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Texas Creek trembles

Brief by Central Staff

Geology – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Subscriber (and occasional contributor) Charlie Green, who lives near Texas Creek, seems to be on his way to becoming our earthquake correspondent.

Another small tremor shook his area at 12:37 p.m. on Sept. 12. Its magnitude was estimated at 2.5 on the Richter Scale by the U.S. Geological Survey; in lay terms, it was just on the edge of perceptibility if you happened to be sitting on top of it.

This follows two other small quakes in the same area in January and July, and appears to be on a diagonal fault line that branches from the Texas Creek Fault and extends southeast to the Wet Mountains.

Charlie observes that “I still think it odd that the more historically seismically active area round here (the Rio Grande Rift between Salida and Leadville, 30 miles west of us) has had no quakes in years and we’ve had three in 8 months. What the significance of this is, who knows?”

Well, we’ll be the first to admit we don’t know the significance of it, but fortunately, so far these quakes have been too small to be of much significance.