Hundreds of people reported feeling the quake, which occurred at 5:21 a.m. while most people in the lightly-populated rural area were sleeping.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake’s epicenter as 17 miles northeast of King City and said movement on the San Andreas Fault occurred six miles underground, according to the Associated Press.
That fault runs nearly the entire length of California and was responsible for the 1906 earthquake that destroyed thousands of buildings and resulted in a catastrophic fire that destroyed most of San Francisco.
The 1989 Loma Prieta quake that killed 64 people and caused the collapse of a section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge occurred on a small offshoot of the San Andreas fault in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
In King City, however, no public safety agencies reported any damage from Tuesday’s shaker, the AP said.
King City, with a population of more than 12,000, is located on Highway 101, 150 miles south of San Francisco.
Comments posted on the USGS public reporting pages indicated the quake was felt in Santa Cruz and around Monterey Bay, 90 miles to the north, and as far east as the San Joaquin Valley, the AP said.
Many seismologists predict a catastrophic earthquake on the San Andreas fault within the next 30 years, but that not a universally held view.
