Dramatic changes occurred in the Missouri River valley when the waters receded from the 500-year-flood of last summer. The transformation is especially vivid in the Springfield vicinity, where miles and miles of river bottom are now covered with fine white sand. Here are some photos, taken this week during 30-40 mph winds that gave the river dunes a desert appearance. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
In the last 15 years, powerful tornadoes completely destroyed the town of Manchester in Kingsbury County, and nearly wiped Spencer off the map. In 1928, the town of Davis in Turner County almost met the same fate.
Tom Firney of Scotland sent us a photo showing the aftermath of the late summer storm. He found it while combing through old family photographs and planned to simply throw it away, but something about the compelling image made him hold onto it. I invited him to send it to our Yankton office.
The photo shows three people sitting on a curb, surrounded by piles of debris. Townspeople (presumably) are in the frame, surveying the damage. A note written on the back says,”Mamma and Dad were over Sept. 14, and said it was a pitiful sight.”
That day — September 13, 1928 — the town of Davis fell victim to a tornado outbreak in southeastern South Dakota and northeastern Nebraska that killed eight people and caused over $1 million in damages. At the time, 250 people lived in Davis. Almost half of them were injured.
Much of the damage occurred just across the Missouri River in Nebraska, where a twister demolished four country schools as it headed toward Sioux City. At the first schoolhouse, a nearby farmer who was watching the storm ran to the school and helped the teacher herd the children into an adjacent storm cave. Everyone survived, but the children at the next school were not as fortunate. There, the teacher told students to lie on the floor and hold hands as the powerful tornado lifted the schoolhouse and swept it away. Two students were killed. At another school, a farmer loaded his car with children and drove them to safety. He offered to take the teacher, but she refused. Her body was found after the storm with the doorknob of the schoolhouse in her hand.
The twister stopped just short of Sioux City. To many people, that justified an old Indian legend that the city is naturally protected from tornadoes because three rivers — the Missouri, the Big Sioux and the Floyd — converge there.
The event was surreal for those who lived through it. One survivor said the day”was like a person experiences when taking ether.” Those who lived through the Manchester and Spencer twisters would agree.
Editor’s Note: Third-generation rancher Johnny Bown sent this account of Hyde County’s devastating prairie fire to his mother-in-law in St. Louis 64 years ago. His daughter, Eileen Bown Just of Hoven, sent it to us in 2000. The September 1947 fire was apparently started by a cigarette flicked from a car on Highway 14 between Highmore and Holabird. It burned north northwest across 40 miles of prairie, almost to Lebanon.
The fire started about 30 miles south of us, and the wind brought it directly at us. Our house set in dry grass with prairie on all sides, so when I first saw the fire, there went all my hard work building the house.
Eventually the wind changed enough to push the fire to the east of our house one mile, so we were in luck. We had a cattle sprayer with a fire hose attachment, so we took it down to the fire, but it was no use. There were five fire trucks there already and they were helpless. It jumped wide highways and burned through green fields. There was no stopping it.
The whole country was just a black desert. My brothers Fred and Bob and the home place and ours were the only places it spared. The rest of the boys plus people from all over the state were fighting the fire, so I came back and got the saddle horse and took off to try to push the cattle into bare ground, but the doggone things were scared and wouldn’t drive. The fire was coming right toward them at about 25 miles per hour, so I had to get them out.
Finally I got them crowded into a dam when it came roaring through, so I high-tailed it for home with the fire chasing me all the way. The heat was terrific! Never loved a horse as much as old Smoky after he took me out of that fire.
We fought side fires all that night, next day, and new fires flared up next night. Rosemary was out with an old water-soaked coat fighting too. She looked so cute all smoky and black. Ha. Most of the time she was patrolling the fire in the car, watching for fresh ones. In all it burned over 1,000 square miles, so it was fight or get burned up.
