The 1,700-Foot Wave of Lituya Bay

On the night of July 9th, 1958, a powerful earthquake struck a remote

stretch of Alaska near Lituya Bay, a narrow inlet surrounded by steep mountain walls and dense

forest. The quake itself was massive, but what followed was something no

one alive had ever seen before. The shaking triggered a colossal landslide, sending millions

of tons of rock and ice crashing into the bay all at once. The impact displaced

an unimaginable volume of water, forcing it upward instead of outward, creating a wave

that climbed the mountainside rather than racing across the open sea. That wave reached

a height of over 1,700 feet, stripping trees from the slopes as if they were