The 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes were series of intense intraplate earthquakes, magnatitude 7.2–8.2 and were felt strongly throughout much of the central and eastern United States, across an area of roughly 130,000 square kilometers, and moderately across nearly 3 million km² . By comparison, The Great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, was felt only moderately over 16,000 km²

Eliza Bryan^[10] in New Madrid, Territory of Missouri, wrote the following eyewitness account in March 1812:

On the 16th of December, 1811, about two o'clock, a.m., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness.

The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go, or what to do—the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species—the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi— the current of which was retrograde for a few minutes, owing as is supposed, to an irruption in its bed— formed a scene truly horrible.