We were lucky. At one time about 200 square miles right next to us was roaring at once. Cattle, horses, rabbits, pheasants — everything was running madly ahead of it. When you drive around this black desert and see the paint burned off the sides of ranch houses and buildings, you wonder how those people ever saved them with water buckets and wet rags.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2000 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
Editor Bernie Hunhoff captured these photos of the Wagner area flooding for the upcoming September/October issue.
Our upcoming Sept/Oct issue features stories from the long rise of the Missouri River. Editor Bernie Hunhoff took these photos of the Pierre/Fort Pierre area.
Editor’s Note: Here is a story that longtime Sioux Falls Argus Leader reporter Fred Masek wrote in 1990 about the major floodwaters that swept through Sioux Falls when the Big Sioux River swelled in 1881.
This is the story of a Sioux Falls hotel where the guests departed and then the hotel departed. It is the story of a reporter whose apparent assignment was to identify and record the buildings floating by. When a building broke loose from its foundation and floated away, a news account referred to the episode as a”departure.” Sioux Falls experienced a major flood in April 1881 in which 33 buildings, most of them commercial structures, were swept away by swollen waters of the Big Sioux River. A winter of hardship and sacrifices had already preceded the flood disaster. The setting for the 1881 flood began with the big blizzard of October 1880, and continued with frequent snowfalls.
The snowfall of 1880-81 was unprecedented in the history of the Northwest. It was noted in the History of Southeastern South Dakota,”Not only were the snowfalls immense in volume, but they followed each other with provoking promptness and a strife for ascendancy, worthy of a better cause.”
By the beginning of 1881 the railroad was hopelessly blockaded, mail arrived only at intervals and provisions and fuel became scarce in Sioux Falls. The capitalist, as well as the dweller in the sod shanty, was compelled to take his coffee straight. Sugar was a luxury not to be found. Settlers were described as having to”gather their robes around them to keep warm.”
Thousands of ties, piled up for extension of the Worthington and Sioux Falls Railroad, instead were sold at cost to persons in dire need of firewood. Dana Dailey’s History of Minnehaha County reported that during the winter of 1880″Sioux Falls was isolated from the outside world as it would have been if surrounded by a hostile army.”
There were signs of easing on April 9, 1881, when trains reached Luverne, Minn. carrying provisions for Sioux Falls. Teams of horses were used to relay the supplies 25 miles to Sioux Falls. However, the town’s 2,000 residents began to feel new apprehension when thawing of the heavy snow accumulation started. Ice began breaking up April 17, and the river started to rise. By Wednesday, April 20, the flood hit hard.
The Dakota Pantagraph and Independent gave its graphic account of the disaster by referring to floating buildings as”departures.” It appeared that a reporter was perched on the riverbank counting and identifying business places and other structures as they floated by.
The weekly newspaper’s flood story began,”The departure was noted last week of the railroad and two highway bridges, Weber’s Restaurant, Henjum’s and Olson’s Blacksmith Shop, McKinnon and Ross Planing Mill and Sash Factory, the Cascade Mill office, the Queen Bee Mill office, Cochran’s Stable and Gilbert’s Ice House.
“A blockade of lower water set in on Wednesday morning so that the departure of buildings was suspended. But the rise of Friday after midnight caused them to resume. The first to start were Winchell’s dwelling from below the site of the 10th Street bridge and Jensen’s Blacksmith Shop.
“At 2 o’clock Saturday morning, the remnants of the Riverside Hotel moved out after the guests moved out. There were no further departures until 7 a.m., when the Sioux Falls Mill shoved out.
“Just after dinner, Phil Plaster’s Saloon, near the St. Paul Depot, moved off with its full stock of liquors and cigars. Some of the boys overhauled the wreck below the Falls and had a jamboree.”
“The lumberyards started on their trip about 9 o’clock,” the paper reported,”and some of the contents moved off in nice piles.” Scavengers were busy retrieving boards, shingles, planks and lath from the river.
Most ice storage facilities were lost. A telegrapher sent a message to Worthington, Minn. asking that an icehouse and contents be furnished to the Cataract House.
