Damage
Most of the buildings at Fort Tejon were badly damaged and several people were injured there. More buildings were destroyed along a twenty-mile stretch between Fort Tejon and southeast to Elizabeth Lake, a sag pond that was formed directly on the San Andreas fault. Some buildings in Los Angeles were cracked, but no major damage was reported. In Ventura the roof of Mission San Buenaventura collapsed and the bell tower was damaged.
Bodies of water experienced disturbances, particularly in southern California, where rivers spilled over their banks. Farther north in Santa Clara County the flow of well water was affected. Ground cracks from liquefaction of swampy ground were observed in Los Angeles and near Oxnard, and ground fissures were reported near the Los Angeles, Santa Ana, and Santa Clara Rivers.
California was thinly populated, with a population of 380,000 recorded during the 1860 census, and this likely helped limit the fatalities from the earthquake to just two, with one indirectly related. A woman was killed by a collapsing adobe house very close to the fault in Gorman at Reed's Ranch in the Tejon Pass, and an elderly man collapsed and died in a plaza in the Los Angeles area.
Read more about this topic: 1857 Fort Tejon Earthquake
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