Summer got off to a literally shaky start at 8:23a on June 1, 1927, when New Jersey’s strongest-ever earthquake struck the northern Jersey Shore.
Attributed to a renewed slipping of an old fracture known as Logans Fault, the quake was felt as far away as Jersey City, New Brunswick and Toms River. But the real action was right here in Monmouth County.

Three shocks over the course of 12 minutes made medicine bottles dance upon the shelves of an Ocean Grove pharmacy, according to the next day’s New York Times; heavy rolls of newsprint in the plant of the Asbury Park Press were moved. Chimneys fell, and plaster came crashing down from the ceiling of an operating room of Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch. Red Bank, N.J., felt the shocks so distinctly that they were believed to have been caused by a heavy explosion, the Times reported. Panes of glass in greenhouses in Navesink Village were shattered by the shocks.
No one was killed or injured.
Why the history lesson? Because today, on the 79th anniversary of that Jazz Age temblor, redbankgreen debuts, and the Quake of ’27 seems an apt metaphor for what this site is about. We, too, hope to shake the ground, bust some plaster, maybe rattle the local media a bit – all without injuring or killing anyone.
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June 1, 2006 - 12:07 am
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