A filmmaker seeks to honor Earthquake Lake history 65 years later.

BY BELLA BUTLER

It’s late for wildfire in southwest Montana, but on this unseasonably warm October day a veil of smoke drapes the broken hillside rising from the banks of Earthquake Lake. The smoke settles into the phantom space on the slope where earth used to be before a massive earthquake in 1959 triggered a landslide, damming the Madison River below and causing a night of terror for dozens of unassuming people camping in the canyon. The carbon-diffused light casts eerie shadows down the rubble that eventually spill into the dark water. From across the canyon, Big Sky, Montana-based filmmaker Chris Kamman gazes solemnly at the collision of modern disaster and past calamity, respecting the place as he always does with reverence for its beauty and for the stories it holds, some of which are buried with bodies beneath a semi-truck sized boulder next to where he stands.

“Essentially these boulders are their headstones,” he says, seemingly haunted by his own words.

Memorial Boulder sits on the hill above the Earthquake Lake Visitor Center as a tribute to the 28 people killed by the earthquake, some of whom are buried beneath it. PHOTO BY MICAH ROBIN

Cars with out-of-state plates whiz by on U.S. Highway 287 below the Earthquake Lake Visitor Center where Kamman and I parked, and I wonder if the people in them have any idea what this place is. Do they know that the lake to their left was once a river before 80 million tons of rock came barreling down the mountain at 100 miles per hour in less than a minute? Do they know that pieces of guest cabins floated on the surface of the floodwater while camper trailers drowned underneath? Do they know 28 people died here in what was, at the time, the second largest earthquake to occur in the Lower 48 in the 20th century, and that some of them are still here? Perhaps not—65 years is enough time to wash some stories away. It’s enough time to forget. But Kamman’s determined to remember. And he’s spent years making a documentary so that others can remember, too.

Kamman, 39, wasn’t there for the earthquake—he wasn’t even alive. But he remembers the first time he ever saw the lake. He was 10 years old and traveling through the area with his family, and a bald eagle was perched on top of one of the many lifeless skeleton-like trees that jut out of the water.

“I just remember thinking [this place] had special power to it,” he said. As an adult, he moved to Big Sky and started making films under a brand he founded, Skylab Media House. Much of his work was anchored on the slopes of Big Sky Resort, but as a storyteller he felt compelled by the beautiful and haunting lake just 65 miles south. He decided to take on a documentary about the earthquake around the 60th anniversary in 2019 as a passion project. He loaded camera gear in his 1993 Ford F150 truck and with camera assistant Micah Robin in tow, traveled to the visitor center for the anniversary event. With many survivors present, Kamman recorded their stories outside in the wind, an imperfect setup that yielded tragic and resilient accounts of the fateful night of Aug. 17, 1959. One of those stories was Anita Painter Thon’s.

This photo shows the road that ran east to west along the north shore of Hebgen Lake. The road was significantly damaged by the earthquake and the seiches that followed the earthquake. The north end of Hebgen Lake dropped relative to the south end, which caused the lake to tilt. This tilting caused the water in the lake to rock back and forth creating waves known as “seiches.” These seiches, combined with the earthquake, caused smaller landslides which resulted in sections of the road falling into Hebgen Lake. NPS PHOTO
The after-effects of blasting at the Golden Gate Canyon area of Yellowstone National Park. Blasting operations were used to break up large rocks and boulders into smaller, more manageable rocks that could be moved more easily. The road was completely blocked by rockfall that occurred during the earthquake and aftershocks. NPS PHOTO

Now 77, Painter Thon is a great- grandmother, but she’ll also always be the 12-year-old girl who was shaken awake by an unfathomable disaster. That August in 1959, Painter Thon’s parents had taken her and her two sisters on a road trip from their home in Ogden, Utah, to Yellowstone National Park. With their brand-new trailer in tow, the family toured the park, feeding cookies to bears out the window of the car (remember, it’s 1959). Painter Thon remembers the wild thermal landscape made her mother nervous.

“She was very anxious, and she told us that with all the hot pots and geysers and everything like that, it’s funny that they don’t have more earthquakes,” Painter Thon said. “She told my dad and us that she wanted to get out of there before the whole place blew up.”

Her father had heard about a place near West Yellowstone on the Madison River that offered excellent fishing, so after their Yellowstone visit, Painter Thon’s family found a spot right by the river at Rock Creek Campground. Painter Thon remembers the details of this evening with color. She describes butterflies and dragonflies buzzing through the air, and moonlight shining across the camp as they ate a steak and potato dinner. One might wonder if she would recall such vivid details were it not the last night her family would ever be all together.

Later, in the bed she shared with her twin sister Anne, Painter Thon was shaken awake by the swaying trailer, and a deafening roar thundered around them. She wondered if it might be a train, and tried to recall if there had been a set of tracks on the way in the canyon. Dishes flew out of the cupboards as the trailer rocked violently in the darkness. People screamed in the distance. When the movement stopped, Painter Thon and Anne looked outside to find they were in the Madison River. They stepped out of the trailer and water rushed up to the waists of their matching white flannel pajamas.

