The Great Flood of 1913

Mother Nature is both limitless and relentless.Our environment is a great gift to all of us; but sometimes the forces of nature create unpleasant events or, even more, bring deadly results.Memories can remain in people's minds for generations. For Daytonians, one of these unpleasant memories is the Great Flood of 1913.Due to the topography of the Miami Valley, Dayton has always been subject to floods. Dayton has been described as "very rich, level and well-timbered, some of the finest meadows that can be…." Indian tribes fought over it and explorers and settlers cultivated it. Along the shores of the Great Miami River the Indians hunted and fished for thousands of years but never really lived there because of its tendency to flood. For them the Miami Valley was a hunting preserve.

Following the peace treaty with the Shawnee nation, signed at Greenville in 1795, the area was opened to white settlement.Dayton was laid out by a group of Revolutionary War veterans, including Jonathan Dayton from New Jersey, for whom the town was named. It was developed as a river port for the shipment of agricultural produce, mainly to New Orleans. The opening of the Miami and Erie Canal from Dayton to Cincinnati in 1829, and the arrival in 1851 of a railroad from Springfield, spawned Dayton's commercial and industrial growth. The town became the home of the cash register after the mechanical money drawer was invented there by James Ritty, and perfected by John H. Patterson in the 1880s. The automobile self-starter was developed there by Charles F. Kettering who, along with Edward A. Deeds, also developed ignition systems and electric lighting equipment for farms. In 1892 Wilbur and Orville Wright opened their bicycle repair shop in Dayton, where they conducted experiments that led to the first sustained and controlled flight of a powered airplane, at Kitty Hawk, N. C., in 1903. Along with these milestones of Dayton history, however, must be included the disastrous 1913 flood. This collection tells the story of this horrible flood that took the life of more than 300 people, including 123 in Dayton alone, and caused widespread destruction of bridges, commercial buildings and dwellings amounting to over 100 million dollars.

There had been major floods in Dayton before, but no adequate solution to the problem had ever been achieved. Levees helped; straightening out curves in the rivers helped also. But the fact remained that, at Dayton, the Miami, the Mad and the Stillwater Rivers joined to form the Great Miami, with Wolf Creek and Twin Creek emptying into the Great Miami within a few miles. A deluge of rain began on Easter Sunday, March 23, and lasted until March 27, pouring nine to eleven inches of water onto the area. The rain came at a particularly dangerous time, for the spring thaw had caused the ice and snow of a hard winter to melt into the ground, and recent light rains had already fallen. Consequently, the already saturated ground could not accept much more moisture, and the water had to run into the creeks feeding the rivers of the valley. Altogether an incredible volume of nearly four trillion gallons of water, equivalent to about thirty days' discharge of water over Niagara Falls, flowed through the Miami Valley during the ensuing flood.

While communities upstream from Dayton, such as Piqua and Troy, suffered extensive flooding at the time, the problem was more severe around Dayton and downstream communities such as Middletown and Hamilton. Attributable to the junction of rivers in Dayton, the situation was made worse by the narrowing of the channel of the Great Miami and by an "S" shaped bend in the river as it passed through Dayton.

In Dayton, the flood covered about fourteen square miles. It brought disaster everywhere. Rising waters drove people to seek shelter in trees, on roofs and in attics, where they awaited rescue. The waters swept away bridges, houses and buildings and anyone who was in them. Broken gas mains caused fires; such a fire destroyed nearly two blocks of downtown Dayton. After about 24 hours, the floodwaters reached their high point on Monday, March 24 and remained at that level for about 12 hours, until midnight and the early morning hours of Tuesday. Thereafter they receded, but only slowly, for the rain would continue for another two days. On Tuesday, John H. Patterson, president of the National Cash Register Company, converted his ten-story factory/office building to a relief station and a construction site for rescue boats. On Wednesday, March 26, Ohio Governor James M. Cox declared a state of emergency. Dayton and Hamilton were placed under martial law and the Ohio National Guard was called in to maintain order and help in the rescue effort.

The story of the Great Flood would not be complete without discussing its aftermath. This involves both the immediate aftermath and the longer-term aspects. The immediate aftermath involved providing relief for Dayton's stricken citizens. On Thursday, March 27, as the rain began finally to ease, a Citizens Relief Committee was established in Dayton, with John H. Patterson as president. Although martial law would continue in the city for over a month, Governor Cox authorized the committee, through Mr. Patterson, to direct the work of the National Guard. Within a few days 27 relief stations were established in the city, with the NCR factory at the heart of relief activity.

Another immediate concern was sanitation. When the floodwaters receded, hundreds of carcasses of drowned horses lined the streets. These had to be removed immediately along with other dead animals to prevent the spread of disease. Over 1400 dead horses and 2000 other animal carcasses were removed to an incinerating plant outside of Dayton. Mud and debris were everywhere. Because many homes did not have direct connections to sewer lines or regular garbage pick-up, the flood waters had distributed the contents of outhouses, cesspools and garbage pits, creating a health hazard which made the collection of mud and debris a priority for health reasons. Of course, this digging-out was also necessary just so people could return to their homes and business and resume a normal life. But this meant the restoration of sewage, water and gas services. Until this was accomplished citizens were advised not only to boil their drinking water but also were required to dig cesspools in their yards for waste water, human waste and garbage. Nothing was to be left out in the open or thrown into the streets.

