Caldwell County MO Archives History .....FLOODS IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 12:57 pm

	FLOODS IN CALDWELL COUNTY
	Narrators:  Wm. Guffey and Mrs. Zelma Filson

     The recent heavy rains of the spring of 1935 which raised the creeks to 
the bank-tops brought back recollections of early floods in this county.  Or 
perhaps, the old-timers told about floods of which they had heard from their 
parents.
     The old people all spoke about the tradition of a bad flood in 1844 in 
this county, the freshet of 1844, as they called it.  Mr. William Guffey said 
his grandfather came into the county that year and he felt that flood.  Mr. 
Guffey's grandmother was alive in his youth and she spoke of it.  It 
especially affected Shoal Creek in the Bonanza country around the present 
Gould Farm and the rise was due to a rain of 5 or 6 days.  It ruined the 
spring crops on the bottoms as well as the vegetable gardens.  For days there 
was no communication with the least bit of outside world.  No mail came 
through for weeks.  The farmer had to plant all over again.  He used quick 
growing crops.
     In 1870, there was a flood whom many people actually remember.  It 
occurred in the same district along old Shoal and it established a "flood 
record" the water covering hundreds of rich bottom land.  This was the time 
when Jim Filson who had built his new cabin found that the Shoal water had 
come into his house, so he had to move over and stay with his brother Wash 
Filson for a few days till the water went down.  That was on the old Jim 
Filson farm, in N.Y. township.  At that time, there was but one bridge in the 
county, so it did no harm to the bridges. 
     The next destructive flood to follow in the path of the creeks came in 
June 1904, when all the streams in the county went on a tear.  Lick Fork, Log, 
Long, Mill, usually well-mannered, joining Shoal this year in a rampage after 
a very heavy rain of six hours.  The Gould Farm folks declared that it was 
fully as bad as the 1870 flood, and perhaps as bad as the 1844 flood, judging 
from the reports which had been handed down.  This 1904 flood swept away 
bridges or damaged them badly.  Land between Hamilton and Kingston was covered 
with water to the depth of two to six feet.  Allen Mumpower's ice houses at 
Kingston were swept away.  The James bridge east of Kingston went down after 
many people had crossed it.  All the corn was lost.  The farmers drove their 
stock up on the hills - or saw them drowned.  E.G. Wallace was in a very bad 
section, rich bottom lands, four feet of water between his house and the 
barns, but he saved all his stock.  Mr. Evans, a Welsh farmer, lost all his 
hogs.  The water was two feet deep in his house.  (The interviewer knew all 
these people and talked with them after that flood.)  The flood occurred about 
daylight on a Saturday morning and by midnight, the flood had subsided.  All 
Sunday, people drove in from everywhere to see the results.  Even then, old 
Shoal looked like a real river.
     Interviews  1933, 34, 35.


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