Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1906 — WHAT CAUSED [ARTICLE]

WHAT CAUSED

Immediately after the big earthquake in California the governor of the state appointed a commission of eminent scientists from the two big universities there and set them to work to investigate and report upon, the cause of the dis turbance. They seem to have located it all right and have made their report This cause, explained in brief and common language was a long crack or seam in tbe earth’s crust, and a slipping of the sides of the crack wljere they came together. Thus if the earth is looked upon as resembling in con strubtSon a big melon with a hard but thin rind outside, and all its inside parte soft and semi-fluid in character, and a big sharp knife made a cut down through this outer rind, some 300 miles long, this cut would represent the crack. The crack has been found, and traced the distance mentioned, beginning in Ventura county, well towards the southern part of the state, and running in a general northwest direction, until it disappears in the ocean at a point about 75 miles north of San Francisco. Along the sides of this crack the land slipped during the earthquake one side north or the other Side south as much in places as 20 feet. Thus a fence or road which crossed the line of the crack at right angles would not come together again after the quake by 10 to 20 feet. In many places also one side was heaved up as much as four feet higher than the other side, or one side may have sunk down, amounting to the same thing. The line of this crack is easy to trace, and in places it opened out out wide and then closed up again, in one place catching and swallowing up a cow. This crack or seam follows the general direction of the Coast Range of mountains, and geologists say is not a new one but has been doing business in the earthquake line since a remote geological period. Why slips or faults like this should occur in the earth’s crust is a matter more difficult to explain, in common everyday language, al though the geologists understand the matter fairly well. The melonrind crust of the earth, which is really more of an egg shell than a melon rind in thickness, as compared with the fluid or at least plastic interior, is comparatively solid and rigid. The interior part is very hot but of course gradually cooling, and shrinking as it cools. Like the coat of a fat man who takes anti fat the shrinking of the inside of the earth makes the outside shell too large to fit well, and like the coat it wrinkles in places, and these wrinkles stick up in the form of mountain ranges. Most of these wrinkles are awful old wrinkles and have quit growing any higher but some of them, as for instance this Coast Range in California, are still growing, and as they push slowly upward a mighty pressure or stress is produced in the crust of the earth along the range, which finally lets go all at once with a slipping and sliding which sets the whole earth in the vicinity to Shaking and trembling, and then we have an earthquake. Little slips make little quakes and big ones big quakes in proportion. It seems generally agreed among the ablest geologists that after a big quake like this recent one, that matters will settle down for a good many years, before there is another big earthquake.