Quaking in Our Boots

We Minnesotans tend to be pretty smug about the safe, sheltered, inland surrounds we call home.  Oh, we have our freezing temps, wicked blizzards and an occasional tornado, but no hurricanes, wildfires, landslides, volcanos, mudslides,  floods (rarely), locusts, or earthquakes.  

Oops, earthquakes.

On a July 1975 morning, I was working at Hoplin & Nelson Hardware in Lowry, Minnesota, when the floor started quivering and shelves rattling. What the heck? Alas, an earthquake, lasting several seconds, a 4.6 on the Richter Scale, which of course is peanuts compared to the 6's & 7's California experiences. (Remember, each 1 point increment in the scale represents a 10x increase in intensity). But the "Morris Quake" as it became called, was the strongest quake ever recorded in Minnesota. The epicenter of the quake was in Steven's County, near Morris, about 25 miles from Lowry. In Stevens County, plaster cracked and pictures fell off walls. In the town of Morris, two homes suffered damage to their foundations. In Lowry, the hardware store lost some depression glassware. So bravely, in the face of death, I picked up a broom. Actually, nobody died and few were injured. An A&W manager in Morris got some notoriety after the seismograph he built out of a coffee can, an erector set and a cheap pen was the only one to capture the Morris quake.

Turns out Minnesota does indeed have a fault line in it, the Great Lakes Tectonic Zone, stretching from Big Stone and Traverse Counties on the Dakota border to Duluth. but seismic activity in Minnesota is extremely rare. Only 20 moderate quakes have been documented since the Civil War. Alexandria had a 3.6 in 1919, Brandon a 3.1 in 1920.

So it seems we should expect one every 50 years or so.  We're due. Pay attention to your pets. They're earthquake bellwethers.

'64 Pope County tornado

Another natural disaster might have cost me my future bride. In 1964, she was driving a tractor pulling a hayrack on County 24 with her grandfather and brother riding the rack when they were faced with with a tornado approaching Pelican Lake. Carol and Larry took cover in a culvert under the county road and Grandfather Thomas crouched underneath the hayrack. Apparently he wanted to see what would happen. The tornado's path took it across the lake and did damage to Scott’s Resort about a half-mile from where the threesome were huddled.  But nobody died.

Reckless behavior seems to run in my wife’s family. Many years later Aunt Othelia - yes, that WWII Nurse Othelia - stood calmly gazing out their living room picture window of their farm home near Evansville as a tornado rippped apart the grove next to the house. 

So there you have it, both my future bride and I facing down near death experiences.  

Well, that might be slight hyperbole.

Be careful out there.

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin