Christmas Day 1994 brought a surprise stretching from the Tri-Lakes area to the Denver metro area thanks to an earthquake.

“At 12:06 p.m., a 4.0 earthquake rocked the region, shaking houses and buildings with no major damage reported,” according to the National Weather Service in Pueblo.

The mild earthquake shook parts of Colorado hours after an earlier quake struck the high desert near Death Valley, Calif. No injuries or major damage was reported in either quake.

The Colorado quake centered in Castle Rock Denver said Stuart Koyanagi of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden.

It was the strongest quake to hit the metro area in more than a decade.

“We do get them once in a while. The Denver area has had earthquakes in the past. It’s not unprecedented, but fairly rare, at least at this magnitude,” Koyanagi told the Associated Press after the quake.

The quake was felt from Lakewood to Black Forest. One woman said her basement cracked in the tremor.

It shocked residents, many of whom weren’t sure what was happening.

“I thought something hit the roof, like a tree,” said Katy Stump of Parker. “I was the only one who felt it. I thought I was going crazy.”

A 3.5-magnitude quake shook the desert near Death Valley on the same day, the California Institute of Technology said. The quake was centered 12 miles north-northeast of Little Lake, about 140 miles north of Los Angeles and 45 miles west of Death Valley National Monument.

There are numerous small faults in Colorado and small tremors are not uncommon, the Geological Survey said. An earthquake expert at Colorado State University said the Front Range is overdue for a large earthquake.