The Largest Earthquakes in Utah History

Largest Earthquakes in Utah

These are the 10 earthquakes of magnitude 5.5 or larger with epicenters inside Utah in the USGS catalog. Dates are Utah time. Magnitudes before the 1960s are estimates from damage and felt reports, so catalogs differ by a tenth or two.

The Utah Earthquake Program counts 17 earthquakes larger than magnitude 5.5 since pioneer settlement in 1847. Catalogs differ in where they draw the region and how they rate early earthquakes, so their counts vary.

Utah's Major Earthquakes, One by One

1901: Richfield and Marysvale (About M6.5 to 6.6)

At 9:39 p.m. on November 13, 1901, an earthquake near Richfield shook an area of about 50,000 square miles. Rock slides and rockfalls came down in the mountains, and fine white sand and water spouted from cracks in the ground, a sign of liquefaction. No deaths were reported and no fault break was found at the surface. The University of Utah's catalog rates it as large as, or slightly larger than, the 1934 Hansel Valley earthquake.

1902: Pine Valley (M6.3)

Just after noon on November 17, 1902, an earthquake struck near Pine Valley in Washington County. Most of the chimneys in town were reported damaged, and boulders weighing many tons crashed down the slopes. Residents felt one or two aftershocks a day for some time afterward.

1909: Hansel Valley (M5.6)

On the evening of October 5, 1909, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in Hansel Valley sent waves across the Great Salt Lake that washed over the Lucin Cutoff railroad line. No injuries were reported.

1934: Hansel Valley (M6.6)

At 8:05 a.m. on March 12, 1934, the largest earthquake in Utah's recorded history, tied with 1901, struck about 30 miles north of the Great Salt Lake. It was felt from Elko, Nevada, to Rawlins, Wyoming, and some of the worst damage was in Logan and nearby towns.

• The ground broke. Surveys mapped a zone of surface cracks about 5 to 8 miles long, with up to about 20 inches of drop. It is still Utah's only historical earthquake to break the ground surface along a fault.
• The landscape changed. Sand cones formed near the epicenter, artesian wells that had been dry for years began to flow, and waves on the Great Salt Lake washed over the pier at Saltair and the railroad trestle at Lucin.
• Two people died: a woman who suffered a heart attack when she learned the shaking was an earthquake, and a waterworks employee caught in a trench cave-in. The Utah Geological Survey lists them as the only two deaths from earthquake shaking in Utah since 1847.
• A second shock of magnitude 5.9 followed about three hours later, and the catalog lists two more magnitude 5.5 earthquakes in northern Utah that April and May.

The earthquake also pushed Utah to expand its network of seismographs.

1962: Cache Valley (M5.7 to 5.8)

At 6:35 a.m. on August 30, 1962, an earthquake felt in six states hit northern Utah. In Richmond, about 75% of homes were damaged, and the Benson Stake tabernacle was damaged so badly it was later torn down. Logan had cracked walls, collapsed rooms and broken windows, and a rockslide buried Highway 89 in Logan Canyon. No one died. Damage of about $1 million in 1962 dollars made it, as late as 1997, the costliest earthquake in Utah history.

1975: Pocatello Valley, Just Across the Border (About M6.0)

On the evening of March 27, 1975, an earthquake struck about 15 miles southwest of Malad City, Idaho, just north of the Utah line. Almost every home and building in Malad City was affected. There were no deaths and one minor injury.

1988: San Rafael Swell (M5.3)

On August 14, 1988, an earthquake about 10 miles east-southeast of Castle Dale, in Emery County, brought boulders down onto some roads. No injuries or serious damage were reported.

1992: St. George (M5.8 to 5.9)

At 4:26 a.m. on September 2, 1992, an earthquake near Washington shook southwestern Utah. Its biggest blow landed 28 miles away: it set off a large landslide in Springdale, at the entrance to Zion National Park, that destroyed three homes. Damage came to about $1 million in 1992 dollars, mostly from the landslide. No deaths or serious injuries were reported.

2020: Magna (M5.7)

At 7:09 a.m. on March 18, 2020, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck near Magna in the Salt Lake Valley, followed by thousands of aftershocks. No major injuries were reported, but buildings were damaged across the valley. Read the full story of the 2020 Magna earthquake.

How Often Does Utah Have a Big Earthquake?

Earthquakes of magnitude 5.5 or larger strike somewhere in the Utah region about once every 10 years on average, and about once every 20 years on the Wasatch Front, according to the Utah Earthquake Program. Averages aren't schedules, though. After the 1992 St. George earthquake, the USGS catalog shows no earthquake of magnitude 5 or larger inside Utah for more than 27 years, until Magna in 2020.

Small earthquakes are constant. The University of Utah Seismograph Stations locates about 1,500 earthquakes a year in the Utah region, including aftershocks, and about 13 of them reach magnitude 3 or more. Follow them on the live Utah earthquake map.

Since Magna, the largest earthquake inside Utah in the USGS catalog was a magnitude 4.7 at 7:49 a.m. on January 22, 2026, in northeastern Utah about 40 km (25 miles) south of Evanston, Wyoming. More than 4,000 people reported feeling it.

Before the Record: The Wasatch Fault's Prehistoric Earthquakes

Utah's written record covers only about 175 years, a blink for its faults. Trenches dug across the Wasatch Fault show that its central segments, from Brigham City to Nephi, have produced at least 22 surface-faulting earthquakes in about the last 6,000 years, each around magnitude 7, according to the USGS. That is far larger than anything in the written record.

On the Nephi segment, a Utah Geological Survey trench found ground offset by about 10 feet in an earthquake of about magnitude 7 roughly 500 years ago. The Salt Lake City segment last ruptured 1,200 to 1,600 years ago. A 2016 forecast gives the Wasatch Front a 43% chance of at least one magnitude 6.75 or larger earthquake in the next 50 years. More in our Wasatch Fault guide and our guide to Utah fault lines.

How Utah's Earthquake Record Was Built

• 1849 to 1850: Howard Stansbury's survey of the Great Salt Lake made the first scientific report of an earthquake in Utah.
• 1850: the University of Utah's historical catalog begins, the year Utah's first newspaper was published. Early earthquakes are known from newspaper accounts.
• 1853: the earliest Utah earthquake in the USGS catalog, a magnitude 4 near Nephi.
• 1907: James Talmage installed the first seismographs at the University of Utah.
• 1962: the University of Utah's instrumental catalog begins in July, the start of the modern record.

Today, the University of Utah Seismograph Stations locates most Utah earthquakes within minutes.