We don’t really think about the Southwest as a hotbed of seismic activity. But Mary Elizabeth Reynolds' forthcoming book shines a light on a massive earthquake here that changed our state’s water trajectory.
Mary Elizabeth Reynolds is author of “The Quake That Drained The Desert,” which tells the story of a 7.4 magnitude earthquake that hit near the U.S.-Mexico border on May 3, 1887 — and had long-lasting impacts.
She spoke with The Show about how she came across this lost piece of Arizona history.
Full conversation
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: I first heard about this earthquake because I was working for the town of Sahuarita, and we were trying to take care of a West Nile virus problem that they were having in the town. And it’s a mosquito-borne disease, and we had someone from the state health department talk to us about how there have always been mosquito-borne diseases in Arizona, even back in the 1800s when there was a lot of malaria problems at some of the army bases here in Arizona like Fort Lowell, here in Tucson, Camp Verde up in Northern Arizona.
And he said there was also a malaria problem in St. David, Arizona, and he said it was really bad, and the Mormon community wanted to leave that area. But they didn’t leave, and one year, in 1887 on May 3, there was a massive earthquake in Sonora, Mexico. That earthquake caused the San Pedro River to surge, and it wiped out all the malarial pools, so there were no more mosquitoes and the town was saved.
And so I thought to myself, what is this earthquake? I never heard about it. But then I remembered in Tucson, I went to high school at Catalina High School, and there were what we called earthquake bands in the floor of the hallway, and there were these steel bands that would allow the building to flex if there was an earthquake. So I had known somehow that there were earthquakes in Arizona, in Tucson, but I had never heard of this particular earthquake.
LAUREN GILGER: But this was no small earthquake. Like as you’re getting at there, I think we could infer based on the surge in the San Pedro River you mentioned, right? Like this was really big. Describe just the the impact of this for us.
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: Well, researchers today have analyzed the data, and they estimate it was a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, which is just like the earthquakes that happened in Colombia and Venezuela this summer. So we all saw the total devastation of those earthquakes.
LAUREN GILGER: Those are major, yeah.
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: And and back in 1887, you know, people were living in this area were living in adobe buildings, basically one-story buildings. And at the epicenter at the town of Bavispe, Sonora, Mexico, there were 700 people living there, and every house was destroyed.
The walls moved so much that every roof collapsed on top of the people that were inside the houses, and also the church. There’s an amazing photograph of the church that has its walls but no roof, because the roof has fallen in.
So 41 people died in Bavispe. Another nine people died in other places in Mexico. No one was killed in Arizona, but the earthquake was felt as far away as El Paso; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and it even rang church bells 1,000 miles away in Mexico City.
LAUREN GILGER: Some of the stats here are just staggering. People in Tucson thought it was a volcano, right? Like there was debris, dust flying up in places?
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: Well, yes, in Tucson, it was as if you were on a ship at sea and the ocean was moving below you. So people ran out of the buildings, some of them were sick with nausea in the street, and they looked up at the Santa Catalina Mountains, which are the big mountains just outside of Tucson, and they could see dust flowing from the tops of the mountains.
And then at night, there were fires on the mountains because the earthquakes caused rocks to fall, and they sparked against each other, and the forest caught on fire. So people thought there were volcanoes in the Catalina Mountains and in the Chiricahua Mountains, which are closer to Tombstone.
LAUREN GILGER: My goodness. So you mentioned the surge in the San Pedro River, geysers basically shot up from this river in Southern Arizona there when this happened. And that is going to bring us to the next part of this book, right, which is the the long-term and sort of modern-day implications of this earthquake many, many years later, and its connections to our water sources today. Can you kind of connect the dots for us there?
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: There was in Tucson, the earthquake made El Ojito Spring, which had been providing water to Tucson for at least 200 years, that spring went dry. At the McKay house, the well in the backyard went dry. At San Xavier Mission, the mission spring also stopped at the time of the earthquake.
But fortunately for the Tohono O'odham farmers near the mission, another spring opened up. And as you mentioned in St. David, the San Pedro River surged, and the people there also discovered artesian springs, which continue to water their walnut groves and their pistachio trees today.
But here in Tucson, there was a problem with the water. You didn’t have the main spring anymore, and so the people in Tucson had to figure out a way to tap into the Santa Cruz River upstream from town to provide water to the people in Tucson. But it also just shows that earthquakes, they close up springs in one place, but they may open them in another.
But this was also a time of great boosterism for Southern Arizona. You could grow eight crops of wheat a year because it was a mild climate. You could have cattle, and the railroad had just come to town, and so the cattle could be shipped back to Eastern markets.
So people were really trying to create basically a Midwestern atmosphere here in the desert. So there were cotton fields that used a lot of water, there were wheat fields that used a lot of water, so they’re always trying to pump more and more water out of the ground.
So now the Colorado River, we’re understanding there’s a limited supply in the Colorado River, right, so the states are, as you know, the states are having to come together to decide who’s going to who’s going to get cut, what water is going to be cut. It’s not going to be cut from California, it’s going to be cut from Arizona.
LAUREN GILGER: One of the things that surprises me here is that it’s not something we think about when we think about the Southwest, the Sonoran Desert. You might think about the San Andreas Fault, but you don’t think about a lot of seismic activity happening in this part of the world.
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: No. No, you don’t. But in Arizona, actually the most seismically active part of the state is sort of the northwest corner between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon. There’s a lot of seismic activity there, and according to the Arizona Geological Survey, every 5 to 10 years there is a moderate earthquake in Arizona.
And some of your listeners might remember in 2015, there’s there was a 4.1 magnitude earthquake near Black Canyon City, which is just north of Phoenix, and I’m sure many people in Phoenix felt that earthquake.
There was another one on the New Mexico-Arizona border in 2014, near Duncan there was a 5.3 magnitude earthquake, and actually I know people in Tucson who felt that. They said, like, one of the drawers in my dresser slid open. They noticed that the the curtains inside were waving, but there was no breeze, and it was because of that earthquake. It was on Easter Sunday.
LAUREN GILGER: So it does happen. It does happen here.
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: Yes.
LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you then, Mary, could this happen again? I think anytime there’s an earthquake conversation, people wonder that: Could it be worse? Could it be bad again? Could it impact our water supply now as it’s so dire?
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: Yes, it could happen again, and I think everyone should be prepared. You should think about what do you do during the earthquake. And I’ll tell you right now, this is what you do: You drop, cover and hold on. Water lines could be damaged, electricity might be out. So you just have your disaster preparedness kit like you would for anything, and that way you can get through the aftermath of the earthquake.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. Well lots to keep in mind. Mary Elizabeth Reynolds, author of the new book “The Quake That Drained the Desert” joining us. Mary, thank you so much for coming on The Show, thanks for talking about this, I appreciate it.
MARY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS: Thank you, Lauren. It was great to talk to you.
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