FLOODS IN DAYTON PRIOR TO 1913
The rivers in and around Dayton have been both friend and foe to the inhabitants of the city. It was on the Great Miami River that the first settlers of the city came up from Cincinnati in a boat called a pirogue, landing on April 1, 1796. The rivers were also used for transporting cargo, with the first flat boat being launched from Dayton in 1799. Loaded down with grain, pelts and 500 venison hams, it made the journey to New Orleans in record time.
It was these same waters that caused the city to flood periodically over the years. Less than nine years after the first settlers came to Dayton, they recorded their first flood. John W. Van Cleve spoke of the occurrence in a speech entitled Settlement and Progress of Dayton, which he delivered before the Dayton Lyceum on August 27, 1833.
JOHN VAN CLEVE
In the spring of 1805 Dayton was inundated by an extraordinary rise of the river. In all ordinary freshets, the water used to pass through the prairie at the east side of the town, where the basin now is, but the flood of 1805 covered a great portion of the town itself. There were only two spots of dry land within the whole place. The water came out of the river at the head of Jefferson Street, and ran down to the common at the east end of Old Market Street, in a stream which a horse could not cross without swimming, leaving an island between it and the mill. A canoe could be floated at the intersection of First Street with St. Clair, and the first dry land was west of this point. The western extremity of that island was near the crossing of Main and First Streets, from whence it bore down in a southern direction towards where the saw mill now stands, leaving a dry strip from a point on the south side of Main Cross Street (now Third Street), between Jefferson Street and the prairie, to the river bank at the head of Main Street. Almost the whole of the land was under water, with the exception of those two islands, from the river to the hill which circles round south and east of town, from Mad River to the Miami. The water was probably eight feet deep in Main Street, at the court house, where the ground has since been raised several feet.
In consequence of the flood, a considerable portion of the inhabitants became strongly disposed to abandon the present site of the town, and the proposition was made and urged very strenuously that lots should be laid off upon the plain upon the second rise on the southeast of the town, through which the Waynesville road passes, and that the inhabitants should take lots there in exchange for those which they owned upon the present plat, and thus remove the town to a higher and more secure situation. The project, however, was defeated by the unyielding opposition of some of the citizens, and it was no doubt for the advantage and prosperity of the place that it was.
Sometime afterwards a levee was raised across the low ground at the grist mill, to prevent the passage of the water through the prairie in freshets; but not built with sufficient strength and elevation, the floods rose over it and washed it away several times, until at length it was made high and strong enough to resist the greatest rises of water that have occurred since 1805, although one like the one of that year would still pass over it. The last time it was washed away was in August 1814.
Early on a levee was built by Silas Broadwell to protect the western part of Dayton from the overflow of the annual freshets. The levee began at Wilkinson Street and ran west quite a distance along the Miami River. D. C. Cooper gave Broadwell a number of lots in the vicinity of the levee in payment for building it and keeping it in good condition.
In 1814 the Miami again overflowed its banks and destroyed the levee built after the 1805 flood. Van Cleve described the flood as follows:
The water was deep enough to swim a horse where the warehouses stand, at the head of the basin, and a ferry was kept there for several days. The water also at that time passed through with a considerable current from the head of Jefferson to the east end of Market Street, and through the hollows in the western part of the town; and the plain through which the feeder passes, east of the mill race, was nearly all under water.
On January 8, 1828 the rivers again flooded, breaking or passing around all the levees that had been built. Considerable damage was caused, small bridges were carried away, and a warehouse at the head of Wilkinson Street was destroyed.
In February, 1832 a flood occurred that rivaled the height of the one in 1828. This flood washed out the middle pier of the Bridge Street (Dayton View) bridge.
M. E. Curwen gave an account of the flood that occurred on January 2, 1847 which was published in the O’Dell’s Dayton Directory and Business Advertiser in 1850.