One man saved his dwelling by the good fortune of his occupation. He operated a brickyard. His house stayed in place after 10,000 bricks were loaded on the first floor.
Although 33 buildings were swept away, there were no deaths attributed to the flood. The newspaper reported,”No funeral was provided with a subject by the flood. Fortunately almost everybody was careful enough to avoid peril.”
One light moment was related to a miller’s experience. The miller was fixing a gangway for crossing water surrounding the Sioux Falls Mill. The story was related as follows:”He had stooped for a board and when he straightened up the mill wasn’t there, so he didn’t get aboard.”
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 1990 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
Editor’s Note — We’re mucking our way through one of the worst Missouri River floods in state history. The duration of the 2011 flooding has not been experienced before. Wide parts of the floodplain have now been inundated for seven weeks. Still, old-timers are comparing this year’s disaster to 1952, when the river experienced a “spring rise” in April that caused a frenzy of rescue efforts somewhat like we’ve experienced this year. A number of years ago, Nadine Mickelson wrote this article for South Dakota Magazine on the ’52 flood.
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| Pan aerial view of the 1952 flood at Pierre. |
“There was a crack, a resounding crash, a tumultuous roar, volume still building, at last adding a gush of water.” The Chamberlain newspaper reporter described the event beautifully.
But it was not the opening orchestration of a symphony, and it was not always music to the ears. It was the mystical spring ritual of the mighty Missouri River. Ice flew high as she sighed, stretched, and flung wide her arms.
She never freed herself from her icy winter girdle in the same manner, nor did she do it mildly. It depended on early spring runoff and the feeding from upstream tributaries. Mo’s frivolous frolics happened in 1947, 1948 and 1952. My research began in 1986 with the death of my mother, and I found pictures I had taken as a girl in 1948.
On March 29, 1947 Bismarck recorded a nighttime high water level of 21.8 feet with solid ice another 11 miles south. Garrison residents were moving back to higher ground. By Tuesday, April 1, 1947, Pierre patrolmen W.H. Walker and Fire Marshall Carl Jensen said,”Rats in Pierre had been flooded out by the rapid rise in the river. City police officers caught up on their target practice Monday afternoon with light caliber shot before rats entered any buildings or homes.”
In April 1951, fed by the Bad River that bulged with a two foot melting of snow from a late March blizzard, Mo peaked 10 feet over flood level in Pierre. Sometimes called Old Misery, her spring tantrums are recorded as far back as 1832. That was when Congress first set out to tame her.
This great river rampaged the plains long before South Dakota gained statehood.
Mo’s headwaters at Three Forks, Montana ramble over 2,000 miles to join the Mississippi near Hartford, Illinois. She’s second longest only to the Mississippi by a mere 32 miles. I’ve always wondered if the 2,000-mile figure includes her meandering U-turns and S-curves?
One of Mo’s past recorded free-runs that began changing the face of the land came in 1881. Another historical facelift caused by Big Muddy was in 1867, when she formed the meandering”S” that joined her to the Big Sioux River.
These deceptive channel jogs stirred by undercurrents and eddies could have been the beginning of land disputes between Nebraska and South Dakota. Every time Ms. Mo changed her mind, she also changed her curves.
Through the years, she altered her traditional shores, her deep channels, and left islands, sandbars, and sediment or quicksand. Malicious or mischievous? Or waiting for an unsuspecting animal or traveler? Who can say? Once while walking on her drought uncovered bottom sand, we found buffalo bones and jawbones she claimed many years ago.
I’ve used”she” haven’t I? Well, I guess I’m safe in using the feminine gender without being sexist. You could challenge me, but I’d tell you I grew up with Mo. No one has ever totally understood a woman or Mo.
