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The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes
From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten.
In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes , Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial.
Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time— The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.
In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes , Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial.
Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time— The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.
472 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 17, 2019
In late 1811 and early 1812, massive earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks rocked a considerable area of what today is Arkansas, Kentucky, and the bootheel of Missouri. In this engaging and thoroughly researched book, Conevery Bolton Valencius (b. 1969) argues that knowledge of the quakes was lost, forgotten, or deliberately downplayed because the contemporary European population of the area was small, because information about the quakes was disseminated through anecdotal accounts published in newspapers rather than through scientific journals, because the swampy “sunk lands” created by the quakes were drained and turned into farmland during the early 20th century, and because the quakes can not be explained by the current theory of plate tectonics. Valencius, nonetheless, maintains that the quakes had significant effects: rearranging (for the worse) the geography of an extensive region, encouraging the departure of Native Americans, stimulating religious movements among both Indians and Europeans, and playing a significant role in the War of 1812 and the Civil War.
Valencius writes with enthusiasm, and this book is clearly a labor of love as well as a scholarly contribution. I am a fan of the discursive footnote, and I read all of Valencius’s. Nevertheless, I admit to running my eyes lightly over numerous pages of the text itself. The book is simply too long for a general reader who doesn’t live in the area or have a professional interest in seismology.
Valencius writes with enthusiasm, and this book is clearly a labor of love as well as a scholarly contribution. I am a fan of the discursive footnote, and I read all of Valencius’s. Nevertheless, I admit to running my eyes lightly over numerous pages of the text itself. The book is simply too long for a general reader who doesn’t live in the area or have a professional interest in seismology.
December 17, 2022
If it's possible to be a fanboy of an academic environmental historian, I am one for Valencius and her work. This is a nearly perfect monograph that covers A LOT of impressive territory: close reading of primary sources on the 1811-1812 New Madrid quakes, summarization and speculation about the human geographical impacts, and a science-studies examination of seismology from the 19th century to the last decade. Valencius is talented at (among other things) deriving possible explanatory material from brief and elliptical public records, of drawing on her own experiences to illuminate both historical events and scientific and popular understandings of earthquakes and earthquake science.
Not only is this study interesting in its own right, but it is also an exemplar of how to do history and science studies in a rigorous and _right_ way. One of the few academic works I feel the need to keep and reread at some point.
Not only is this study interesting in its own right, but it is also an exemplar of how to do history and science studies in a rigorous and _right_ way. One of the few academic works I feel the need to keep and reread at some point.
October 16, 2017
Less about the actual earthquakes than I expected. Much more about the reactions and responses at the time, the culture of the place and the changes after, and the historical understanding of earthquakes in general. All-in-all, not what I expected, but very good. Slow reading, though. It did take me a longish time - but I kept going back to it!
July 11, 2022
If your interested in the history of the New Madrid earthquake then this is the book to read. If you are interested in intraplate tectonics, you are going to be disappointed. The author readily admits that the science of intraplate tectonics is very incomplete and in need of a lot more dedicated research to find answers to many interesting questions you will have after reading this book.
March 3, 2020
This book could have been amazing. All the elements are there for an exceptional non-fiction book on a long forgotten topic. Alas the author seems to have taken her Phd thesis and without a lot of work, published a book. The chapters are repetitive and longwinded. We don't ever get to the "why."
October 15, 2020
Very interesting. More of a social/cultural history rather that a very scientific account.
November 19, 2025
It's a good book but a little too academic for my mood atm.
January 4, 2026
Reading this as a college student was a very frustrating experience. The arguments were valid but weakly linked to the thesis, and the chapters were sporadic.
November 30, 2025
It's an interesting history of the rare mid-continent earthquakes, caused by intra-plate movement. What makes them unique is that they occurred in an area heavily covered by alluvial silt, with sand and even coal being ejected from fissures.
Valencius' history is excellent in discussing first-person accounts of the quake and also the long-term impact that it had on settlement of the area, which continued for decades after the 1811-1812 earthquakes.
Valencius' history is excellent in discussing first-person accounts of the quake and also the long-term impact that it had on settlement of the area, which continued for decades after the 1811-1812 earthquakes.
April 11, 2016
I picked this up having just finished Full Rip 9.0, the book about the Cascadia fault on the west coast. I was expecting this to be similar, full of anecdotal stories and such, but two earthquake books couldn't be much different.
That being said, this is a fantastic work on the history of the New Madrid earthquakes and the history of that history. Which is to say as a people we literally ignored or forgot the earthquakes happened for over 100 years, because acknowledging them was more expensive or less lucrative than paying attention to them.
The impressive part of this book is the sociologically and anthropological history of our country. This book explains what our society was like in 1811, who was in it, how it changed, and who told the stories. There are sections on Native American cultural changes, the Revival movement, the changing attitudes of scientists toward historical narrative, and lots and lots of bits and pieces of mid-American history that was never covered (nor will be) in any class I took.
This is not a riveting edge-of-your-seat tale and to be honest it could use more first person narrative to make it so. On the other hand, its tone is appropriately academic, which fits the material. Also, it's already 333 pages, so more narrative may make it a bit too heavy for comfortable beach reading.
All in all, I'm glad I read it.
That being said, this is a fantastic work on the history of the New Madrid earthquakes and the history of that history. Which is to say as a people we literally ignored or forgot the earthquakes happened for over 100 years, because acknowledging them was more expensive or less lucrative than paying attention to them.
The impressive part of this book is the sociologically and anthropological history of our country. This book explains what our society was like in 1811, who was in it, how it changed, and who told the stories. There are sections on Native American cultural changes, the Revival movement, the changing attitudes of scientists toward historical narrative, and lots and lots of bits and pieces of mid-American history that was never covered (nor will be) in any class I took.
This is not a riveting edge-of-your-seat tale and to be honest it could use more first person narrative to make it so. On the other hand, its tone is appropriately academic, which fits the material. Also, it's already 333 pages, so more narrative may make it a bit too heavy for comfortable beach reading.
All in all, I'm glad I read it.
March 6, 2016
I found that reading this book was a considerable slog, though that may have been partly due to my own schedule which allowed for only short bits of reading time for several weeks. It did seem that a good deal of the material was repeated from chapter to chapter. The book is a fascinating story of how knowledge of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 was gathered and disseminated, then forgotten has history moved on, and then has been re-learned in modern times. I would havbe appreciated a summary of current scientific thinking on the quakes.
February 4, 2015
A very interesting account of the history of the quakes of New Madrid how time has buried much of the evidence .this book tells of why that happens. Human nature was a big factor
July 4, 2014
Excellent scholarly history that is also approachable for non-pros.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews