In the winter of 1811-1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley. The earth cracked, huge sand blows spurted liquefied sand, and the Mississippi River ran backwards. People across North America wrote extensively about these dramatic events. Yet now, almost no one knows these earthquakes took place. The Lost History pioneers connections between environmental history and the history of science to demonstrate that the New Madrid earthquakes were an important force in the early nineteenth century United States. They shaped early western Cherokee and other Indian settlement ... More

In the winter of 1811-1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley. The earth cracked, huge sand blows spurted liquefied sand, and the Mississippi River ran backwards. People across North America wrote extensively about these dramatic events. Yet now, almost no one knows these earthquakes took place. The Lost History pioneers connections between environmental history and the history of science to demonstrate that the New Madrid earthquakes were an important force in the early nineteenth century United States. They shaped early western Cherokee and other Indian settlement, heightened the advocacy of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, formed part of the history of the Great Revival (Second Great Awakening), and revealed surprisingly lively and widespread scientific inquiry in early America, especially about electricity. Yet the quakes were soon forgotten, evidence lost in the wrenching changes brought about by the Civil War and submerged under environmental transformations including swamp drainage and timber railroads. Further, they were dismissed as seismology became an instrumental science defined by seismometers and their readings. First-person narratives lost credibility in the face of instrumental evidence. Only with the recent development of paleoseismology have these earthquakes regained scientific validity and sparked scientific concern about the possibility of future quakes. With the New Madrid Bicentennial, social debate now focuses on earthquake vulnerability in mid-continent, bringing old historical sources to the fore in current, pressing questions of disaster planning and seismic future.