M. E. CURWEN
The river had been rising for several days; and on the 1st, the principal merchants, along the Canal Basin, thought it prudent to raise their goods to the second story, in anticipation of any accident that might happen to the levee, which was then new and not yet settled. A few minutes after midnight, the insignificant outer levee, that had for years been neglected and weakened by earth being hauled from it to fill up house yards and roads, gave way, near Bridge Street, and the inner levee, being insufficient to withstand the torrent suddenly rushing upon it, and rising in a breast two feet above it, soon after fell in. A breach once made, the waters rose rapidly, filling the cellars and covering the ground floors of houses in the vicinity. At one o’clock the church bells rang an alarm. A crowd of men with boats and on horseback, promptly turned out to rescue those who lived in the low grounds, west of Perry Street; while others assembled on the levee, north of Mill Street, with shovels, to check the leakage there. The water had by this time risen nearly to the top of the bank; and the work was soon abandoned as hopeless. A small party passed down Kenton, St. Clair, and Stone Streets, rousing the inhabitants along the line of the Basin, and advising them to move their valuables into the second story of their houses. The levee gave way near the head of Mill Street, about two o’clock…
In the course of the night, all principal citizens opened their houses, lighted fires, and offered accommodations to those whom the water had temporarily rendered homeless. The Council, on the next
day, voted a handsome appropriation to relieve the wants of the destitute.
It was a bright moonlight night, and the air was calm and mild. There was not a life lost, nor endangered, nor did any accident happen, during that night, nor afterwards. In striking contrast with the truth, it was represented abroad that one hundred and fifty persons, at least, were drowned; that the poor, shivering survivors were huddled together on the high grounds, waiting their fate in agony; that the people were rescued in boats from the third stories of some of the highest buildings in town; and that Dayton was literally in ruins! The damage was moderately estimated at a million and a half, - a sum, by the way, equal to half of all the personal property in Montgomery County.
From the most accurate information that could be collected, the loss sustained by private individuals in Dayton could not have exceeded $5,000; and that was made up principally in the inconvenience occasioned by the wetting of carpets, the spoiling of such family stores as happened to be left in the cellars, the damage to fences from floating drift wood, and to yards by being washed by the torrent, etc.
A levee was soon after constructed, which will completely secure the lower parts of town from any such catastrophe for the future.
The Journal newspaper reported that the canal bridges were so badly damaged by flood waters that they could not be crossed by horses, with the exception of the “new one” across the canal at the head of Water Street (now Monument Avenue). The First Street canal bridge was the first one to collapse, and those at Third, Fifth, Sixth, Jefferson and Main streets had to be rebuilt.
Three days of heavy rain, starting on September 17, 1866, caused a serious flood. This time the levee gave way east of the city, which allowed the water to rush through the lower parts of Dayton. Backwater from the Miami River through an old ditch helped direct the water to the southern part, causing more flooding. The water reached a depth of one foot on the floor of the Beckel House, located at Third and Jefferson Street, and four inches deep on the floor of the Phillips House, located at Third and Main Street. The southern part of Dayton, west of the canal, was the most affected, with water rising several feet deep in many of the houses. Railway communications was cut off and the loss of property in the city was estimated at $250,000.
To help alleviate the problem, it was decided to widen the river channel. Both the Third Street Bridge and the Dayton View Bridge (then called Bridge Street Bridge), were also lengthened.
The next flood occurred on February 3, 4 and 5, 1883. Although the water did not reach the heights of the 1847 or the 1866 floods, the danger was increased by the large amount of ice in the water, which caused damage to bridge piers and levees. The levees held, but the lower sections of Dayton were flooded by water that had entered the area through the floodgates of the canal, hydraulics and sewers, which were frozen to their bearings and could not be shut. The flood level reached a height of twenty-two inches at the foot of Ludlow Street. Again, the levees were made stronger and their length extended.
Three years later a heavy rainfall, accompanied by a shower of hail, some of it the size of hen’s eggs, caused another flood on May 12, 1886. When the railway embankment across the Wolf Creek valley gave way, it washed a number of houses on the west side of the city from their foundations and caused a general flooding of the area. On Fifth Street, from Wayne Avenue to Eagle Street, the water covered the streets and sidewalks. Between Wayne and Bainbridge and on Wayne from Fifth south to Burns, the water reached a level estimated to be around three feet deep, with the section of the city bounded by Warren, Buckeye, Chestnut, Wayne and Park Streets becoming entirely submerged, some places being deep enough to swim a horse.
Floods plagued the city on March 6, 1897 and again on March 23, 1898. The Miami River flooded the low ground in North Dayton both times, with the Riverdale section being flooded by the backwater though the gates of the hydraulic race that once ran through the area. Storm water also covered the streets in the lower sections of Dayton, with some areas reaching a depth of several feet. The level of the water nearly reached the top of the levees in several spots, which were built about three feet higher the next year.
The river lay quiet for several years afterwards. Although the water did rise on occasion, it seemed to the citizens of Dayton that, finally, they had built their levees high enough to contain the river in its banks.
Then, in March 1913, it began to rain…
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