Trail Leads Tourists to Epicenter of Earthquake

The 6-mile round-trip trail through Aptos Canyon has become a tourist attraction, drawing hundreds of hikers eager to stand at ground zero of the deadly and devastating Oct. 17 earthquake.

“It’s awfully crowded. . . . It’s swamped,” said senior park aide Barbara Louck on Sunday, adding that the crunch of curious sightseers was creating problems for parking and access to the trail.

“It’s an exciting place to be,” said Bud Getty, superintendent of Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. “This was the major quake of people’s lifetimes, and it really captures your imagination to walk out to the epicenter. You can really see the power of the Earth.”

A sign posted by Ranger Jerry Waggoner marks the spot about 50 miles south of San Francisco that was calculated by latitude and longitude. The site has 4-foot-diameter redwood trees snapped off at the ground, and a 150-foot-wide landslide nearby. Just beyond the epicenter, the trail is closed because of danger from new landslides.

“That’s enough to convince me,” said Pat Wagner, 62, of Burlington, Iowa. “I’ve never been in an earthquake--and I never want to be.”

“Can you imagine what it took to rip these trees out?” asked Julie Dawson of Milpitas during a hike to the epicenter last Tuesday. “And can you imagine the sound it made? Snap, crackle and pop!”

Dawson said she understands why the previously obscure park site has become so popular since the 7.1-magnitude quake that killed 67 people and resulted in $10 billion in damage.

“I stayed away from San Francisco because I didn’t want to be a rubble necker. I wouldn’t want that in my neighborhood,” she said. “But there’s no one to bother out here.”

The walk to the site takes about an hour. Most of the trail is in a deep forest where sunlight rarely penetrates.

In addition to Nisene Park, other San Francisco Bay Area locations are experiencing renewed interest from temblor tourists.

At Point Reyes National Seashore, the 0.6-mile Earthquake Trail leads to the epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco quake, and visitors can see a fence displaced by fault movement of 16 to 20 feet.

And in Hollister, meeting place of the San Andreas, Calaveras and Hayward faults, a self-guided earthquake walk wanders past curbs offset by fault creep and buildings damaged in the October earthquake.