Over A Century Later, Point Reyes Trail Still Shows Where 1906 Earthquake Left Mark
POINT REYES (KPIX 5) – There are some lasting pieces of the 1906 earthquake tucked around San Francisco, but to see what it did to the earth itself you need to go a bit farther north, to a spot where the ground literally ripped apart.
"Do you believe that?" Mark Pesek asked his son. "Sixteen feet."
On the 116th anniversary of the '06 quake, Pasek, a Fremont school teacher, and his family decided to see a little history.
In the Point Reyes National Seashore, they could see exactly where the San Andreas fault runs beneath your feet, and where two pieces of the earth ripped apart.
"Right on the line," Pesek said. "Right on the line between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate."
There are not many spots in the Bay Area where one can really get a sense of what the fault accomplished in 1906. The Earthquake Trail at Point Reyes is one of them, and a photograph on the trail helps make that happen.
In the photo is Alice Eastwood, a pioneering member of that early survey team, looking at the tear in the earth. Here, all these years later, visitors can stand in the exact same spot and feel it running away over the hill.
It gives you a good idea of what happened here in less than a minute.
"Yeah, it gives you a sense of the amount of disturbance there was in just 40 seconds," says Park Ranger Marybeth Shenton.
The effects here were astounding. The original fences, the ones standing today are a replica, left such spectacular evidence of the quake that this area actually became a focus of the early scientific investigation.
"They didn't really have much to go on, but because of the amount of devastation that there was here, the amount of movement, they believed that the epicenter was here in a little town around the corner called Olema," Shenton explained to KPIX 5.
Now, geologists know how that fault is shaping this landscape in far greater ways, over tens of millions of years.
"The San Andreas Fault runs right under the Olema Valley and continues right under the Tomales Bay," Shenton said. "So those landforms, the bay, and the valley, were created by movement along the San Andreas fault."
The split fence, and the posts marking the path of the fault are really depicting a work in progress. 1906 was just one dramatic chapter, with more yet to be written.
"As a Californian, you never know when you're going to have your big moment of terror," Pesek said, staring at the split fence. "It can happen. And you'll never know when it's going to happen."
