Reelfoot Lake: The Tennessee Lake Created by an Earthquake

In the winter of 1811 to 1812, some of the most powerful earthquakes in American history struck the Mississippi River valley. They're known as the New Madrid earthquakes, after the small Missouri river town near their center. There were three major shocks, on December 16, 1811, January 23, 1812, and February 7, 1812, each estimated at more than magnitude 7.0, along with hundreds of aftershocks. The worst came in the early morning hours of February 7. It struck along what geologists now call the Reelfoot Fault, where one block of earth was thrust up over another. The ground was reshaped across the region. In places it rose, and in others it dropped. The riverbed of the Mississippi itself deformed, sending waves rolling upstream, and witnesses reported the river flowing backward for a time. Before the earthquakes, maps showed a small stream called the Reelfoot River running through a low, forested area in northwest Tennessee and emptying into the Mississippi. After February 7, 1812, that changed. With the ground disrupted and the land around it uplifted, water from the Mississippi flooded the low area, and a lake formed where a cypress forest had been. Few people lived nearby, and early accounts were vivid and exaggerated. An 1816 letter by New Madrid resident Eliza Bryan described a new lake "upwards of one hundred miles in length." The real Reelfoot Lake is far smaller, a shallow lake of about 15,000 acres. Today Reelfoot is often described as Tennessee's only natural lake. Bald cypress trees grow out of the water across much of it, giving it the look of a flooded forest, and its shallow, nutrient-rich water supports huge numbers of fish and birds. Bald eagles nest around the lake, and in winter it becomes one of the best places in the region to see them. In 1925, Tennessee began buying land around the lake to preserve it, creating Reelfoot Lake State Park. In 1966, the National Park Service designated Reelfoot Lake a National Natural Landmark. More than two centuries after the ground shook, the cypress trees are still standing in the water the earthquakes left behind.