence."