Parkfield, CA

Movin' and Shakin' In Parkfield

Anyone with an affinity for large cities will find themselves on shaky ground in Parkfield, Calif., and not because this town straddling the San Andreas Fault bills itself as the “Earthquake Capital of the World.”

Magnitude-6 quakes have rocked the area every 22 years on average, which is why Parkfield boasts the largest array of earthquake monitoring gear—up to 200 devices—anywhere on the planet. But quakes are the only moving and shaking going on here. Parkfield (pop. 37) is a tidy collection of log and clapboard buildings—fire station, school, inn—surrounded by vineyards, hayfields, and isolated stands of oaks and pines in the Cholame Valley, about 200 miles south of San Francisco.

“The infrastructure is pristine,” says Jack Varian, 66, a rancher who established a conservation easement on his 17,000 acres north of town to shield the property from developers.

Yet even Varian admits it’s tough squeezing a profit from the rolling, hardscrabble hills in central California’s isolated coastal mountain range because of low beef and grain prices. A decade ago, with the idea of diversifying his and Parkfield’s interests by promoting more tourism, Varian built what is now the town center: the rustic pine log Parkfield Inn and Parkfield Café. A sign above the plank tables inside reads: “If you feel a shake or quake, get under your table and eat your steak.”

Varian sculpted some of the inn’s furnishings by welding together old farm implements—tractor seats, pipes, wagon wheels, water valves, and impossibly large wrenches, nuts, and bolts.

Parkfield is the sort of place where the only movement on a hot summer afternoon may be turkey vultures soaring overhead or where the sound of a pickup truck on the one paved road through town draws attention. Dust mixes with a sweet alfalfa fragrance on the valley floor, a patchwork of rich grain fields, vineyards, and pasture that stands out like an oasis against the thirsty hills all around.

Among local attractions are the annual rodeo and bluegrass festival and a memorial 17 miles south on Highway 46 where actor James Dean died in a car crash. The best local art, without question, is the splash of stars on cloudless nights.

Teenagers nearing adulthood may flee the town, but locals cite a kind of magnetism that draws natives back.

“There’s something about this little town that’s instilled in me,” says George Jewell, 60, a rail of a ranch and farm hand since 1954, who returned to Parkfield a couple of times after serving in the Army and attending college. “I can’t explain it—it’s just there. My heart is here.”

The prospect of quicksilver, coal, and oil once lured fortune hunters and homesteaders to the area in the late 1800s, transforming Parkfield into a robust town of 900—but when the promise faded, so did the town.

“Most of us are descendants of pioneer families. They had to be tough to survive,” says Gloria van Horn, 73. Her grandfather owned 70,000 acres around Parkfield in the last century. Today she farms and ranches about 1,000 acres with her husband, Martin, who has the dubious honor of being the 1966 quake’s only casualty: He broke two toes scrambling over bricks from a toppled chimney.

Earthquakes have occurred here, on average, about every 22 years since 1857—in 1881, 1901, 1922, 1934, and 1966. Rich Liechti, director of field operations for the U.S. Geological Survey in Parkfield, says the lack of tall buildings and freeway overpasses could make this one of the safest places to be during the next major shaker—which now is 13 years overdue.

“Lord willing, I’ll be here when that earthquake happens,” Donalee Thomason, 76, an author and Parkfield’s self-appointed historian, says brightly. “We’ll live through it.”

Paul Engstrom is a freelance writer from Sebastopol, Calif.

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