It was a typical calm, quiet night in November of 1872. A pale frosty moon cast an eerie, white light across the landscape through a high, thin haze.
The Wapato family had settled down into peaceful slumber in their cabin near where the town of Entiat would be founded in later years. The only sounds came from the family dog who had been pacing the floor and whining nervously for the past half hour.
Suddenly, the dog became quiet. Then it started: a low, distant rumble, growing in intensity. The dog began to howl as the first tremors hit. The noise rose to a cresendo. The ground rocked and shook as if trying to buck the cabin off the face of the earth. The Wapatos – Mom, Dad, and children Sylvester and Peter – were wide awake now, trying to keep their sparse furnishings from crashing through the walls. The cabin seemed to be trying to tear itself apart. The Wapatos ran outside as the fury and violent rolling motions of a full-blown earthquake gripped the land. It seemed like a lifetime to the Wapato family.
Just as the noise began to subside and the mighty quake convulsed to an end, the air was split with a deafening roar, as of the very devils of the earth had been set loose. The ground began to shake again as the mountain just north of their cabin lost its footing, split in half, and millions of tons of rock and earth plunged and tumbled a thousand vertical feet into the mighty Columbia River. . . . to become the first dam to block its flow and it also created Ribbon Cliff.
Members of the Wapato family escaped serious injury and death that night, but like many other people throughout this area, they would wonder how they were so fortunate.
A host of strange things happened the night the mountain fell . . . . and during the days that followed.
The next morning, Indian women went to the river to get water for the Miller and Freer trading post at the north end on Miller Street in Wenatchee, only to find the mighty Columbia had dried up and simply vanished. The word spread like wildfire. Everyone within reach came to see this miracle.
A Yakima pioneer told of oil being found along the hogback, east of the Columbia River, in two large cracks that had opened up. Oil had boiled out of these cracks, and oozed down the mountainside to set and harden.
Near Chelan Landing, a great body of water shot high into the air like a geyser. Indians came to see this wonder for months after the quake, but as time went on, the water pressure lessened until it became nothing more than a spring.
The night the mountain fell is a time to be remembered. Story taken from book "The Night the Mountain Fell and Other Stories".
Other Sites by Patudles
We’re Rockin Now)
Explosion
School of Hard Rocks, (or is it Hard Knocks?)
I'm Hiding, I'm Hiding, Do You Know Where?
It's my party
First Bridge
RiverSide
Road Less Traveled
One Foot in the Grave
A Picture says a Thousand Words
Where the Wind Blows
Gold?
Halfway Point
Old McDonald had a Lake
A Rainbow in the Mist
Glacier