On June 29, 1833, an earthquake shakes the Puget Sound region. William Tolmie (1812-1886), the young Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) doctor recently left temporarily in charge of Fort Nisqually, records the event in his journal. His journal entry is the first surviving eyewitness account of an earthquake in the region.
That afternoon, Tolmie and four others, including Francis Heron, the newly arrived head of Fort Nisqually, were out examining land near the recently established HBC fur-trading post. Tolmie and Heron were on horseback and three others were on foot.
Tolmie's account is as follows:
"Mr. Heron returned about 9 this morning to breakfast. Afterwards we mounted the north bank of Coe by the path & were occupied nearly all day in collecting specimens of the soil ... H[eron] & I on horseback. While thus engaged our three attendants McKie, Brown & Peter Tahi, the islander, felt the earth under them shake violently at least twice. Brown first exclaimed, & seemed much alarmed -- He & McKie were on their knees at the time & felt violently lifted up, the sensations of Peter I could not ascertain, Mr. H. & I did not perceive anything remarkable -- this happened at 20 minutes from 2 ... On returning to the house we learn't that the shock had been felt there, the boards in the floor of house rattling together. The Indians were much struck & said 'The Chief's (Heron's) medicine is strong, he has gone up the hill to shake the grounds.' In some quarter of the globe, perhaps the Almighty has wrought some dire devastations by earthquake, one of the most powerful & calamitous instruments of chastisement employed against Mankind. The steep & broken faces to Eastward of the islands in the sound render it probable, that they have been severed from the main shore by an earthquake" (Tolmie, 211-22).
A month later, Tolmie noted in his journal that the earthquake had not been not felt at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River.
