Lasting nearly three minutes with a magnitude of 9.2, the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 is the world’s second largest earthquake in recorded history. And Jesus Christ wasn’t the only person to die on this day, across Alaska 143 people lost their lives. Over 200 miles of railroad tracks were warped and twisted. The Big One is memorialized in Anchorage’s Earthquake Park with a staggered concrete monument and a coastal trail full of informative reader boards about the destruction and the natural forces that caused it. Looking over the Cook Inlet, the park was once an affluent residential area until the entire neighborhood slid into 30 foot crevasses and the ocean below. Maybe the quake wasn’t a message from God, but it certainly was a Bad Friday.
Anchorage’s Earthquake Park, Alaska
