Historical Seismicity in the San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area has experienced a number of large magnitude earthquakes over the last 150 years. This table and map of historical seismicity is taken from the catalog compiled by Dr. William Ellsworth in the USGS Professional Paper 1515 - "The San Andreas Fault System, California".

Significant Bay Area Earthquakes: 1769 - 1997

M > 6.5
Year
 Mo
 Dy
 Ho
 Mn
 Latitude
 Longitude
 Magnitude
 Fault
1836*
 6
 10
 15
 30
 37.80
 -122.20
 6.75
 Hayward
1838
 6
 ?
 ?
 ?
 37.60
 -122.40
 7.00 San Andreas
1865
 10
 8
 20
 46
 37.00
 -122.00
 6.50 San Andreas
1868
10
 21
 15
 53
 37.70
 -122.10
 7.00 Hayward
1892
 4
 19
 10
 50
 38.40
 -122.00
 6.50
1898
 3
 31
 7
 43
 38.20
 -122.40
 6.50
1906
4
 18
 13
 12
 37.70
 -122.50
 8.25 San Andreas
1911
 7
 1
 22
 0
 37.25
 -121.75
 6.50 Calaveras
1989 10
 18
 0
 4
 37.04
 -121.88
 7.10 San Andreas

*Note: The location of the 1836 event has recently been called into question. Recent work [Toppozada & Borchardt, Re-evaluation of the 1836 "Hayward" and 1838 San Andreas Fault Earthquakes, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of American, 1998] indicates that this earthquake did not occur on the Hayward fault and that the event was located near Monterey.

Return to the Hayward Fault Page
Return to the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory

The Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, 202 McCone Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94720
Questions and comments to www@seismo.berkeley.edu
© 2000, The Regents of the University of California.