The Great Earthquake of 1892
A morning tremor rattles Central Washington, stirring memories of the catastrophic 1874 quakes that reshaped the Columbia River valley.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The earthquake of Tuesday morning was felt all along the coast, from Santa Ana, California, to North Yakima. Here, it shook houses and awakened sleepers at about 3:00 a.m. The Heg and Howlett families on the hill reported it, and Mr. Ross, who lives in the brick Cadwell buildings, felt it distinctly. At Fort Simcoe, the shock was violent enough to shake students out of bed in the school dormitory. Clerk Charles Lombard of the Yakima Indian Agency reported three shocks, noting that the heavy tremors wrenched the office enough to tear away light wire fencing and damaged plaster in the new boarding house. While Central Washington has experienced several shivers, old-timers like H.H. Allen and B.E. Snipes still recall the 1874 earthquake with awe—a series of 64 shocks that famously caused mountains to collapse into the Columbia River, temporarily damming the stream and forcing Chief Wapato John to abandon his flooded ranch.
“The latter frightened the inhabitants, made the houses rock, and shook down a portion of the plastering in the new boarding house.”
Earthquakes remain a constant, if unpredictable, feature of life in the Yakima Valley. While modern building codes and seismic monitoring have replaced the 'felt-shock' reports of 1892, the region's geologic instability continues to shape the local landscape and civic conversation regarding infrastructure resilience.
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