New Madrid Fault

You can see evidence of the fault in road cuts along there of the highway. But there is not much from a museum standpoint. The rocks are twisted. If you think about it, the violence of those earthquakes are the result of the pressures upon an entire continent. Most of the "bad" earthquake areas are closer to the edges of the tectonic plates. New Madrid is in the center. So, it doesn't go off as often but the pressures upon it are stupendous and so, when it does go, stand by...or rather fall down along with everything else and continental rivers run backwards. If you want to see physical evidence of the power of earth forces, lake Missoula in western MT all the way over to the coast is of interest. Grand Coulee is the biggest example of that. Imagine one of the larger great lakes emptying in three days and there you go. It is pretty amazing and starts in Missoula MT. You can see old lake shores from the at least 39 times it filled up and then emptied. Awesome. A good place to start is the national Bison Range there close to Missoula. Unto itself it is very nice and you have to drive to the top of a small mountain and at the top where you can look down into the Flathead valley. There are areas of rolling hills hundreds of feet high and miles long that are ripples. Just like a small stream but X thousands. You have to change your entire perspective to imagine it. You can follow I-90 from Butte north and see the sharp turns in the valley where the force of the water ripped into the rocks and they still look like the did after the last flood. Hellsgate canyon into the Missoula valley is still ripped up and as you drive in, you can look up to a slough between mountains about a half mile up where once the water ran 200 feet deep during the biggest floods. And then you can follow the drainage up through Spokane and the scablands west to the coulees. There's some good online info about it. So, if you are into geologic history, that is probably the most amazing trip imho. And it only happened maybe 12,000 years ago.