| |
1935
Flood - Colorado River Bridge in Columbus,
Texas
Photo courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library 00160 |
The
April showers of 1935 may or may not have brought May flowers. If they had, they
would almost certainly have been swept away into the Gulf of Mexico. Central and
South Central Texas experienced heavy rains that Spring which greatly affected
Austin, San
Antonio and lesser cities like Junction,
Uvalde and D'Hanis.
Although Texas was hit with record-breaking
rainfall in 2007, vastly improved infrastructure prevented the devastation which
Central Texas and
the Hill Country suffered
in the 30s. (See Rob Hafernik's Dam
Fun: A July 4th Trip Up the Chain of Highland Lakes.)
The 2007 flooding
around Burnet, Marble
Falls and Cedar Park brought nearly 20 inches of rain in a 24-hour period
which is far more than the 9.21 inches of rain Austin
received for the month of May 1935 or the 9.71 inches that June. But when one
factors in ground saturation and no run-off channels, the resulting damage of
the 1935 rains was far worse. |
 |
1935
Flood - Austin, Texas
Photographer: H.M. Stene, a cartographer for TXDoT |
1935
Flood - Austin, Texas
Courtesy of Austin History Center, PICA 008484-A |
| In
1935, while Austin was receiving its
deluge, San Antonio was hit even
harder with 14.07 inches in May with 8.41 inches the next month. The stores around
Alamo Plaza were flooded in late May and tiny D'Hanis,
Texas reported a hard-to-believe 20-24 inches of rain in just 2 Hours and
45 Minutes. |
View
of Cibolo Creek Bridge on Highway 66 North of San
Antonio
River near flood stage. |
| Early
to mid-June rains approached 20 inches in many other smaller communities from
Uvalde to Austin.
The Llano, Colorado and Pedernales Rivers all reached flood stage, affecting the
cities of Junction, Llano,
and Fredericksburg.
On June 14 and 15 the Colorado River was just 1 foot below the record reached
in July of 1869. |
| The
Llano River crested at its record level ever (at that time). June also brought
flooding on the Nueces River and West Nueces River. Flooding extended from north
of Brackettville
to the Rio Grande (just downstream from Del
Rio). Uvalde
reported 12.5 inches within a 12 hour period and the total for that day was 17.6
inches. |
| Flood
scene of the Nueces River, Highway No. 2 south of Cotulla |
| The
flooding of 1935 was instrumental in the building of the chain of lakes and dams
from San Saba County to Matagorda. The flow of the Colorado River is uninterrupted
from Austin to the coast.
The towns of Bastrop, Smithville,
La Grange, Columbus
and Wharton have all had their share
of high water incidents and the loss of bridges. But none since the construction
of the dams. |
Photos
and Story by Rob Hafernik
DAMS:
Tom Miller Dam, Mansfield Dam, Max Starke Dam, Wirtz Dam, Inks
Dam & Buchanan Dam
LAKES:
Lake Austin, Lake Travis, Lake Marble
Falls, Lake LBJ, Inks lake & Lake Buchanan |
Tom
Miller Dam - with three and half floodgates open
See Dam
Fun |
The Great Flood
of 1935
A Narrow
EscapeExcerpted
from the diary of Maryleene Bolen Christensen
Shared by her daughter, Carolyn
Oldfather
A recent letter from Carolyn Oldfather included an excerpt
from her mother’s diary. It’s a first-hand account of a narrow escape from almost
certain destruction from the roiling waters of the (usually placid) Llano River.
Ms. Oldfather and her sister are preserving her mother’s work as a family project
and we thank her for allowing us to share this account with our readers. What
follows is an entry from the Spring of 1935, when the author, Maryleene Bolen
Christensen was approaching her 13th birthday: - Editor
“When we got
to Llano we stayed
with Uncle Walt and Mildred... for a little while. I guess Mama and Daddy rented
a little cabin by the river. As I remember the place, it must have had one room
and a little lean-to where we kids slept.
Marguriete [Maryleene’s sister]
and I had so much fun while we lived in Llano
– we would play on the spillway below the dam. The spillway was just behind Uncle
Walt’s and Mildred’s house.I think Mildred and Uncle Walt were renting [that]
great big old house.
While we stayed with them, we could hear the water
splashing over the dam and down the spillway at night and we loved the sound.
The bridge across the Llano River was one mile across and Marguriete and I had
lots of fun running across it.
One day Mama decided to go back home –
maybe because it had started to rain – or was it because she was just tired of
living that way. Anyway, we went back to San
Angelo, and it was a good thing – because the day after we left, the river
flooded and washed that big bridge away, and the cabin we’d lived in and all the
lovely old trees that had been growing along the river banks for many years. I’m
sure many of them were big pecan trees. It was total devastation!” |
Llano
River Bridge in Llano
being washed away by the 1935 flood
|
La
Grange High Water
Mark, July 9, 1869
Photo by John Troesser, 2006 |
| Texas
Escapes, in its purpose to preserve historic, endangered and vanishing
Texas, asks that anyone wishing to share their local history and vintage/historic
photos, please contact
us. | |
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