February 16, 1950
Park Region Echo
Alexandria, Minnesota

At 4:05 a.m. Wednesday, buildings in an area from Alexandria to Wadena shook under the impact of a mysterious force. Simultaneously, a muffled boom woke light sleepers of the community and startled the night workers on duty at that time.

No explanation for the "earthquake-like" disturbance had been found by the time this article was written late Wednesday evening.

Walter "Zimmy" Zimara was on duty at the Civil aeronautics station at the Alexandria airport when a loud, but muffled "whoosh" rocked the building. Zimara, started, glanced immediately at the wind gauge but noted that it held at a steady 10 miles an hour. Zimara then raced outdoors to check on a possible explosion. When he could see nothing unusual, he said he decided he might have imagined the disturbance.

A few minutes later, however, Zimara was summoned to the phone by the Alexandria telephone operator, Ruth Haas. Miss Haas asked him if he had noticed anything unusual then switched him over to Robert Schmalek who lives three miles out of town between Lake Carlos and Lake Darling. The disturbance had awakened him also.

Other calls began to come in, some to the telephone company and some to the police station. Though Patrolman Wallace Abercrombie did not report anything unusual, Miss Haas at the phone company said she definitely felt the building rock and heard the muffled noise. She described the tremor as being similar to that caused when a heavy truck passed by the building -- only more violent.

Miss Haas then called the Wadena telephone operator and was informed that a similar disturbance had occurred there. This was about 5 o'clock and the Wadena operator, according to Miss Haas, said a tremor had occurred there about 15 minutes before.

R. J. Huhn, chief at the Civil Aeronautics station here, was awakened by the tremor and reported that it felt and sounded exactly like an earthquake he had experienced at Long Beach, Calif. on March 10, 1933.

Mrs. Lloyd Moen, who lives with her husband in an apartment over the Park Region Echo, was awakened by the disturbance and immediately thought something had exploded. The same reaction was reported by Mrs. Tommy Noonan who also was startled by the noise and the shaking of the earth.

Russell Van Wie, on duty at Gamble-Robinson at the time, described the disturbance as being similar to the sensation one gets in a depot when a train roars by. A co-worker, sitting in a truck at the time, did not notice anything out of the ordinary, Van Wie said.

Adding to the general confusion was the fact that the street lights in the city were off at the time, leading some people to think that the disturbance sprang from the power plant. Plant employees reported, however, that the street lights were merely being switched from one circuit to another and were out from 3:50 to 6:20 a.m.

All local sources of information were checked by the Echo editor, and when no clue to the disturbance was found, a call was placed to the Associated Press bureau in Minneapolis. The Associated Press informed the Echo that no other reports had come in as yet and offered no explanation for the phenomenon.