History of a Tsunami 



By Elliott B. Roberts 



Captain, Coast and Geodetic Survey [Retired) 



[With 1 plate] 



On July 9, 1958, the rock layers 9 miles deep under the Fairweather 

 Range of southeast Alaska grew tired of the unrelenting strains asso- 

 ciated with a geological uplift going on in the region. At 15 minutes 

 and 52 seconds after 10 in the evening, Pacific standard time, while it 

 was still light in that high latitude, they broke apart in a shearing 

 motion that started a chain of very weird events. 



For a few moments the scattered people in nearby parts of Alaska 

 were unaware of that subterranean cleavage. All seemed peaceful 

 and quiet — even the normally restless waters of the Pacific were as 

 nearly calm as they ever are. At Yakutat, 115 miles to the northwest, 

 postmaster John Williams and CAA employee Robert Tibbies, with 

 their wives and a widowed cannery owner, Jeanice Welsh Walton, 

 were preparing to leave Khantaak Island, where they had been pick- 

 ing strawberries on Point Turner near the harbor navigation light. 

 The Williams couple were some distance off the point in a launch, 

 while the others were embarking in another boat. Quiet, late-evening 

 sounds drifted from Yakutat and the few cabins around Dry Bay to 

 the southward. Still farther south, mountain-girt Lituya Bay lay 

 near the foot of 15,320-foot Mount Fairweather itself. Inside La 

 Chaussee Spit at the bay entrance were two boats, the Badger, aboard 

 which Bill and Vivian Swanson, of Auburn, Wash., lay asleep, and 

 the /Sunmore, occupied by Orville Wagner, of Idaho Inlet, and his 

 young wife IMickey. Farther in, near Lituya's south shore, were How- 

 ard Ulrich and his 7-year-old son Junior, in the 38-foot Edrie. Just 

 in from a day of fishing, they all sought a night's shelter before un- 

 dertaking another day of labor in the Alaskan Gulf. Geologist 

 Virgil Mann, of the University of North Carolina, and a party of 16 

 men were camped on the shore of Lake Crillon, among the hills 8 miles 

 southeast of Lituya, preparing to move next morning to an abandoned 

 cabin on Cenotaph Island almost in the exact middle of the bay. Ten 

 Canadian mountaineers just down from history's second ascent of 



570121—61 25 327 



