On the evening of Aug. 17, 1959, JoAnn Ruf was putting together a puzzle in her father's cabin near Hebgen Lake in Montana when an earthquake registering 7.5 on the Richter scale struck at 11:37 p.m.

"It sounded like a bomb," Ruf said. "It was scary."

Ruf recently reminisced about that terrifying evening, when she was a young mother of two with a third child on the way. The Latter-day Saint woman, now in her 70s, vividly remembers the details of the disaster and how she felt "the Lord's protection" over the cabin.

When the quake hit just outside of Yellowstone National Park, Ruf knew what it was. She had lived in the San Francisco bay area for the first few years of her marriage and experienced a tremor or two.

"It's an earthquake," she said as the shaking began.

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