Landon Jones: The New Madrid Earthquake: 200 Years Later

Landon Jones: The New Madrid Earthquake: 200 Years Later: If you think this week's East Coast tremblor was disconcerting, consider that this is the 200th anniversary of the Mother of All American Earthquakes.
About 2 a.m. in the early morning of December 16, 1811, the young painter John James Audubon was riding across the Big Barrens, a large grassland in western Kentucky, when his horse suddenly froze and splayed out its legs as if walking on a smooth sheet of ice. "At that instant all the shrubs and trees began to move from their very roots," Audubon recalled. "The ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake."