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1886 Cashiers Quake
Written By: Jane Gibson Nardy - Cashiers Historical Society | Issue: 2021/03 – March
Rock Mountain’s distinctive Rainbow Crack emerged upon the rock face like a bolt in the night.
An article titled Rescue on Rock Mountain was recently published in The Crossroads Chronicle.
There was also a big picture, in color, illustrating the face of Rock Mountain with its Rainbow Crack in plain view. Our nationally-acclaimed Rescue Squad’s rescue of a man trapped on the steep side of the mountain and their use of a drone to get the exact location of that man is a thrilling read.
Every time I hear anything about Cashiers’ Rock Mountain my mind goes back to over 130 years ago when an earthquake with its epicenter in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean traveled to the North Carolina mountains, causing face-changing damage to our own Rock Mountain.
That damage is the mountain’s Rainbow Crack, easily viewed from the High Hampton Inn. This happened on August 31, 1886 at 9:50 P.M. with the violent shaking lasting one minute. Located two thirds of the way down from the top of the mountain, the huge rainbow shaped crack measured 100 yards wide and 12 feet deep.
Terrified citizens of Cashiers and Highlands, most at home at that time of night, ran outside and spent the rest of the night sleeping outside. There was no newspaper at that time in Cashiers, but the Highlands newspaper was filled with interviews with everyone eager to tell their stories. There were many aftershocks felt for quite a while.
Before reaching Cashiers, the earthquake had first struck the city of Charleston, South Carolina, leaving much of that city a heap of rubble. The shock waves continued on, racing west and northwest. Most experts agree the quake was around a Number 7 on the Richter Scale.
Effects were felt and structural damage reported from Central Alabama, Central Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, North Carolina, Southern Virginia and Western West Virginia. It was felt as far north as Boston, Chicago and Milwaukee to the northwest, as far west as New Orleans, as far south as Cuba and as far east as Bermuda.
I had ancestors living not far from the bottom of Rock Mountain in 1886, but none of their stories of the quake have survived.
