The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-12-28
.REELFOOT LAKE
AND ITS UGLY PAST
Bern Of Earthquake, Is Center
Of Human Strife
HARRIS THE PIONEER
His Long Conflict With Fishermen
and Huntsmen From the Mar
kets-Lake County Got the
lynching Habit.

R. S. Spears, in N. Y Evening Post.
There is no more interesting locality
in the Mississippi river basin than
Reelfoot Lake, where Capt. quentin
Rankin, the Trenton, Tenn, attorney,
was lynched and Col r. z. Taylor per-
mitted to escape by a midnight band
of raiders few weeks ago. Around
Reelfoot Lake cluster uncounted legends
and tales of many Varieties, most of
them in keeping with the weird and
CHASTITY beauty of the lake and its dead
forest.
Reelfoot Lake is a part of the Sunk
Lands of the Mississippi bottoms. The
Sunk Lands comprise several thous-
and square miles between Cairo and
Memphis, and the name comes from
the belief that when the New Madrid
earthquakes convulsed the bottoms in
1S11-12 the land sank" permitting
the waters to gather in great shallow
basins, forming lakes, of which Reel
foot Lake is the largest in Tennessee,
and st. Francis Lake in the swamps
of Arkansas and Missouri, is the larg-
"Reelfoot country was the name
given by the river and swamp hunters
of Davy Crockett's time to the region
most affected by the earthquakes. 1t
expresses graphically the condition of
affairs when "a man couldn't stand up
nor lie down" on account of the ter
rife commissions of the earth which
Of
tervals beginning in 1911 and lasting
at their worst for two or three years,
and continuing with decreasing severi-
ty down to the present time, when
there are five or six shocks a year
which do no worse damage than shake
a few acres of land into the Missis-
sippi throw down some chimneys, and
brighten the colored population of Lake
county. The people of the bottoms are
rather inclined to be proud of their
little shakers" and they take great
delight in the open mouthed surprise
of strangers who happen to be in the
land when an earthquake rolls across
the bottoms out of the west, as I know
from experience. These earthquakes
would be thought very severe else
one which SHOOK ploughmen off their
feet" cracked the Holiday house at
Cairo. and badly damaged the Mem
phis sewer system. The people of the
bottoms depend on cisterns for their
drinking water, but in the earthquake
zone it is impossible to build them OF
cement, owing TO the wracking they
receive from the seismic disturbances.
Earthquakes of 18t1-12.
The earthquake of 1S11-12 made the land
roll like waves There are letters and
descriptions which tell how the land
rocked" The story of the first steamer
trip down the Ohio and Mississippi has
many times been told-how the Roose-
velts on board found themselves rocked
and tossed about on the agitated waters
Elizabeth Brown wrote to the Rev. Lo-
renzo Dow that the first shock came on
December IL, 1911. There was an awful
noise like distant thunder, but more
hoarse, followed by the complete satura-
ton of the atmosphere with sulphurous
vapor, causing total darkness. There
were screams of the affrighted inhabi-
tants, running to and fro, the cries of
| fowls and beasts, the cracking of trees
falling, and the current of the Mississippi
turned and flowed up stream for four
hours. Mrs. LaFont died of fright.
On January %, 1872, violent shock came,
and from this time until February 4 ''the
earth was in continual agitation, visibly
waving as a gentle sea-" On February 4
came a violent shock, and on the 5th
four more. On the 7th, at O'Clock
a. M, came the CONFUSION known as the
"hard shock"
AT first the Mississippi seemed to re-
! cede from its banks as the water gather
| ed up like mountain, leaving for a mo-
! ment the keelboats that were here New
| Madrid), on their way to New Orleans,
on the bare sand. in which time the poor
| sailors made their escape from them. 1t
| then raised from Is to 20 feet perpendicu-
larry and expanding, as IT were the bank
| oyerfiowed with a retrograde movement
as rapid as a torrent. The boats were
torn from their mornings and driven up
| a little creek quarter of a mile. The
/ river fell as rapidly as it rose, and tore
/ off young cottonwoods so that people
! thought it a work of art. so regularly
was 1t done. Fish were left on the banks
and the river was covered with the
wrecks of boats A woman and six
children were reported dead"
Mention of ReeIfoot.
Hundreds of acres were covered with
sand, which boiled up out of splits and
holes in the ground, and the site of New
Madrid settled at least 10 feet" Many
ponds back Of the town were dried up.
the bed beng raised higher than their
shores. Lately" the woman wrote ut
has been discovered that lake was
formed on The opposite side of the Missis-
! sippi in the Indian country, upwards of
100 miles in length, and from one to six
miles in breadth, and of a depth of from
10 to so feet. 1t has communication at
10th ends with the Mississippi and il is
conjectured that 1t will not be many years
before the principal part of the Missis-
| sppi will pass that way" This was the
first mention in writing of Reelfoot
lake.
The Reeifoot lake region extends from
! hickman nv, to few miles below Car
rIthersville, Mo, a distance of about 50
miles in a straight line and nearly 70
miles by the Mississippi river channel,
and covers about $50 square miles The
lake itself Is Is miles long from, say,
French slough to the road to Tiptonville,
Tenn It's width varies from few hun
dred feet 10 something over four miles.
There are many arms and bays, and the
shore line is most irregular, the north end
losing itself in a cypress brake along
eight or 10 distinct bayous. Here the tu-
l1 - IL.