The Flood of 1938 Excerpt from: Bridge Dams On The Mohawk: David A. Watt’s Marvelous Creation by Michael Riley

 

The Flood of 1938

Excerpt from: Bridge Dams On The Mohawk: David A. Watt’s Marvelous Creation

by Michael Riley

    “On the morning of Tuesday, September 20, 1938, the Schenectady Gazette carried a front-page story on a hurricane approaching southern Florida, with the estimated landfall being somewhere between Palm Beach and the Keys.  This being a morning paper, the reporting was hours old by the time people in the Mohawk Valley read about it.  During the day on the 20th the storm turned north without hitting Florida at all.  By the 21st, the storm was southeast of Virginia with a forward speed of 50mph.  On the 22nd, the storm had tracked over the middle of Long Island and into New England.  And by the 23rd, the storm had slowed and turned to the northwest, placing it over Ontario, Canada. Newspaper reports say that between 125 to 700 were killed, mostly along the coast where towns and cities were caught unaware.

   Although mostly a coastal storm, locally the effect of the storm was quite severe.  The Hudson (river) was expected to be 26 feet over flood stage at Troy, and the Troy Times Record reported that a barge had been swept downstream over the Federal dam, but all hands had been saved.  On the morning of the 22nd, the Schenectady Gazette reported that the Mohawk River had risen 6 feet after 55 hours of steady rain… Along the Mohawk River the village of Mohawk was under 4 feet of water, the fairgrounds at Fonda were flooded.  The Canal between Waterford and  Utica was closed to traffic, and the upper gates of the Mohawk Dams were raised.  As happened in 1913 and 1922, the frames collected the floating debris and the water soon backed up and started to flow around dams.  The flood reached a depth of six feet over the lock walls.  The handrails were torn away, lock machinery was flooded and filled with sediment, dam gates were covered in debris, thousands of tons of earth from around the ends of the locks was washed into the channel, buoy boats were sunk, buoys were swept away, and lock houses were lost.  There was no specific mention of the damage done to the dam structures in the papers.  Most of the damage was to dams between Rotterdam Junction and Tribes Hill (dams 5 to 8), likely due to the additional flow from the Schoharie Creek.  At Tribes Hill, the highway approaches to the bridge were washed away.  However, tugs and tows tied up at the lock survived.  At Cranesville, the yard between the lock and West Shore Railroad was washed away.  The Superintendent of Public Works wrote that flooding greatly endangered the movable dams; ‘There was a time during the height of the flood when we feared that four of these costly structures might be destroyed.’    Amazingly, by September 29 the newspapers reported that the canal had been reopened to traffic, albeit much work had yet to be done and the total recovery would take six months.  This appears to show that the dams themselves had little damage, as the cost was estimated to be $200,000, about $3.5 million in 2018 dollars.  Knowing that more floods were likely to come, one of the damage remediation measures was to build concrete spillways and other hard surfaces around the dams.  You can see this today as you wander about the lock grounds.  Note how the hard surfaces are constructed to allow water to flow over them.

   An interesting note is that prior to the 1938 flooding, many articles had been written about how the Barge Canal had saved the towns and villages along the Mohawk Valley due to the many water control measures set in place, such as the Delta Dam, and the channel dredging to 12 feet.  These typically showed up after a large flood had swept through the valley. ‘The deep channel of the Barge Canal carried off the water, whereas, in the days before its construction, such a great flood would have covered the flats and streets of nearly every river town.  The Canal has paid for itself in carrying off many floods in the Mohawk Valley since it was built in 1918.’ The paper went even further in 1936 making the bold statement that the valley was free from flood disasters, going as far to write; ‘The people of the Mohawk Valley want it generally known that the prospective industrial concerns can locate in this great industrial section without fear of flooding.    Indeed, the Mohawk river region stands along in its immunity from flood.’ *                                                                                                             

   After 1938, the paper once again made this claim, which was picked up in papers across the State, where the cost of the construction of the Barge Canal was weighed against its protective powers in an interesting spin where; ‘The flood of September 21-22 was a real test of the Barge Canal, as it was a straight water flood and not a flood caused by the combination of ice and water, like the one which caused so much damage at Amsterdam this spring.’”

Pages 44-46, 2019

 

– Michael Riley is the President of the American  Canal Society and a board member of the Canal Society of New York State. Membership in these, and all canal societies, is strongly encouraged to help  protect and preserve all our canal sites and history. 

   Proceeds from his book, Bridge Dams On the Mohawk, are donated to both the Canal Society of NY and the American Canal Society.  You can purchase the book by contacting the author:  AmericanCanals.org or NewYorkCanals.org

 

*Canajoharie Courier, Canajoharie, NY

**The Evening News, Towawanda, NY 11/03/1938

Images that accompany this article courtesy of the Montgomery County NY Dept. of History and Archives—Fonda, NY.