Seventy-something-year-old Grace Miller, who called herself a tough old bird, lived in a small lakeside home up the hillside from here along the original shore of Hebgen Lake and ran the Hilgard Lodge, renting cabins and boats to vacationers. On the night of August 17, 1959, before the full effects of the Hebgen Lake Earthquake destroyed her home, she woke with a strange feeling that she needed to get out immediately. With her malemute dog, Sandy, she reached the door and found it jammed shut, then kicked it open with adrenaline-driven force and discovered a five-foot gap between the stoop and the shore. As she and Sandy leaped, the house dropped away behind them and sank into the lake. Homeless and on foot as the earth trembled around them, they headed cross-country toward higher ground, and Sandy stayed close, several times stopping her before she fell into crevices. They reached the Kirkwood Ranch, about a mile and a half away, in the early hours of the next morning. Later, boating past her submerged home, which had sunk to the roofline in Hebgen Lake, she responded with humor, joking that she hoped it stayed upright because her teeth were still on the kitchen counter next to the sink. Her house and other buildings at this site were destroyed by twenty-foot seiches, waves that rolled back and forth across the lake after the earthquake, and these powerful water surges, combined with destabilized ground, also caused a landslide along the shore that was 750 feet long, 200 feet wide, and dumped one-third million cubic yards of debris into the lake, taking a large chunk of Highway 287 with it.