Section A·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Raging river:
Flooding still a threat despite reservoir system
Lifelong North Lawrence resident Bob Snow rests after tilling his strawberry crop. Fifty years ago, Snow's field, house and barns were covered with flood water. Shortly after the disaster, he lost his riverfront property in North Lawrence when the state built a levee to prevent any future flooding. Photo by Thad Allender/KANSAN
Emil Heck Jr., his wife, Betty, and his mother-in-law trudge through the receding floodwater that covers the road in front of Heck's childhood home. Photo courtesy of Emil Heck Jr.
Continued from page 1A
North Lawrence is submerged
At the peak of the 1951 flood, Lawrence was practically an island. The only road out was U.S. Highway 40 leading west to Topeka, and Topeka was under water, too. Every major highway in the northeast part of the state was blocked, and the Union Pacific and Santa Fe tracks were under water. Most of the 2,000 people living in North Lawrence had been evacuated to dormitories at Haskell Indian Nations University, the community building or relatives' homes south of the river.
The flood followed months of heavy rain. The Kansas River began to rise over its banks on July 11 and spilled into North Lawrence from the direction of U.S. Highway 40. In addition to the Kansas River, its tributaries—the Delaware, Wakarusa and Marais de Cygne rivers—flooded. The Marais de Cygne flooded Ottawa to the south, the Delaware submerged Perry to the northwest and the Wakarusa flooded areas south of Lawrence. On either side of Lawrence, Topeka and Kansas City suffered heavy damage, and flooding affected every town in the Kansas River basin.
Bob Snow owned riverside property in North Lawrence, but it was the backwater, and not the water coming over the levee, that flooded his little yellow house at 876 Oak St., where he still lives. Born and raised in North Lawrence, Snow worked at the Food Machinery Corporation plant after serving four years in World War II. The day before the river crested, Snow said he walked to work in the morning and saw backwater invading his neighborhood.
"I got up that morning and water was rushing past the plant." Snow said.
Snow went home to get his wife, infant son and daughter, and parents to ferry them safely across the bridge where they could stay with family in southern Lawrence. He was able to rescue most of his pigs and cows from the barn that sat at the edge of the river and moved them to higher ground. Snow said that when he left his house, water was lapping at the mattresses in his bedroom.
Water covered the tops of windows in some North Lawrence businesses. Some houses were torn from their foundations and swept away down the river in the worst days of the flooding.
"Weedd tactually move back into our house until the later part of August." Snow said.
The floodwaters had destroyed the FMC plant and Snow was on paid leave until the plant was rebuilt. Snow said he needed that time to make his own house and yard livable again. The stench of rotting vegetation was terrible and the floodwater had dug huge chunks out of the streets and farmland around Snow's property, he recalled. The Snows couldn't live without water and their well wasn't working after the flood. At the time, North Lawrence didn't have city water lines.
After the flood receded, the Army Corp of Engineers built the levee that now follows the north bank of the river. Snow and others had property that bordered the river taken for the levee. Despite the hardships of '51 and the threat of future flooding, Snow said he never considered leaving.
"I like North Lawrence," Snow said. "I couldn't live anywhere else."
No way out: Lawrence is an island
Across the bridge in South Lawrence, KU students continued to attend summer classes without interruption despite the flooding. High on its hill, the University escaped direct damage. The Fraser Hall tower on campus was a popular place for viewing the extent of the flooded area. The University Daily Kansan reported on July 17 that a large number of students climbed the stairs to get into the tower.
On the west edge of campus, Dee Skie said she remembered looking out at a sea of water from her yellow house at the corner of West Campus and Stratford roads, facing Carruth O'Leary Hall at the top of Mount Oread.
"We could see vast water," Skie said.
Skie, at home caring for her infant daughter when the flood came, watched the drama from a safe distance.
"I do remember that daily, a plane would fly over," Skie said. "They would drop supplies down into the stadium."
Navy planes from the Oatlite base regularly dropped medical supplies and life jackets into the University's
Memorial Stadium to supply Navy personnel working in the flooded areas.
Skie said she had been lucky that the downtown Dr. Pepper bottling company she and her husband, John, owned wasn't damaged by the flood. However, the Skies' owned property in North Lawrence that flooded. Cole's IGA on North Second Street, which was built on the Skies' land shortly before the flood, collapsed under the flood's strong current. The site later became Roger's IGA, which also suffered extensive damage in the 1983 flood.
Meanwhile, across the river, floodwater crept close to downtown buildings when water pooled in the low area between Kentucky and Tennessee streets where the Lawrence Outdoor Aquatic Center now sits. On the east side of downtown, the stone Santa Fe Depot on east Seventh Street suffered severe flood damage.
The contaminated water created sanitation problems and fear of typhoid. At the time, the city dumped its trash into a big heap in the East Lawrence creek bottoms. When the bottoms flooded, the trash floated with the water, and rats followed the trash.
"Water backed clear up to the creek," Zimmerman said. "There were thousands of rats coming up out of the swamp with the trash."
The American Red Cross ran a successful campaign to vaccinate against typhoid. The steamy, wet summer was trouble enough for Zimmerman and his wife Barb, even without the house. Barb was pregnant with their son Alan and their new house at 1743 Barker St. didn't
Bob Zimmerman remembers when the bottoms flooded.
have air conditioning. Barb said she stayed at her parent's air-conditioned house, which was crowded with North Lawrence relatives left homeless after the flood.