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| Sandbagging kept water from flooding into the Pierre National Bank and other downtown businesses. |
Every clever descriptive phrase from jubilant spring freedom, frivolous frolic, devious damage, vengeful ruins, or deadly devastation could describe a scorned woman or Mo in springtime. If in Mo’s youth PMS had already been identified, it could have read”MoPMS” for her”Spring Syndrome.” Farmers were thankful it came but once a year.
Magnus”Mac” Ekeren, while in the service in his early 20s, remembered water up to the grain elevator in Mission Hill. When he was 11 back in the 1940’s, he’d find carp in the ditches and throw them out into the road.
James Novak, who regularly manned the bridge lift at Yankton, remembers the water nearly reaching the Charles Gurney Hotel in Yankton in March 1947. Jim also recorded flood level at 10.13 feet at 12:30 p.m. on April 7, 1952. He spent many years watching and keeping people aware of Mo’s annual flooding.
On April 10, 1952, dozens of families from Pierre to Yankton were evacuated from their property. Pierre firefighters had an additional scare. A petroleum tank came loose from its mooring and floated toward the city. The danger included an outboard motor fire, coupled with a car fire uptown. It shook Pierre’s remaining residents. Virtually all of Pierre’s downtown businesses were surrounded by water.
On Good Friday, April 1952, Ted Blakey of Yankton was driving a tractor on Highway 50 from what used to be the Yankton city dump. He had a picture taken under the Coca Cola sign that toted the slogan”The Pause That Refreshes!” Two hours later the road was under water. On Easter Sunday, Ted and Stan Brunick went with a boat and motor down the middle of the highway to rescue their seed potatoes out of a flooded cellar.
Mo’s progress was watched every spring as she”pipped” from her icy shell from Montana to Illinois. Every farmer from either shore called warnings to neighbors down stream. From gentle thawing birth, tempting teens, right up to a malevolent maturity, every spring with a vengeance of purpose she headed on her trip to the far off sea.
Few rivers or streams ever accomplished as many rebirths as Mo. She celebrated a birth annually until dams harnessed her energy. I’d wait expectantly for that special time every year. Native South Dakotans will understand when I say I could feel it, sense it, and even smell it. The premonition defied exact dates. I learned it from my father.
“Let’s get in the car and go to Chamberlain,” dad would announce. You knew it was time to see the river. Adrenaline ran high and danger lurked. From birth, you didn’t trust the river.
Wise men had already moved their livestock to higher grazing and machinery further inland. The bottomlands were empty. It was fine by them to wait to farm until after Mo was through playing. Precaution came from common sense and experience. We respected the river. No one built too close to the river for fear of arousing her anger.
Depending on each spring and planting progress, the next trip would be to Yankton to see where she would crest next. Some years the history lesson varied with a trip to Lake Andes where friends lived.
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| The last major flood on the Missouri occurred in 1952. Boats became the best method of transportation. |
Anne Morrow Lindbergh said this about rivers:”Rivers are perhaps the only physical features of the world that are at their best from the air. Mountain ranges dwarf to anthills; seas lose their horizons. But rivers stretch out serenely ahead as far as the eye can reach. Rivers are seen in their true stature.”
I cannot cross the interstate at Chamberlain without looking to see if I can identify where American Island lies. It’s like an eternal goodbye wave to that island lying in its watery resting place. If the water ever recedes, I wonder if the island will reappear?
Old American Island is gone, but the river has given us some of our state’s greatest sport areas and tourist resorts. Though tamed by the dams, she still takes her toll of life when an unwary fisherman or boater forgets to respect her power, currents or snags.
And Mo keeps everyone in turmoil with her claim on wildlife, like the least tern and piping plover. Mo lies placid and calm as government officials, state citizens and industries rage in disputes. Court decisions seem to solve nothing, as she appears to slumber with a smile of glib conceit.
We may think we’ve tamed the river, but those mercurial waters have an indomitable spirit of their own, just watching and waiting to prove Mo’s power over man’s superficial control of a river’s true power.
