Early in the morning of December 16, 1811, residents of New Madrid, Missouri were literally shaken out of their beds. One of the largest earthquakes in United States history shocked and disoriented residents of the busy frontier town. For several weeks, earthquakes continued to tremble and terrify folks and, in the process, rearrange the land and reshape the Mississippi River. In this episode, I talk with Jeff Grunwald, the administrator of the New Madrid Historical Museum, about those earthquakes, what it was like to live through them, and their legacy on the area around New Madrid. In the Mississippi Minute, I talk about Bubbleland, the geographic oddity on the other side of the Mississippi from New Madrid.