Zimmerman, then a recent KU graduate, had just bought the True Value Hardware Store, 1832 Massachusetts St. He recalled that his hardware store sold a lot of shovels that summer.
The worst flooding had passed by July 16 and water levels on the Kansas began to fall. Reconstruction of North Lawrence and the bottoms of East Lawrence soon began.
Glenn Kappelman, then in his late twenties, was a World War II veteran who had just completed his master's degree in political science at the University and was working as a real estate broker for Traylor and Calvin, 1026 Massachusett Street. The Red Cross asked Kappelman to appraise damage in the Red Lawrence.
Kappelman went house to house, peering into basements that had filled to the ceiling with slippery silt, estimating what it would cost to reconstruct people's lives.
"There were houses that were swept away," Kappelman said.
However, most of the damage to the houses he appraised came from mud-filled basements, ruined electrical boxes, water heaters, furnaces and destroyed personal possessions that residents didn't have time to take with them.
Kappelman said the flood devastated North Lawrence, but damaged few homes on the south side of the river.
"Most people didn't really feel the effect of the flood," Kappelman said.
"It's a amazing what a catastrophic event it was but how little most of us were really involved. Very few of us were actually in it; we read about it in the paper and on the radio."
Farmland and crops are devastated
Outside of town, the greatest damage was to the land itself—the rich bottomland, which was the best land for crops to grow from.
The flood wiped out farms north of Lawrence. When the water receded from the farmland, it had deposited up to six feet of sand and silt. It was an expensive process to scrape off the sand and then till up the rich soil underneath. Herbert Collins, the state and federal crop statistician for Kansas, said the flood took a big bite out of the Kansas wheat crop, which was nearing harvest time. Collins said that between 75,000 and 100,000 acres of small grains were completely lost.
Roger Pine was 11 years old in 1951 and remembers his parents' farmhouse just east of Teepee Junction becoming an island.
"When I woke up there was water everywhere and I thought I was dreaming," Pine said. "I can remember looking out my window and seeing water at the teebees."
A rescue boat came from South Lawrence to take Pine's mother, two younger siblings and cousin to safety, but Pine stayed behind to help his dad secure the farm.
"We had pigs," Pine said. "We spent the day preparing for seepage in the basement and figuring out what to do with the livestock. We put the Shetland pony on the front porch."
Pine said his farmhouse was built on a mound and escaped damage, except to the basement. Floodwater stood 20 inches deep in the Pine's yard.
"Our house sits up pretty high." Pine said. "As dad said, he never liked all those steps, but he was glad we had them."
The day after the river crested, a Navy boat came from Highway 40 near Tonganoxie to take Pine to a neighbor's house while his dad stayed on the farm to care for the animals. The pigs waited out the flood in the bed of a truck parked in the yard.
Across Highway 24 from the Pines, Emil Heck Jr. and his wife, Betty, were in their first year of marriage and farming when the flood destroyed their potato and corn crops.
"We lost all our crops," Heck said. "Prior to that, our corn was just the gretest you'd ever seen."
They were lucky that only four feet of clear water seeped into the basement of their house. The furniture they had stashed on the second story stayed dry, but their fields were buried with sand and their crops destroyed.
"I know we talked about, 'how are we going to live?'"
Betty remembers.
When the floodwaters receded, the Pine and Heck families and other farmers began the time consuming and costly process of scraping mud and sand off the surface of their fields or deep plowing their fields to remove the deposits of sand and silt. The Pine farm brought in deep plows with 4-foot blades to dig the good soil up from under the sand.
Heck said his costs were overwhelming, despite government flood relief.
mostly what they do is loan you money," Heck said. "None of it made up for what you would have had harvesting and selling the crops."
Both Heck and Pine said that their most enduring memory of cleanup is the smell of rotting soybeans in the fields.
Many of the flood's victims, including Heck's father, Emil Heck Sr., became active in state and federal lobbying for flood control in the area.
Flood control becomes legislation
President Harry Truman flew over the flooded Kansas basin in his plane, the Independence, on July 17 to survey the scene with federal officials in charge of emergency relief measures. One of those officials was Mal Gen. Lewis A. Pick, chief of Army Engineers, who reported to Truman that damage in the area exceeded $750 million. After viewing the devastation Truman told a radio audience:
we nave just made an investigation of the flood situation from St. Louis to Salina, Kansas, and from Salina to Miami, Oklahoma, and it is one of the worst disasters. I
LAWRENCE
Share your views on future transportation needs in Lawrence and Douglas County
Help us identify transportation improvements for regional roadway, transit bicycle, and pedestrian systems over the next 25 years. Talk with city-city county planning staff and consultants developing the region's Transportation 2025 Plan. Here your chance to learn about the process and provide input.
KANSAS. USA
Give us your input
Public meeting
5 to 7 p.m., Eudora City Hall, 4 E. 7th
Tuesday, April 17
12 noon to 1:30 p.m., University of Kansas Kansas Union, Fourth Floor traditions area
More information available at the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Office, City Hall, 6th and Massachusetts, (785) 832-3150. Written comments due April 17 to Transportation Planner, Planning Office, PO Box 708, Lawrence 66044,
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