A Note from Cottonwood Corners

Local floods on the streams and small rivers occurred at frequent intervals throughout our history.  In general, 1908 appears to have been a serious flood year for most small streams in the North Central States.  These streams were natural places where our earliest homesteaders located their homes.  For them, needed water and wood were easily available.

We have no idea how many of these homesteaders drowned in 1908 or were forced to relocate.  At that time adequate warning was not possible.  Also, most of these folks had no knowledge or experience of weather, flooding, and the behavior of “Mother Nature” out on the sparsely settled Dakota frontier.

Historic main-stem floods on the Missouri River include those of 1844, 1881, 1903, 1915, 1943, and 1951.  Those living in Gregory County and eastern Lyman County in 1903 were not involved in a spring roundup which was organized by the Stock Growers Association.  By that time the homesteaders in the area controlled the grazing of their cattle and they locally dealt with the cattle who thought the “grass was greener on the other side of the fence.”  Folks living next to the Missouri River and on the islands surrounded by the river in the early 1900s had to be ready to move on a moment’s notice in April and May.

The last significant flooding on the upper Missouri River occurred in 1952 during the middle of the construction of the Corps of Engineers dams.  The flood of April 1952 on the Missouri was unprecedented in area inundated.

The accumulation of an extensive snowfield during the winter of 1951 – 52 had become abnormally heavy over eastern Montana and southern North Dakota.  It extended to the White River in South Dakota and across northeastern South Dakota into Minnesota.

River ice had little opportunity to deteriorate and soften until the arrival of warm weather during the last week of March.  Near the close of March, ice cover in the main stem of the Missouri was 24 inches at Pierre, 25 inches at Mobridge, 28 inches at Bismarck, and 23 inches at Williston, North Dakota.  The ice breakup was slow, reaching Yankton by March 18.

The breakup, moving upstream in South Dakota from the south, reached Geddes on March 30, Chamberlain on April 1, Pierre on April 4, and Mobridge on April 5.  The last 50 miles of ice cover, between Bismarck and Mobridge, moved out on April 8.  The crest moved downstream without further jamming.

The Bad, White, and Niobrara rivers all broke up during the last few days of March.  Fort Pierre underwent a long period of flooding.  First there was the flooding from the ice jams near the mouth of the Bad River.  Then came the flood on the Missouri River.

In South Dakota, the flood of 1952 was the worst disaster ever to strike Pierre and Fort Pierre.  During the first week of April, Fort Pierre had been partly flooded because of ice jams near the mouth of the Bad River.  This had hardly subsided when the second week of April brought the devastating flood on the Missouri.  Fort Pierre was eighty-five percent inundated.  Except for the few left behind to save the power and water plants, the town was completely evacuated.  At the height of the flood, the city was deserted.

Across the river at Pierre, one-hundred blocks, most of the business section, were flooded.  On April 10 the Missouri reached a crest of 25.35 feet at Pierre, 10.35 feet above flood stage.

Along the river, the flood progressed down-stream from Pierre.  Flood stages rose very high where contained within narrow valleys.  In other places, the crest dropped down as the river flooded widely across the valley.  Chunks of ice as large as city blocks floated down the river.

On April 11, the Missouri crest reached Chamberlain, reaching an all-time high of 25.55 feet.  A portion of the railroad bridge was sept away.  The next day, a 22.55 foot crest passed Wheeler Bridge, near Geddes, and valley flooding was becoming very widespread from Geddes and Niobrara, Nebraska, to Sioux City.  South Dakota farmers suffered heavy losses from Yankton to Sioux City.  Flooding ranged from seven to ten miles wide between Yankton and Vermillion and from three to five miles wide from Vermillion to Sioux City.

All previous records of flood stage were exceeded on the Missouri River from Mobridge, South Dakota to Rulo Nebraska, except at Yankton.  After the spring flood crest had passed, closure on the river at the Fort Randall Dam was attained at 1:10 p.m. on July 20, 1952.

The prime characteristic of the 1952 flood was that it came from snowmelt.  In the Missouri River basin it was due almost entirely to the rapid melting of an abnormal snow cover in the Dakotas and eastern Montana.

Almost half of the Missouri Basin was involved in the 1952 flood.  Nationwide, eleven lives were lost, a very low figure in the statistics of major floods.  Seven of those deaths occurred in South Dakota.  Six on the Bad River and one on the Big Sioux River.  Of the Bad River deaths, five were the result of an automobile accident in which the vehicle rolled into the turbulent flood waters.  The other loss of life was attributed to the inability to reach medical facilities due to high water.

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on May 10, 2023