By early May life in Dayton had returned to a semblance of normalcy and civil law was restored. Now the longer-term effects of the Great Flood would appear. Miami Valley citizens vowed they could never allow such devastation to ravage their communities again. On May 2, barely a month after the flood, the Dayton Flood Prevention Committee was formed and adopted a resolution to raise, through voluntary contributions, $2, 000,000 to initiate study of the flooding problem and find a solution. Civic leaders, in particular John H. Patterson and Adam Schantz spearheaded the committee. On May 5 the Morgan Engineering Company of Memphis, Tennessee, was retained to study the flood control problem, with principal partner Arthur E. Morgan assuming personal responsibility. Morgan’s engineering brilliance in flood control and drainage was recognized nationally. He was responsible for the ultimate technical success of the entire project. The Dayton committee, realizing that flood control was a regional issue rather than just a municipal one, invited other communities to co-operate in flood control work. On May 15 the Miami Valley Flood Prevention Association, representing several counties, was organized. By May 25 the Dayton committee’s fund raising goal had been achieved, with 23,000 of Dayton’s citizens contributing $2,160,000. Eventually it was realized that the total project cost would be several times this and a different financing plan was adopted. Ninety-three percent of the money was returned to the original donors. Nevertheless this show of local support was influential in gaining support for the project in the statehouse. On February 17, 1914 Governor James Cox signed a Conservancy Bill (the Vanderheide Act) into law. It provided for the creation of conservancy districts. The same month, ten Miami Valley counties petitioned the Court of Common Pleas in Montgomery County for creation of a conservancy district. These counties were Butler, Clark, Greene, Hamilton, Logan, Miami, Montgomery, Preble, Shelby and Warren. After surviving several legal challenges, primarily from farmers in the northern Miami Valley, the Conservancy Court met on June 28, 1915 and declared the Miami Conservancy District (MCD) organized of the Common Pleas judges of the counties involved. The Court appointed the three members of the Board of Directors of the MCD to be Edward A. Deeds (Montgomery County), Henry Allen (Miami County) and Gordon S. Rentschler (Butler County). Logan County left the MCD in 1915 shortly after it was formed. Deeds donated funds for the construction of a District headquarters at the corner of Jefferson Street and Monument Avenue in Dayton, where it stands to the present day.

In the meantime, Arthur Morgan and his engineers had conducted a careful topographic survey of the Great Miami River flood plain. Such factors as the width and height of valleys, bedrock for siting concrete outlets and upstream storage capacity were considered. Based on these studies Morgan proposed a construction plan which was presented by the MCD in 1916 to the Conservancy Court for approval. This plan called for the creation of five retarding basins (dry dams) by the construction of earthen dams across the Great Miami River (Taylorsville dam, north Dayton), Mad River (Huffman and Dam, east of Dayton near Wright-Patterson AFB), and Stillwater River (Englewood Dam, northwest of Dayton), and across Twin Creek (Germantown Dam, west of Germantown)and Loramie Creek (Lockinghton Dam, north of Piqua). The plan also gave detailed proposals for local protection in affected communities, e.g. the building of levees along riverbanks and the widening and deepening of channels. Lengthy litigation delayed approval and implementation of the plan for almost two years. In fact by 1950 the Miami Conservancy District had been involved in over 60 litigations, most of them during the period from 1914, when it was first proposed, to 1917.

Construction finally began in January of 1918 and was essentially completed by the end of 1922. While the construction phase lasted five years, the pre-construction phase (research, planning, legislation and litigation) took nearly as long. Overall, from initial studies to the end of construction, the project extended over nearly a decade (mid-1913 to end of 1922), and cost over $30,000,000. The money was raised by the issuance of bonds, but in the long term came from assessments on the properties, which would benefit from the flood control. Determination of these assessments required the appraisal of every property, public and private, affected by the project.

There were some unique features to the whole project. For example, the small village of Osborn would lie on the flood plain created by construction of Huffman Dam. The residents decided to have the District relocate the entire village, about 400 buildings, some two miles to an area adjacent to the village of Fairborn. Relocation began in 1921 and took about four years to complete.

Another example illustrates the social conscience of chief engineer Arthur Morgan. Not wanting to see shantytowns spring up around the construction sites to house the hundreds of migrant workers, some with families, he built at each of the five dams a village camp for the workers and their families, complete with sanitary sewers, water lines, electricity, green space, schools and cafeterias. He felt that creating such an environment would result in a more productive and dependable work force.

Completion of the dams was one side of the coin. The other side was maintaining them. The dams had no mechanical or moving parts. The water flowed through fixed concrete conduits. This eliminated the need for replacing worn out or rusted out machinery. But the concrete surfaces were subject to deterioration, requiring periodic inspection and repair as well as upgrades. A full-time caretaker was assigned to each of the five dams and nine local protection features (levees, floodwalls and channel enlargements).

Since completion at the end of 1922, the dams have held back waters on over 1000 occasions, and at no time has more than 60 per cent of the capacity been reached. Of course this does not mean that serious flooding would otherwise have resulted on every such occasion, but as of 1983 it is estimated that the Conservancy District has prevented $235,000,000 in flood damages. Engineers estimate that in 1959 a major flood of the Great Miami would have occurred had it not been for the District’s flood control work. Downtown Dayton would have been covered with five to twenty feet of water. So, if 1913 was the year of the Flood, 1959 was, thanks to the Miami Conservancy District, the year of the flood that wasn’t.