One year after the terrible storm that caused the Walnut Grove dam disaster, an even worse, two-part storm flooded Yavapai County.
The first phase started the morning of Monday, February 16, 1891 and lasted until Thursday the 19th. The first two days the rains were constant, but gentle, saturating the ground. On Wednesday, however, around noon, Granite Creek had swollen and the rain increased steadily until 3PM, when it started to come down in torrents for seven solid hours.
Around 5:30PM, an engineer was weary of crossing the Granite Creek railroad bridge and decided to test it by running some flat cars on it first, “and it appearing safe, he started across with the engine. As the engine reached a point immediately over the middle of the stream the timbers commenced to creek and give way," the Weekly Journal-Miner described. The engineer had no choice but to pull the throttle wide open. He barely reached the other side just in time to look back and see two bents from the bridge dislodging and carried away by the roaring creek.
The southbound train stopped shy of the bridge over the creek near Whipple and remained there all night when it was realized that two bents of that bridge had washed away. ”Streams near Whipple were so high that it was found impossible to get out with wagons to bring the mail in,” the same paper continued. Indeed all train traffic came to a halt.
Around 7PM, along Granite Creek, the kitchen of the Chinese wash house was carried off downstream “and the remainder of the building was soberly undermined [and] it now stands at an angle of about 45 degrees,” the Journal-Miner reported. Around the same time, on Lynx creek, a dam under construction to facilitate hydraulic mining washed away nearly down to the original creek bed.
“About [8PM, Granite] creek overflowed its banks at Willis street and a large stream of water commenced pouring down Granite street,” the paper said. Three houses were surrounded by water and the occupying families had to be rescued by carriages to get to higher ground.
Just before 10PM, a house on the south side of town broke loose from its moorings “and, with all the furniture it contained, started down [Granite Creek] with the mad rush of the raging torrent of waters,” the paper related. “It remained unbroken for quite a distance sailing down the stream like a boat, but after successfully rounding one or two sharp curves of the stream it began to go to pieces and the work of destruction was completed when it struck the Granite Creek foot bridge. (The village had not yet spent the money to build a proper bridge over any part of Granite Creek since teams and wagons could generally ford it without difficulty. So only inexpensive pedestrian “foot bridges” were in place at this time.)
Shortly after, the rain moderated, but the temperature took a drastic dive and the precipitation turned into snow which fell continually until sunrise. As the snow began, Granite Creek hit its highest recorded depth since the town was founded. The water was only a few inches from the foot bridge at Gurley St. The creek had grown wide enough to cover the approaches to the bridge on both sides, however, and Granite street was already covered with water around Martin Maier’s Exchange saloon. The water was reported to be about 18 inches higher than the storm of the previous year which caused the terrible Walnut Grove dam disaster.
The complete, heartbreaking story of the Walnut Grove Dam Disaster of 1890 in Yavapai County. It is still regarded as the worst natural disaster in Arizona history.
One man, who built a bulkhead across his property on McCormick street found it washed-out and water stretched far into his lot. Two other bulkheads along the creek were seriously undermined. “Considerable damage to property occurred along the creek,” the paper observed. Half a barn was taken by the waters; fences were lost, and lots were “badly washed.”
Yet this was just the first phase of nature’s dramatic and terrible fury.
After a couple of cold, but dry days, snow began to fall steadily Saturday evening and by Sunday morning, it was 4-6 inches deep in Prescott with the surrounding mountains covered with two feet and more. Then around 10AM it turned to rain “and continued during the day and all through Sunday night, and all day Monday there was a steady downpour,” the Arizona Republican explained. Granite Creek started rising about 4PM Sunday and continued to rise all through Monday.
The Chinese wash house, so terribly damaged a few days previous, was now carried off downstream. One lot lost a barn, a woodshed full of wood, and a small dwelling house. “With the washing away of the Chinese washhouse, the water had a free sweep and commenced pouring over the bank into Granite street, rushing down that thoroughfare fully two feet deep,” the Republican apprised.
Clark & Adams’ boarding house on the north side of town washed away around daylight with all of its contents, and shortly afterward a large portion of their corral, along with two oxen, were washed away. Their loss was about $500 (about $17,500 today.)
