M 7.9 - Kodiak Island region, Alaska

The wharf at Woody Island [about 5 km from Kodiak] was partly destroyed, and chimneys, windows, and crockery were destroyed at Kodiak. About 50 slight aftershocks continued through the next day. Felt along all of southern Alaska and probably to the west of Kodiak. (Ref. 420, 424, 477.)

Maximum observed Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) VIII

Abridged from Seismicity of the United States, 1568-1989 (Revised), by Carl W. Stover and Jerry L. Coffman, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1527, United States Government Printing Office, Washington: 1993.

At Seldovia [on the Kenai Peninsula about 185 km north of Kodiak], the postmaster was awakened by the first of two shocks sometime between 3 and 4 AM, causing him to get up and go outside. At Valdez [about 350 km northeast of Seldovia], the quake was felt at about 3 AM. Shocks were also felt at Controller Bay [about 160 km southeast of Valdez or about 260 km west of Yakutat], and at a USGS field camp near the Copper River delta. At Yakutat [more than 750 km east-northeast of Kodiak], "two shakes" were felt at 3 AM local time [equivalent to about 12:30 UTC].

Abridged from The Earthquakes at Yakutat Bay, Alaska, in September, 1899, by Ralph S. Tarr and Lawrence Martin, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 69, United States Government Printing Office, Washington: 1912. [Stover and Coffman Ref. 420.]

The volunteer Weather Bureau observer at Tyonek [about 370 km north of Kodiak] reported that the quake was felt as “violent earthquakes” at 2:30 AM. It was also felt as a "slight shock" at Coal Harbor, Unga Island [about 570 km southwest of Kodiak].

Abridged from The 1900 Mw 7.6-8.0 Earthquake Offshore of Kodiak Island, Alaska, by Carl Tape, Lynn Sykes, and Anthony Lomax (2021), Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 111(2), 1080-1109.

The earthquake was felt strongly at Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. But, the authors then note that "Modified Mercalli Intensity of VI in Whitehorse comes from Stover and Coffman, 1983 but original source is not given. Such a high MM Intensity seems questionable given MM Intensities in coastal Alaska assigned by Brockman et al. 1983."

From Significant Canadian earthquakes 1600-2017, by Maurice Lamontagne, Stephen Halchuk, John F. Cassidy and Garry C. Rogers, Geological Survey of Canada Open File 8285, Ottawa, Canada: 2018.

Actually, the Whitehorse report is from Coffman, von Hake and Stover (1982), as well as a report that the MM Intensity was VI-VII at Skagway. Those reports are based on unpublished records by H.F. Reid, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

In their Supplementary Content, Tape, et al. (2021), explain in detail that the felt report from Skagway referred to an earthquake that occurred two months earlier, on August 09 (local time), that was reported in the Skagway newspaper Daily Morning Alaskan on the front page of the August 10 edition. That newspaper said nothing about any earthquake in October. Tape, et al., did not find any newspaper records from Whitehorse, so they could not confirm the source of the MMI VI report from that city.

However, we believe that it is likely that the Whitehorse felt report also belongs with the earthquake in August instead of this Kodiak quake in October.

This is one of the Largest Earthquakes in the United States (M>=7.0)
The USGS has designated this as an event for "This Date in U.S. Earthquake History" for Oct 09.