A whole lot of shakin’ was going on

Many of us in Southern California have, at some time or another,

experienced one of nature’s sudden undulations of the earth’s crust.

Surviving an earthquake is an experience no one would ever forget.

The temblor most people think about when speaking of past

earthquakes that damaged our city, is the March 1933 shaker that destroyed a good many of our brick buildings.

This week, we look at another earthquake that struck Huntington

Beach and how our people reacted to the tremor.

July 22, 1923 began as a normal Sunday. People went to church, had

their evening supper and went to bed.

When the clocks chimed 11:30 p.m., there were few people awake to

hear it. But one minute, 25 seconds later, nearly everyone in town

was awake as the earth shook beneath them.

Residents heard a loud noise not unlike that of distant thunder,

and many clocks stopped, showing the exact time of the quake.

A few of our residents were thrown from their beds, and some fell

out while trying to get out of their beds in a hurry.

Charles Patton had been staying upstairs that night at the

Huntington Inn on Pacific Coast Highway and had retired to bed just

10 minutes before. He was just about asleep, when he felt a slight

tremor.

In no time, the doors in his room began to rattle as if someone

were trying to get in. Patton’s bed began to rock, and the walls,

doors and windows in his room shook.

For Patton, the quake seemed to go on forever, even if it only

lasted a few seconds.

Meanwhile, over at the home of C.N. Whittam, the assistant manager

of the Security Trust & Savings Bank was alone in his bed, when it

began to shake violently. He heard what sounded to him like a distant

clap of thunder.

Whittam quickly got out of bed. After several seconds of tremors,

the shaking stopped, and there was an eerie quiet throughout the

town.

William Therium had just quit work in our oil fields and was

driving down Main Street to his tent camp on the beach, when his car

began to tremble and run roughly. It began to rock so much that

Therium pulled over and stopped. His car continued to rock like a

baby’s cradle, although he was stopped on a paved street.

Therium also heard the sound others described as thunder but to

him sounded like a distant cannon.

When he arrived in camp, Therium stood on the beach to see if a

tidal surge was coming, but none came.

A fellow oil worker in the same camp, William Turner, was sleeping

on a cot when the quake struck. The cot overturned, and he watched as

his tent shook violently.

A Mrs. Black, who lived in a house at Acacia and Seventh, felt her

bed shake and thought a robber had entered her room and was shaking

her bed. But as her bed continued to shake, she jumped out of it and

then screamed when she saw her whole house was shaking. She soon

realized she was living through an earthquake.

William Dunn was asleep upstairs in the Huntington Hotel when he

felt his bed fairly dance across the floor. At first, he thought the

Navy was firing its big guns offshore but soon realized he was in an

earthquake.

The people living in the tent city at Eleventh and Orange were

overturned in their sleeping cots, while others sleeping nearby felt

only a slight tremor.

Mrs. Bledsoe, who worked as a clerk at the post office, thought

her bed was going to turn upside down. She could hear her dishes

rattling in the China cabinet and on her shelves and felt her house

shake from top to bottom.

A water main on the beachfront ruptured, and the cascading water

flooded several concession stands.

The clocks stopped at Security Trust & Savings, Canady’s Jewelry

Store and McElfresh Department Store, each registering the same time

of 11:31 p.m. and 25 seconds, while other clocks in the area

continued to tick away.

Although many people were frightened by this quake, it would be

another 10 years before our residents would again experience a

significant earthquake. That one, in 1933, would damage much of the

downtown’s brick buildings and would keep most of our residents awake

for days.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.