 What is most significant about the earthquake that happens?
It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the general public. It was still a matter of academic interest when in the late '40s geologists speculated on the relationship between the Kiowa Fault and the Conchas Fault farther south, in New Mexico, and which followed the Pecos as far south as Texas. Nor was there much in the papers a few years later when it was suggested that the Niobrara Fault (just inside and roughly parallel to the eastern border of Wyoming) was a northerly extension of the Kiowa. Not even in the Rockies could anyone remember a series of rock slides as bad as this. Newspapers in the mountain states gave it a few inches on the front page; anything is news in late August. Only Joseph Schwartzberg, head geographer of the Department of the Interior, wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling of the Kiowa Fault. The idea was not nearly so exciting as a volcano, even a lava-less one, and you couldn't draw a very dramatic picture of it. To excuse the other geologists, it must be said that the Kiowa Fault had never acted up before. As the tremors grew bigger, along with the affected area, as several towns including Edison were shaken to pieces by incredible earthquakes, whole bus- and plane-loads of geologists set out for Colorado, without even waiting for their university and government department to approve budgets. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Land west of the Fault was holding firm, though Denver had recorded several small tremors; everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradans scurrying for safety. As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome life. Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the Fault, and a general subsidence of the land was noticeable well into Kansas and Nebraska. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the scenes ; it is impossible to speak of anything this size in the singular) there was a horrifying confusion.
 It became a national tragedy, affecting most of the country.
 It proved that the dust volcano was alive.  It proved Schwartzberg's theory?  It became a national tragedy, affecting most of the country.  It happened quickly and suddenly.