The Pick-Sloan plan began the taming of the”shrewd” river by permanently flooding 500,000 acres of farmland and forest, resulting in crop losses of over $79 million per year. Dams forced Mo to give up her fretful, aimless life and become a more productive adult. From figures compiled in 1982 annually from all six dams combined, she produced in peak years, 2,098,250 kilowatts of power serving Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, where she feeds into the Mississippi south of Hartford, Illinois.
T. S. Eliot, in The Dry Salvages, who lived by the Mississippi River as a boy, wrote,”I do not know much about gods, but I think that the Mississippi River is a strong brown god — sullen, untamed, and intractable.” I think the Missouri is a god of deceit, calm, mysterious, and unpredictable. It has always filled me with awe, distrust, and icy respect.
How much of her debt has Mo paid back? Even the plight of the plover may be peanuts compared to early wildlife, mankind and history lying hidden in the havoc she wreaked in her youth. I wonder if those downstream clamoring for her services would trade places if they’d suffered through those youthful, thoughtless destructions?
I found no positive proof in my research, but after references to destruction of buildings, roads, trails and even forts, that she may have meddled in the eventual move of the territorial capital upstream to Pierre in hopes of tamer, safer springs. Has Mo written history of her own?
Most years she lies calm and peaceful, and we bask in her pleasures, recreational activities, tourism, camping and other benefits. But I caution you. My father said,”Always give water your greatest respect. The muddier it is, and the faster it’s flowing, the farther I want to be from it.”
I grew up and grew old along with Mo. I learned.”Never turn your back on the Missouri.”
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 1993 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
We’re not enjoying the flood all that much in Yankton County, but it has made reading the morning newspaper more interesting than ever.
The Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan is one of only two daily newspapers that still have local ownership, and it’s probably no coincidence that it’s also one of the best little dailies in the West. The staff and readers are going to celebrate the paper’s 150th anniversary later this summer (good Lord willing and the Missouri don’t rise any more). Never in my memory has our local newspaper done a better job of guiding the community through a difficult period.
Yankton and other South Dakota communities are not strangers to disasters. We have had our share of fires, floods, tornadoes, blizzards and other such mayhem. But seldom does a disaster linger for weeks, as this flood does. For those most affected, it is a slow-motion disaster. Though the water is broiling through the dams and speeding down the river channel, time is nearly at a standstill for home owners and farmers who wait and wait to see how it will all end.
Through it all, the writers and editors of our paper have kept southeast South Dakota in the know. They’ve dispelled rumors (no, the Corps of Engineers has not inserted dynamite in the cracks in the dam … and no, there are no cracks in the dam). They’ve put out the word for volunteers, and taught us the language of a flood. Everybody now understands that a CFS is a cubic foot per second of water, about the same volume of a basketball. They’ve photographed and editorialized and reported on long, boring meetings and issued alerts …. and it doesn’t stop.
In today’s edition, editor/photographer Kelly Hertz shows a picture of two lads using a park bench as a fishing dock at Lake Yankton. Of course, park benches are normally ashore. Priceless photography.
Also today, the paper reports that the Corps will divert surplus water through four regulating tunnels at Fort Randall from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. so the spillway (40 acres of concrete) can undergo a routine inspection. It is just the second time in history that such a high volume of water will be released through the tunnels.
The paper also notes that a man fell into the James River while fishing. He became stuck in the mud. A deputy fished him out.
And in the classifieds, Bob Monfore notes that he lost his boat dock by Choteau Creek near Avon,. It’s a heavy bridge plank deck on two pontoons. Call 286-3644 if you see it floating by your farm.
The lake temperature today, according to the paper, is 70 degrees. Lake elevation is 1206.16 feet. Tailwater elevation is 1171.81. Oh, and the CFS is still at 160,000.
If you must endure a summer-long flood, it’s nice to have a local newspaper as a guide.
Flooding in the northeast part of South Dakota isn’t getting much attention. These photos, taken near Hosmer and Roscoe, show the extensive flooding issues further upstream. Photos courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
