New Madrid Historical Museum

The first great shock struck at about 2:15 in the morning on December 16, 1811, centered in northeast Arkansas, at a magnitude the US Geological Survey puts near 7.5. A large aftershock followed at dawn. On January 23, 1812, a quake of about 7.3 centered on New Madrid itself, and on February 7 a third, near 7.5, broke along the Reelfoot fault in Missouri and Tennessee and destroyed the town. By mid-March more than 200 moderate to large aftershocks had been counted. Sand blows, fissures and sinks opened in the ground, bluffs slid, the land dropped as much as six meters where Reelfoot Lake formed, and waves on the Mississippi made the river look as if it ran upstream. Damaging shaking covered some 600,000 square kilometers. In New Madrid, only one life was recorded lost to falling buildings.

The museum stands in the former Kendall Saloon at the foot of Main Street, on the river. Its earthquake exhibit covers the damage of 1811 and 1812 and the hazard that remains, for the central United States is still at risk of large quakes and the ground here still shakes. Other rooms hold hundreds of Mississippian objects, from pottery and jewelry to stone tools and points, and tell of the Lilbourn Fortified Village Site south of town, of the fall of Island No. 10 in the river during the Civil War, of the two world wars and of daily life in the town, down to a kitchen that was state of the art in 1910.