It’s unusual when an event so spectacular as the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake doesn’t produce some exploitable possibilities, and this one did. The month after this August 17, 1959 series of quakes, the U. S. Forest Service, which is proprietor of the vast and tumultuous real estate on which the major portion of the immediate quake action happened, announced that is was underway with plans to set up a Geological Area to help visitors get to earthquake interest points and to understand the tremendous earth forces which operated here.
They held the inaugural of the Madison River Canyon Earthquake Area—the first of its kind anywhere—on August 17, 1960, the first anniversary of the quake. Relatives of the 28 quake victims sat on the gigantic slide as they unveiled the bronze memorial plaque mounted on the huge dolomite boulder which had floated across the valley atop the surging debris.
This awesome and fascinating earthquake area quickly became one of the region’s top tourist attractions, with close to half-a-million visitors in attendance during each of the first two post-quake summers, in spite of miserable to nearly impassable access roads. This popularity is especially fitting because the quake that’s on display here was essentially a “tourist earthquake”. It happened in the scenic mountain area which draws a brisk vacation traffic from all over the U. S. and Canada, during the height of the tourist season. And those who went through the adventure, the thrills, the terror, the heroes and the helped, the survivors, and the casualties, could nearly all be classed as tourists.
On this huge boulder, atop the slide, the U. S. Forest Service erected a plaque in memorial to the victims of the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake.(U. S. Forest Service)
Superb trout fishing has always been one of the area’s most important features, and, understandably, there was much post-quake concern as to how this would be affected. While Hebgen Lake was drained to repair the quake-damaged Hebgen Dam, Montana’s Fish and Game Department poisoned the trash fish and stocked the refilled lake with millions of rainbow trout running in size from fingerlings to 9-inchers. Today both Hebgen and Quake Lake—formed by the damming action of the slide at the mouth of Madison Canyon, afford top fishing, either from shore or from boat. Quake Lake has a made-to-order launching ramp at Cabin Creek, where the flooded-out road runs right into the lake.
In spite of the concern by fish biologists that silting from the slide would take the edge off fishing on the Madison below the slide area, it kept right on providing fishermen the top-notch action that had long earned its reputation as a blue-ribbon trout stream that compares with fishing anywhere in the world.
Today there are excellent roads to and through the Earthquake Area. Route 287, south from Ennis, leads directly to the huge slide at the mouth of Madison Canyon. Here the Forest Service has built a surfaced road up onto the slide. On top is the best vantage point to view the whole panorama of the mountain fall—where it dropped from, how in a matter of seconds 80-million tons of rock cut off the valley, the sparkling blue lake it created, and the open stretch of the Madison below the canyon. Besides, on the slide there are interpretive exhibits, and the huge monolith bearing the plaque to the quake dead, 21 of whom still lie somewhere beneath this mammoth pile of rock.
The relocated route runs eastward down the slide, along Quake Lake, and through Madison Canyon. Several Forest Service people staff the formally designated Earthquake Area during the summer season to help explain and interpret what happened here. Definite plans for the area include a formal visitor center, and at least one first-class campground in the slide-lake-canyon area.