TEHACHAPI, Calif. -- It was just before 5 a.m. when a loud noise woke residents up on July 21, 1952.

Following the roar, the shaking of the 7.5 magnitude quake kicked in.

Tehachapi resident Dick Johnson said, "Things started shaking. I thought it was an atomic bomb at first. That was the first thing that struck my mind.”

Pat Gracey, who was 23-years-old at the time, said it felt like her house was dancing.

“I thought someone was picking it up and dropping it. It was an old house, it was built in the 1880s, anyways it was doing a dance, and I started screaming,” Gracey said.

Another resident, Betty Freeman said she had to convince her husband that they weren't being bombed.

She said, “My husband thought he was back in World War II being bombed. That was his biggest thing, he said, ‘oh, they’re bombing us again, their bombing us.”

While most residents were terrified by the vigorous shaking, some, like Bob Burgeis, were not.

He said, “It was bad, it will scare you, but I went through the Navy and we went through some hells and storms that were a lot rougher than that.”

The main shock lasted just under a minute, claimed 13 lives, and devastated the town.

Joann Johnson, who owned the local newspaper with her husband, explained what it was like to see Downtown Tehachapi after the earthquake.

“For those of us that were in business, it was quite an experience to walk down and see your whole, everything, in a heap, there was nothing left,” said Johnson.

Betty Freeman agreed, calling it a mess.

“It was a mess, and trying to clean up, one just didn’t know where to start,” said Freeman.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena recorded 194 aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 and higher through September of 1952.

Fear of another big earthquake and even the aftershocks that followed, many people slept outside for weeks and even months.

Joann Johnson said, “We slept outside on our families front yard, for about a week. Then we went to our own houses and slept outside for six weeks because we were too terrified to go in because there were so many aftershocks.”

Gracey said she remembers everyone sleeping outside.

“Everyone slept outside because they didn’t want to sleep under a roof. That was normal,” she said.

And while the 1952 earthquake caused massive damage to the town, everyone we spoke to agreed that it made Tehachapi stronger.

“There was something very special about that time, even though it was a horrible occurrence, people rallied around with and to each other,” Johnson said.

While the people ABC23 spoke to said they would never forget that day, they also hope they never have to experience an earthquake like that again.