Hebgen Lake
Lake Hebgen
© Vertical Media
The recreation area of Hebgen Lake is one of spectacular scenery, camping, boating, fishing and water activities. Located in Montana, it is a short 10 miles northwest of West Yellowstone and draws much of its visitors in the summer months. Full time and part time residents are located around the lake's edge and hillsides. Aside from recreation, Hebgen Lake is an example of the natural forces of our planet. In 1959, the Hebgen Lake earthquake produced a shocking 7.5 magnitude quake, the strongest ever recorded in the Intermountain West and the Rockies. more info
Hebgen Lake Listings: (add your listing)
Madison Arm Resort - Camp on Hebgen Lake
Tent campers! Stay in a nice, safe & clean facility near Yellowstone. Campsites right on Hebgen Lake complete with showers, store, laundry, boat marina, cabins & boat rentals.
(800) 646-9644
Hebgen Lake RV spaces, cabin & boat rentals
Kirkwood Resort, located on Hebgen Lake in West Yellowstone, has low-rates on lodging, RV-camping, boating and marina services in May and June. Book online and save!
(406) 646-7200
Golden West Motel - Summer rooms start at $65
Comfortable rooms just 6 blocks from YNP, cable-TV, daily freshen-ups, group gathering area, ample trailer parking. The best budget rooms near Yellowstone, open year-round!
(406) 646-7778
Lake Hebgen
© Vertical Media
On August 17, 1959 at 11:37pm, a magnitude 6.3 foreshock was followed within seconds by a major earthquake of magnitude 7.5. The strong shaking lasted less than a minute. It sent an entire mountainside crashing down at 100 miles per hour. The slide, falling more than 1,000 feet and plunging into the Madison River Canyon, pushed winds of nearly hurricane force in front of it. Once the landslide slammed into the Madison River it hurled 30 foot waves upstream and downstream. The slide filled the canyon bottom and raced more than 400 feet up the north side of the canyon, dumping boulders as big as houses. The slide buried campgrounds and covered a mile-long stretch of highway and river with 100 to 300 feet of boulders, rocks and soil. After the slide halted and the waves subsided, the Madison River started backing up behind the slide, forming a new lake nearly 318 feet deep, known as Earthquake Lake.
It took weeks for authorities to determine the damage and loss of life. There were 28 fatalities, dozens injured and $13 million in damages to highways and timber. Most of the deaths were caused by rockslides that covered the Rock Creek public campground on the Madison River, about 5 miles below Hebgen Dam. Many summer homes in the area were damaged. Houses and cabins shifted off their foundations, chimneys fell and pipelines broke. Roadways were cracked and shifted extensively, and much timber was destroyed. Three of the five reinforced bridges in the epicentral area also sustained significant damage.
The Hebgen Lake area was not the only region affected. West Yellowstone and more distant Montana towns had damages to structures. The quake was felt through much of the West, including Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Seismograph needles were knocked off scale hundreds of miles away in Salt Lake City and Denver. The seismic waves made water levels fluctuate in wells thousands of miles away in Hawaii, New Jersey, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
Lake Hebgen
© Vertical Media
The Hebgen Lake earthquake happened because huge blocks of rock, as much as 15 miles long, abruptly slumped and tilted beneath the lake and Madison River Canyon. The blocks moved ultimately because the Earth's crust is being stretched apart in a broad region of the West known as the Basin and Range Province. Such stretching has created valleys, mountain ranges, and earthquake faults from eastern California through Nevada and western Utah, and north into Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and western Wyoming. However, this quake was unusual.
It was not only the strongest ever recorded in the Rockies, but it produced extraordinary ground movements. The Hebgen Lake fault is a normal fault, which occurs when ground on one side of the fault drops down and away from ground on the other side, which rises upward. Such vertical movements creates small cliffs called scarps. In some places along the faults broken during the Hebgen Lake quake, these abrupt cliffs were as high as 22 feet. This much offset or displacement was unheard of for a normal fault earthquake in the West. Another great geological force may have contributed to the quake's power - the supervolcano of Yellowstone - the Yellowstone hotspot.
Sitting atop the hotspot, the Yellowstone region is essentially a giant, slumbering volcano that huffs upward and puffs downward over the decades, like a breathing beast. The Hebgen Lake quake may have been powered in part by the heat and molten rock within the hotspot lifting the region upward, thus hastening the stretching of Earth's crust in the area. This activity would be only the latest in a long string of catastrophes triggered by the violent geology of the hotspot. During the past 16.5 million years, geological processes related to the hotspot have included gigantic volcanic eruptions, mountain building, major earthquakes, geothermal activity, landslides, and even glaciers, floods, and forest fires.
These disasters have sculpted Yellowstone's fantastic, high altitude scenery and reshaped the landscape of about a quarter of the northwestern United States. The Hebgen Lake represents an earth changing event, with the third largest earthquake to occur in the lower 48 states. In 1967, the Forest Service's Earthquake Lake Visitor Center opened its doors for the first season of operation. Today the center provides interpretive services for more than 50,000 visitors annually, and this area continues to be of great scientific and general interest.
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