By Carter Williams

SALT LAKE CITY — 1934 was an interesting year in Utah to say the least.

It remains the state's hottest year on record and its third-driest, as drought conditions crept into a state already struggling through the depths of the Great Depression. It's also when one of the largest earthquakes in state history rattled northern Utah and the Wasatch Front.

That earthquake, centered north of the Great Salt Lake, sent tremors as far south as Richfield, as well as into parts of Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming exactly 90 years ago Tuesday. Two people died and thousands of buildings were damaged, per state and federal reports. It was later determined to be a 6.6-magnitude earthquake.

As the Utah State Historical Society wrote in 1995, reviewing the earthquake's history, it also caused "panic and concern for many in northern Utah."

Morning wake-up call

Much like Utahns may remember from the 5.7 magnitude earthquake that shook the Wasatch Front nearly four years ago, the 1934 earthquake struck relatively early in the day.

It was centered within the Hansel Valley near the small — and now abandoned — town of Kelton, Box Elder County, shortly after 8 a.m. on March 12, 1934. It produced many aftershocks over the next few months, including magnitude 5.6 earthquakes in April and May that year.

"Dishes fell, plaster was cracked and furniture shifted about in rooms," the Ogden Standard-Examiner reported that day. "One woman said she was awakened when her bed rolled on its casters and bumped a rocking chair."

The outlet reported other people's reactions to the incident. One woman said she was "startled" when her typewriter slid into her lap and the doors of the file cabinets around her in the building she was working in "shook open."

Two people died in fluke incidents. The Salt Lake Telegram reported at the time that Ida Venable Atkinson, a 21-year-old Ogden woman, died from a heart attack triggered when the earthquake started shaking. State historians note that she had been bedridden by illness for nearly two weeks before the earthquake and was "affected perhaps by the shock" of the violent earthquake.

https://www.ksl.com/article/50947767/how-a-66-magnitude-quake-90-years-ago-transformed-utahs-earthquake-science