Tree tops catch the final rays of the setting sun as the evening freight barrels north, bending west, across the Palmer Hay Flats, about to rumble and whistle it’s way through Wasilla and then to roll on all the way north to Fairbanks. “Palmer Hay Flats?” some of you might challenge. “Where’s the hay, then?” In 1964, there were some hayfields down there but mostly it was a relatively dry grassland. Then, on Good Friday, March 27, the Great Alaskan Earthquake, at 9.2 the most violent ever recorded in North America, rocked, rolled, heaved and dropped this land up and down for four minutes and 38 seconds. When the shaking stopped, the Palmer Hay Flats had lost two feet and more of elevation. Both fresh and tidewater seeped in to change it into a big, boggy, marsh. The Flats are an Alaska State Game and mosquito Refuge now. August 2020 Photograph courtesy of Bill Hess