NEW MADRID IS TOWN RICH IN HISTORY

New Madrid is a town rich with history.

It was founded by Princeton-educated George Morgan in 1789 - one of the first American settlements West of the Mississippi - as a fur trading post between the Spanish and the Mississippian Native Americans.

The town was named after Madrid, Spain by her first inhabitants, when the majority of the land west of the Mississippi belonged to Spain.

Floods and other temper tantrums thrown by the Mississippi River washed away the first town site, but the town not only survived, but it thrived.

In 1803, the United States became land lords of New Madrid and the rest of the land west of the Mississippi with the finalizing of the Louisiana Purchase with war torn Spain, who was in desperate need of the money.

In 1811 and 1812, Mother Nature showed the citizens of the United States that just because they owned the land, didn't necessarily mean they controlled it.

The first of three major earthquakes to hit the New Madrid fault zone on Dec. 16, 1811, was estimated to measure 8.6 on the Richter scale (which wasn't invented until the 1930s).

The quake caused widespread devastation in Southeast Missouri, Northeast Arkansas, Northwestern Tennessee and Southwestern Kentucky. It was felt as far north as Canada and rattled chimneys in Boston and Washington D.C.

The earth churned, turned and experienced violent upheavals of sand and water from beneath the earth's crust. Light colored patches, highly visible even today, spot the land like scars of wounds incurred during battle.

Two major earthquakes followed on Jan. 23 and Feb. 7, 1812. Those quakes are estimated at 8.4 and 8.7 on the Richter scale.

During the five-month period, the area experienced more than 2,000 shocks. Some written reports said that the earth would shake for days at a time without ever stopping.

People who lived through the earth's upheaval told of geology gone berserk. The ground moved in oceanic waves and turned to slush. For a while, the Mississippi River ran backwards. Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee was created, and the town of New Madrid sank 15 feet.

After it quieted, man began his upheaval in the area during the Civil War. New Madrid served as a key fort on the Mississippi River route, initially occupied by the Confederate Army, later seized by Union Troops.

New Madrid's importance as a port city became evident after the end of the war. The town boomed in population, industry and agriculture.

New Madrid's fame and fortune was short lived, however, with the apparent strength and pull of St. Louis' docks and Cairo's key position at the junctions of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

The town continued to exist for decades as a small farming community, its doors always open to outsiders, but becoming an entity within.

New Madrid became a small spot on the map, a community within itself, until Iben Browning brought them back into the world's eye.

But as quickly as it had risen to fame, it once again fell back into the shadows.

Some scientists predict there is a 50 percent chance that an earthquake registering above 7.0 on the Richter scale will hit the New Madrid fault zone within the next eight years. There's a 90 percent chance it will happen by the year 2050.

The people of New Madrid are happy to live in limbo with their fault.