Yellowstone National Park organized an inspection of the park following the earthquake to assess damage. This photo shows the inspection group stopped at Golden Gate Canyon. They are standing on boulders that fell from the mountainside and blocked the road. This photo was taken before the blasting efforts mentioned above. NPS PHOTO
A Cadillac is overturned on a road near Hebgen Lake in August 1959. Roads near the earthquake’s epicenter suffered significant damage during the earthquake and aftershocks which made rescue efforts difficult. A bulldozer was used to carve a dirt path above the north shore of Hebgen Lake the day following the earthquake to allow vehicle access into the canyon where survivors were trapped. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

“That vision has stayed in my mind of looking back at that trailer in the dark with the full moon shining down, and it was just demolished,” Painter Thon said.

Painter Thon and Anne eventually found their other sister, Carol, and later their mother and father, who were both critically injured. Tootie Green, a young registered nurse who was also staying at Rock Creek that night, treated many injured people, including Painter Thon’s parents, but Green’s bed-sheet tourniquet wasn’t enough to save Painter Thon’s mother. After a helicopter rescue successfully transported her to the hospital in nearby Bozeman, Painter Thon’s mother succumbed to her injuries. Painter Thon’s father survived.

When Painter Thon tells me this story 65 years later, her voice trembles as sobs catch in her throat. It’s painful still, but like Kamman, Painter Thon believes in the power of breathing life into this tragic tale of loss. Since the 50th anniversary, which was the first time she returned to the site, Painter Thon has come back on Aug. 17 every year. She and her husband explore the area, investigating where her family’s camp may have been, and she thinks about the 19 people who were buried alive, including children as young as 18 months old. Painter Thon has written three books related to the quake, including a memoir, Shaken in the Night; The Twenty Eight, an attempt to memorialize each of the lives lost; and Princess: A Dog’s Tale, an account of how her dog, Princess, made it back to her family after the earthquake. Much of Painter Thon’s life has been remembering the story of Aug. 17, 1959, and sharing it with others. Yet she has a hard time articulating why it feels important to remember. It’s a purpose so intuitive it’s impossible to put words to. This story seems to tug at people this way, begging to be fossilized in the same way the landscape—and some of the victims— will forever bear its scars.

This photo shows the Blarneystone Ranch which was owned by Emmett J. Culligan (founder of the famous water softener company). The building was directly on top of the Red Canyon fault. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
This photo shows the West Yellowstone Airport which, at the time, was a three- sided hangar. Victims suffering the most severe injuries were transported from the Madison River Canyon to the West Yellowstone Airport via an Air Force helicopter the day following the earthquake. This photo shows a victim being transported on a stretcher as well as haybales inside the airport which were used as makeshift beds. After arriving at the West Yellowstone Airport, victims waited to be transferred to an airplane that then took them to the Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman. NPS PHOTO

Thirty-three-year-old Ellen Butler, another source featured in Kamman’s documentary and the manager of the Earthquake Lake Visitor Center, has played her own part in preserving the story. Like Kamman, Butler has no direct tie to the event itself, but she’s stirred by that same mesmerizing force that inspires her to invite others into its history. From her base at the visitor center, which offers a picture of the geology, human stories and present ecology of the quake site, Butler guides trips throughout the landscape, educating visitors through immersion in the petrified tragedy and wonder of the area. She also curated historical images for the 2022 photo book, Earthquake Lake, an installment of the Images of America series.

“It’s getting even more clear now why it’s important to remember, because we’re at 65 years and there are so few people who do remember it,” Butler says, adding an intention to maintain the memories after the remaining survivors have passed.

This is certainly true for Kamman as well, and using video has allowed him to capture the visceral experiences that come through when people like Painter Thon tell their stories. He adds that this story is an especially visual one, with the marred landscape and paradoxically beautiful and haunting scenery coming through in a medium like film.

A Piasecki H-21 Workhorse rescue helicopter from the Hill Air Force Base in Utah hits the ground in Montana. This is the helicopter mentioned above that was used to transport victims from the canyon (at Refuge Point) to the West Yellowstone Airport. NPS PHOTO
Kamman restarts the engine on his boat on a Quake Lake exploration. PHOTO BY MICAH ROBIN

Kamman says he feels some pressure to get the documentary right, but he’s paid the story the most valuable form of respect: time. From multiple trials of rigging homemade underwater cameras to investigate the drowned remains beneath the lake, to lengthy interviews with survivors, to quiet solo time spent on the lake itself sputtering around in his tiny boat soaking up the essence of the place, Kamman is now a part of this story himself.

“It’s a reminder of how fragile things are and how out of control this world really is, and how we don’t have a say about most things that happen. Tragedies happen. Great things happen. Things can change in the snap of a finger,” Kamman said. “ … Especially things like where we are right now at the slide, you can come and touch what happened that night, and you can hear the voices of the people. I think it just reminds me… of how crazy stories are out there in our backyard.”

Kamman plans to screen his film in late 2025, but for now, many of those cars keep cruising by on U.S. 287, perhaps wondering about the eerie lake and broken mountain. Many of them are on their way to or from a Yellowstone vacation, Butler says, and they might stop at the visitor center looking for a bathroom. And hopefully they’ll learn something.

“We have to make sure people know what happened there and know that sometimes landscapes are more than that,” Butler says. “There are stories to be told.”

Bella Butler is the managing editor of Mountain Outlaw.