The Eighteen Seventy-Two Earthquake: The Biggest One California Forgot

On March twenty-sixth, eighteen seventy-two, the Owens Valley shook.

The earthquake that struck that morning was one of the largest in California's recorded history: a retrospective magnitude estimate ranging from about seven point four to seven point nine, according to United States Geological Survey analysis. That makes it comparable in strength to the nineteen oh six San Francisco earthquake. Larger than the nineteen ninety-four Northridge earthquake. One of the largest seismic events in California since the state has kept records.

In Lone Pine, where roughly two hundred fifty people lived, the ground moved violently enough to collapse most of the town's adobe buildings. Twenty-seven people were killed. That was about one in nine of the entire population of the town, the highest per-capita death toll of any California earthquake on record.

The fault scarp produced by the earthquake is still visible west of Lone Pine, a step in the valley floor where the earth dropped nearly twenty feet. You can see it from the highway. The valley floor on one side of the scarp is higher than the valley floor on the other side by the amount the fault moved in a single morning one hundred fifty years ago.

The dead were Anglo settlers, Mexican residents, and Chinese laborers. They are not named on any major monument in the town. The earthquake is recorded in the geological literature and in the archives of Inyo County. It is largely absent from the tourist narrative of Lone Pine, which concentrates on the film history and the mountain above.

The mountain did not shake. The valley is still shaking.