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Published August 1, 2019 | Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Where was the 31 October 1895 Charleston, Missouri, Earthquake?

Abstract

We revisit the magnitude and location of the 31 October 1895 Charleston, Missouri, earthquake, which is widely regarded to be the most recent M_w 6 or greater earthquake in the central United States. Although a study by Bakun et al. (2003) concluded that this earthquake was located in southern Illinois, more than 100 km north of the traditionally inferred location near Charleston, Missouri, our analysis of exhaustively compiled macroseismic data supports the traditionally inferred location, with a preferred magnitude of M_w ≈ 5.8 and a preferred magnitude range of 5.4–6.1. Our preferred magnitude is derived from comparisons with intensity distributions from the 1925 M_w 6.2 Charlevoix, the 1944 M_w 5.8 Massena, and the 1968 M_w 5.3 southern Illinois earthquakes, macroseismic data of which we also revisited in this study. Based on the distribution of liquefaction, reports of damage, and early aftershocks, we also explore possible rupture scenarios for the 1895 earthquake. Our preferred scenario involves unilateral rupture to the northeast on a (reactivated) northeast‐striking fault (or faults) coinciding with structures associated with the western limb of the Reelfoot rift, with an epicenter south‐southeast of Charleston, Missouri. Our results support the conclusion that within the Reelfoot rift, elevated seismic hazard is not restricted to the New Madrid seismic zone as conventionally defined but continues into the Charleston region in southeastern Missouri, where faults associated with the western edge of the Reelfoot rift appear favorably oriented for failure in the current stress regime.

Additional Information

© 2019 Seismological Society of America. Manuscript received 8 December 2018; Published Online 21 May 2019. The authors thank Rufus Catchings, Jaime Delano, Shane Detweiler, Michael Diggles, Michael Hamburger, and an anonymous reviewer for their reviews of this article. Figures 1, 3, and 5 have benefitted from useful interactions with Aurélie Coudurier‐Curveur and Priyamvada Nanjundiah. The authors thank Luis Rivera and Emile Okal for their assistance in our quest to locate a digital copy of Kortazzi (1896), Christina Bodnar‐Anderson for providing us digital copies of materials from the National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering (NISEE) library, Robert Hermann for making available postcard responses from the 1968 southern Illinois earthquake, James Dewey for his assistance with postcard responses from the 1968 earthquake, and Stephan Halchuk for providing a digital listing of Canadian intensity data points from the 1925 Charlevoix, Québec, earthquake. S. S. M. was supported through the National Research Foundation Singapore and the Singapore Ministry of Education under the Research Centres of Excellence initiative. Figures were generated using Generic Mapping Tool (GMT) software (Wessel and Smith, 1999) and QGIS v.2.18. Data and Resources: Newspaper accounts for the 1895 Charleston, Missouri, the 1925 Charlevoix, Québec, and the 1944 Massena, New York, earthquakes were extracted from the subscription‐based Newspapers.com database (last accessed March 2018). These were supplemented with other newspapers from the Library of Congress' Chronicling America database (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, last accessed March 2018), the Colorado Historical Newspapers Collection (www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org, last accessed March 2018), the Kentucky Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org, last accessed March 2018), the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection (http://idnc.library.illinois.edu, last accessed March 2018), and the State Historical Society of Missouri's (SHSMO) newspaper collection (https://shsmo.org/newspaper/mdnp, last accessed March 2018). Plat books for Mississippi and Scotts counties in Missouri were available via the Missouri University Digital Library, the University of Missouri–Columbia (http://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu, last accessed March 2018). Sanborn Fire Insurance maps are available for Charleston, Missouri, for 1893 and 1900 from the University of Missouri (https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/, last accessed August 2018) and for Cairo, Illinois, from The Library of Congress (1891: https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01760_002 and 1896: https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01760_003, last accessed August 2018). Freely available high‐resolution light detection and ranging (lidar) digital elevation models and aerial imagery were downloaded from the Missouri Spatial Data Information Service (MSDIS; http://msdis.missouri.edu/data, last accessed March 2018). "Did You Feel It?" (DYFI) datasets for the 2008 Mount Carmel, Illinois, and the 2011 Mineral, Virginia, earthquakes are the same as those utilized by Hough (2013).

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August 19, 2023
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