Two men, who were returning from the Senator mine, attempted to cross Granite creek. Their wagon was upended by the force of the water and both men were thrown off. One of the men “sustained quite painful injuries,” and one of the horses was drowned. The wagon was also lost to the raging waters.
A new high water mark was reached at 7:30PM surpassing the record set just a few days before. Granite street was “a raging torrent” for three blocks and nearly all the buildings along that stretch were lost. The flood began rising up along both sides of Gurley and Willis streets.
Indeed the raging torrents actually changed the course of the creek: “The stream, instead of circling around the rear of the buildings facing Granite Street,” the Republican continued, it now was running “straight down in an entirely new channel. A new channel is also said to have been cut by the stream below town through the Chineses gardens.”
It was reported that the waters made a “great effort to get into Fort Misery, the headquarters of Mayor John Howard.” The Journal-Miner suggested that if the waters had continued a few hours longer, Fort Misery (now located on the Sharlot Hall Museum campus,) would have been lost.
The colorful history of "Fort Misery". The first building in Prescott would become the oldest surviving log cabin in Arizona.
As far as the railroad was concerned, “the Willow creek bridge was washed out and all the work to repair the damage on the Granite creek bridge near Whipple was lost to the second flood. The road to that bridge suffered several washouts,” the Republican noted. A portion of the Prescott & Arizona Central railroad roundhouse was also swept away.
“A large portion of the Granite creek bridge [near Whipple] is gone,” the Journal-Miner reported, “and [it] will take several days to repair it… The damage to the Verde River bridge [near the Sullivan lake dam today,] is so serious that it will [also] take several days to repair.”
The flood also affected the great East-West artery of the Atlantic & Pacific railroad. For over three days no train was able to get to, nor through, Prescott Junction; (today’s Seligman.) Indeed, it took nearly a week for the mail to resume.
The stage to Phoenix was cancelled and the stage to Jerome had to turn back.
As the waters receded, “reports continue[d] to come in from various portions of the county in regard to the damage done by recent storms and high water, each report being almost a repetition of one from some other section,” the Journal-Miner lamented. “Damage to property in many of the valleys has been very heavy.”
- One ranch on the lower Aqua Fria lost everything except the house.
- The only thing left of Joe Mayer’s place on the Big Bug creek was one solitary tree.
- The narrow gauge railroad bridge at Big Bug was swept away.
- A couple of ranches on the Granite creek north of town had their crops completely washed away.
- The American Ranch flume was completely lost as well as a portion of fence.
Wood, buildings and refuse weren’t the only thing to come careening down Granite creek. One rancher downstream only had 5% of his crop left standing, but he did salvage a bedstead and a stove which washed onto his land. Another person found a gold nugget in the creek weighing two-thirds of an ounce.
After the disaster, the Journal-Miner reported on a special meeting of the city council where two resolutions were passed. Firstly: “All persons owning or interested in property adjacent to Granite creek are hereby authorized, at their own expense, to erect and construct such breakwaters as they may deem for the best protection for their property adjacent to said stream.” Improvements would require the supervision of the street committee. Furthermore, “the city of Prescott shall not be held responsible for any damage that may hereafter occur by reason of the construction of said breakwaters…” For businesses that had the money to build breakwaters, this offered a possible solution. But the rest of the residents near the creek, who bought there because it was all they could afford, were generally unable to make such improvements and could suffer even more when the extra diverted water encroached their lots.
The taming of Granite Creek through storm water control and the construction of the two Goldwater lake dams would still be several years in the future.
Despite the dreadful damage, no one was reported as missing or killed "although several close calls" were reported to the Journal-Miner.
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SOURCES:
Weekly Journal-Miner, 2/25/1891, Pg. 3, Col. 2.
Arizona Republican, 3/1/1891, Pg. 1, Col. 7; Pg. 4, Col. 2.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/4/1891, Pg. 3, Col. 1 & 7.
Tucson Citizen, 3/5/1891, Pg. 4, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/11/1891, Pg. 3, Col. 6.
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