Sixty-five years ago, on the morning of Aug. 17, 1959, a discussion took place between Lloyd and Amy Sandiland of Helena.
The Sandilands were camping in Madison River Canyon, several miles downstream from Hebgen Lake, with their three children. The couple were deliberating whether to stay another night at their campsite on the Madison, or to relocate to Wade Lake, which was about 12 miles away.
Mrs. Sandiland, who was in favor of moving, won the debate, and the family pulled up stakes that Monday afternoon and moved their campsite.
“We had been at the Hebgen campground a couple nights, and were supposed to meet my grandparents at Wade Lake, but Dad didn’t want to leave, because the fishing was so good,” recalled lifelong Helena resident Roger Sandiland, who was 10 years old at the time, during a 2009 interview. “But thankfully, Mom was able to talk him into going.”
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In the meantime, another Capital City couple, Joe and Jewel Hurley – who were driving to Yellowstone Park with their two young sons in the back seat of their 1959 Chevy station wagon – pulled into the same campground. But by then it was full, there were no available spaces, so the Hurleys decided to give Wade Lake a try.
As it turned out, Amy Sandiland’s stubbornness and because the site then filled to capacity might have saved the lives of both families.
Later that night, at 11:37 p.m., one of the most powerful earthquakes in North American history caused a landslide that buried over two dozen people along the Madison River … at the very location the Sandilands and Hurleys had left.
The violent tremors of the Hebgen Lake quake lasted for 35 seconds, and the disaster became known as “The Night the Mountain Fell,” which was the title of Edmund Christopherson’s book chronicling the event.
The earthquake, which registered a magnitude 7.4, brought 80 million tons of rocks, mud and trees crashing on top of the campground. Twenty-eight campers perished and 60 others were injured in the landslides at Madison Canyon, Cliff Lake and Rock Creek.
The roadway was underwater after the newly enlarged lake created by the earthquake. August 1959.
Instruments at Carroll College measured the quake at over 5.0 here in Helena. Yours truly (I was 7) remembers watching the street light poles in front of our house on Poplar Street waving back and forth like wheat stocks in the wind.
Interestingly enough, the campers being bounced around at Wade Lake were actually relieved to learn it was “only” an earthquake causing the commotion.
“When we got to Wade Lake that afternoon, everybody there was worried about a bear in the area,” according to Sandiland. “We pitched our tents, but then the bear showed up again. So my dad chased him away, and then the five of us – Mom and Dad, my brother Mike, sister Sabrina and myself – moved into our camp trailer. My grandparents, Sandy and Bessie, slept in their car.”
Lifelong local Pat Hurley, who was 8 years old then, recalled that his family was sleeping in the back of their station wagon that night.
“The back window was down, and all of a sudden we hear this rummaging around noise outside,” related Hurley, now 73. “The next thing you know, a bear sticks its head through the window. My Dad grabbed a coffee cup and threw it at it. The cup bounced off its head, it spun around and took off running.”
Little brother Kim Hurley, who was only 5, remembered in a recent phone interview from his home in Oregon how “families were screaming” as the bear raced through the campground and “wiped out a few people’s tents” along the way.
Sandiland said when their trailer started rocking close to midnight, they thought it was the bear again, trying to get inside. “Everybody in the camp figured it was the bear causing the ruckus,” he recalled with a laugh. “My grandparents thought he was on top of their car, so Grandpa started honking his horn. My mom was banging pots and pans trying to scare it away.
“After the shaking stopped, my Dad went outside and realized it was an earthquake, but it took him several minutes to convince Mom to stop making all that racket. It was funny, though, because finding out it was not the bear kind of settled everyone down.”
Pat Hurley remembered his family riding out the earthquake in the back of the station wagon, while Kim’s memory is “the bear’s escapades were more entertainment” than the earthquake.
Sandiland said the quaking was so violent that vehicles were bouncing up and down, with their tires actually leaving the ground.
A car was crushed by debris as it was carried down the mountainside. August 1959.
“We were on a sidehill and had dug in one side of the trailer to level things out, or we would have rolled right into the lake,” he said.
The force of the falling mountain in Madison Canyon created winds estimated in excess of 100 mph, overturning cars at the bottom of the mountain.
Sandiland described the noise from the avalanches and hurricane-like winds as deafening.
“There was a full moon that night, and with all the dust in the air it created a really eerie scenario,” he said.
Early the next morning, residents of nearby Ennis were requested to evacuate in case the Madison River flooded. Three of those leaving in the middle of the night were Jack and Dorris Kinney’s three young children. Geni, Kathy and Kim Kinney were visiting their grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Matzick, in Ennis. They arrived back in Helena safe and sound several hours later, at about 10 a.m.
After the dust settled, there was a 21-foot-deep fault line running near the top of the nearby mountains. The landslide blocked off the flow of the Madison River, forming what became known as Quake Lake.
Overall damages from the quake totaled $11 million, equivalent to about $76 million by today’s currency. Many of the local-area roads were blocked off with boulders and mud, stranding more than 100 campers in the vicinity. The
