Bay Area Hike: See A 16-Foot Gap in the 1906 “Earthquake Trail” (Marin)

More than a century ago, one of the deadliest earthquakes of all time shook the Bay Area. Point Reyes sits right on the San Andreas Fault, which ruptured and slipped northwest as much as 20 feet during the earthquake. Today, the Olema Valley landscape has healed, and the fault line has been transformed into a bucolic park. But the scar of the 1906 natural disaster remains.

You can drive to the Point Reyes National Seashore to hike the Earthquake Trail, a short paved 0.6-mile hike just across from the Bear Valley Visitor Center to see a fence. Yep, a fence. But not just any old fence. This is a fence that, during the 1906 quake, lurched 16 feet apart in an instant as the Pacific Plate slid northwest with an earth-rattling rumble. The current structure is actually a reconstruction of the original fence, dating back to the park’s inception in the 1960s.