The historic Higgerson schoolhouse in New Madrid (pronounced New MADD-rid) a somewhat obscure town in far-southeast Missouri. Instead it is famous: it was the epicenter of three powerful earthquakes in 1911 and 1912. At the time, the area was remote; there were few buildings to level or lives to snuff out. The area of shakes was three times larger than that of the 1964 Alaska earthquake and 10 times larger than that of the infamous 1906 San Francisco quake. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2020.