Denali Fault

The Denali Fault is a major intracontinental, right-lateral strike-slip fault running more than 1,250 miles through western North America, arcing from northwestern British Columbia across the Alaska Range and through southwestern Yukon into central Alaska. Since the Cretaceous the fault has accumulated roughly 300 to 400 kilometers of lateral displacement, about a quarter of it since the Miocene, with present-day movement of around 13 millimeters a year. Tree-ring evidence points to a magnitude 7.2-7.4 earthquake on the fault in 1912, and on November 3, 2002, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake ruptured roughly 336 kilometers of the fault at a rupture speed exceeding 11,265 kilometers an hour before branching onto the Totschunda Fault; the shaking was strong enough to slosh water in Seattle's Lake Union and in bodies of water as far away as Texas and Louisiana. This entity documents the Denali Fault specifically as a geological formation, the tectonic fault system itself, distinct from the Denali mountain massif it is named for and runs near.