YOLO COUNTY, CA - In Winters, most reminders of the chaotic day are gone. But if you look carefully around Main Street, you can get a sense of how bad it must have been on April 19, 1892.

"Completely devastated," said Winters historian Charlie Wallace. "Most of the buildings (on Main Street) were completely devastated."

Wallace says almost everything in Winters had to be rebuilt after that fateful day when a major earthquake struck. The front of a typical Winters building shows two dates: 1889 for its original completion; and 1892, when it was rebuilt after one of the worst earthquakes in Central Valley history.

The epicenter was believed to be a few miles south of Winters.

"They didn't have (earthquake) measuring facilities in 1892, but they estimated a (magnitude) 6 or 7 somewhere around there," said Vacaville historian Jerry Bowan.

Winters wasn't the only town crippled by the quake. Bowan said his town of Vacaville had it bad back then as well.

"All the brick facades of the front buildings (on Main Street) all fell down in front of the street," said Bowan.

Historians believe the chance of seeing another quake in the Solano-Yolo area in our lifetime is significant. Many seismologists point to a major faultline near Vacaville and Winters as a serious potential trouble spot.

"The Hayward fault, they're very worried about that now," said Bowan. "It hasn't let loose in quite a while."

While there's no way of knowing when another disastrous quake may happen, Wallace and Bowan believe it may not be too far off.

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we don't have something headed our way," Bowan said.