I’ve always thought the stories about the New Madrid earthquakes were interesting. It shook a great deal of the continent and according to some witnesses was felt as far away as Virginia. The big river running backwards for a time, the creation of Reelfoot lake, spouts of liquefied sand, flooding, the whole physical, geological gambit.
What is harder to find but to more interesting is how if affected the people where all of this happened. There were alot of people living in that area, relatively speaking of course, but more than you’d think. Lots of mining going there for lead (Galena lead was the#1 choice for a lot of the fur trappers I’ve read) and zinc, lots of agriculture and trade with indians as well. I’d imagine peoplewere scare out of their wits. Here’s where it gets interesting: its thought that some of the settlers there went ‘feral’ out of fear and trauma, ptsd is what we’d call it now. There is a lot of folklore about an Arkansas Wild Man during the exact period after the quakes (there were actually three bigguns). Its also been theorized that the Bigfoot myth came from sighting of displaced survivors of it. Who knows? its pretty easy to imagine how living in the borderlands of the day would make a person edgy to begin with, hell you were one broken bone or bad sip of water from death. Add an event where the earth acted crazy, the wildlife acted crazy, the rivers did crazy stuff and its not that big of a step to feral folk living in the woods acting just as crazy.
Anyways, its interesting to me.
Here’s a fair reference if you’re interested. https://press.uchicago.edu/books/exc...rthquakes.html

There’s also a FB group called Dark Arkansas that has some interesting stuff. can’tvouch for their veracity though.

BKB