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Even Worse, in Many Ways: The 1935 Flood

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A couple of weeks ago in this space, we looked back at the horrible flood of 1972 – forty-nine years ago. This week I thought we should look at a flood that has almost faded from memory, for it took place 86 years back, on July 8, 1935. That flood killed 44 people here in New York – about twice the toll of Hurricane Agnes.

Like the Agnes flood, it sprang up unexpecteldy, in the small hours of the morning. But in 1935 far fewer households had telephone or radio, and forecasting was noplace near 1972 levels, let along what we’re accustomed to in 2021. Many got the word late, and many never got it at all. On the Conhocton River, EVERYTHING flooded – Cohocton, Avoca, Kanona, Bath, Savona, Campbell, Coopers Plains, Gang Mills, and Painted Post. On the Canisteo, so did Arkport, North Hornell, Hornell, Canisteo, Addison. Hammondsport, Penn Yan, Keuka Village, Watkins Glen, Ithaca, Waverly, Sayre, Owego, Binghamton, Syracuse – EVERYTHING flooded.

Railroad webs were ripped to shreds in Hornell and Bath. The short lines from Greenwood to Canisteo, Bath to Hammondsport, and Penn Yan to Dresden all went broke.

The Bath flood took in the library, the county complex, two banks, the Catholic, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches. People used boats and canoes as far out as the post office. The V.A. was cut off for days.

Rushing water wrenched out the rails, steps, and other infrastructure in the gorge of Watkins Glen, and carried the gatehouse down to the Seneca lakefront. Damage barred any further vehicle traffic on Addison’s suspension bridge – it was pedestrians only until becoming a total loss in 1972.

All of “the Flat,” including city hall and numerous churches, flooded in Corning. Corning Glass Works was in the middle of a three-month controlled cooldown on the 200-inch disc for Mount Palomar. They lost the cooling for three days as they moved the generator to higher ground, but the disc came through fine.

Deep gorges were gouged out of roads near Arkport, and streets in Hammondsport. The Catholic and Episcopal churches suffered badly, as did the Academy. The Square in Hammondsport was flooded, and so was everything downhill from there to the Lake. Brandy casks were scattered erratically about, just like the rocks that washed down from the Glen.

Governor Lehman described the devastation as running from Hornell to the Catskills, and from the state line to the Mohawk Valley.

Ithaca got almost 8 inches of rain in 24 hours, with Cortland not far behind. (Normally our area gets about 36 inches a year, including snowmelt.) Norwich and Hammondsport had 6.10 inches. There were 8.52 inches in Delhi, edging out Burdett at 8.50. Ovid had 7.61, Oneonta 5.24, and Haskinville 3.35.

Avoca lost a lot of prime topsoil, and of course tens of thousands of people lost their crops, and in some cases their livestock. Of course, the fact that this was going on during the Great Depression made it all even more of a horror.

Red Cross, National Guard, and Salvation Army were quickly on the scene, and so was Governor Lehman. Help arrived quickly but FORMER Governor Roosevelt, now in the White House, was thinking more broadly, and farther into the future. We’ll see what he was up to in another blog!

The 1935 Flood Devastated Our Region

It’s almost faded from living memory now, but the July 8 flood of 1935 was just as big a disaster regionally as the June flood of 1972 would be. Just as in 1972, the ’35 flood sprang up without warning in the dark hours before dawn. It killed 44 people in New York and Pennsylvania.

*The 1935 event was actually a collection of pretty-much simultaneous floods… on the east-flowing Chemung, the west-flowing Susquehanna, and the north-flowing Genesee, plus all their tributaries; on the Finger Lakes; and on the north-running inlets and outlets of the lakes.

*In Hammondsport the Glen Brook, the Gulf Stream, and Keuka Inlet all flooded. Since the village mainly lies along Glen Brook, and slides downhill from there, it was quickly inundated. Charles Champlin recalled being woken up in the middle of the night at his home on Lake Street, then carried to safety through deep water by his teen-aged cousin Tony Doherty.

*The flood gouged out Orchard Street six feet deep, and scattered brandy casks all across the village. (Tales still abound of how far the casks went, who picked them up, and what they did with the contents.) Farther down Keuka Lake, Keuka Village was flooded too. Damage led the Erie Railroad to give up on the Bath & Hammondsport line, which was then bought by local investors. (The New York-Pennsylvania Railroad likewise gave up its Canisteo connection.)

*Both the Erie and the D.L. & W. lines were unusable in Bath, where boats and canoes plied the waters as far out as the post office.

*The flood wrecked the Erie yards in Hornell, where a Mrs. Case was electrocuted to death as she tried to rescue a lamp in a flooded living room. Her neighbors had taken in a passing family whose car was flooded, and these strangers helped them cart their furnishings to the second floor.

*The Corning Glass Works was flooded, endangering the 200-inch mirror for Mount Palomar Observatory, but the disk later proved unscathed.

*Addison was flooded, and water was knee-deep in Canisteo. In Coopers Plains, farmer J.J. Baker posted a notice looking for two lost heifers and three pigs… we don’t know if he ever got his stock back. Much of Avoca’s farmland was devastated. Things were so bad that at the end of 1935 an Avoca sharecropper received one calf as his total share for a year of mighty labor.

*The flood wrecked the trails, stairs, and infrastructure at Watkins Glen State Park, and carried the gatehouse almost down to Seneca Lake. Owego, Binghamton, Wellsville, Geneseo, and much of Rochester were underwater, along with their neighbors. The water gouged canyons near Arkport.

*A day or two later Governor Herbert Lehman was splashing through the region, among other things sharing a cup of water with a Salvation Army man in Hammondsport. (They had set up a water statuon at the Presbyterian church.) Hornell residents got water at the armory, from the National Guard. Red Cross workers had bread baked for Hornell, and surveyed damage in Hammondsport.

*Longer-range federal projects aimed to make future disasters far less frequent. The Arkport, Almond, and Letchworth dams were created. Civilian Conservation Corps lads planted trees and dug drainage ditches. In some places the rivers were moved, in many places new dikes went up. Avoca became a pilot program for flood control. In 1972 Hornell was spared a repeat disaster by one inch on the Almond dam. That one inch on that one day must have more then justified the original cost of the dam. And that’s just looking at the dollar damage that it prevented… not speaking at all of the lives it saved.

Disaster!

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Disasters have struck our region since time immemorial. The Sullivan invasion (during the Revolutionary War) may be the first one about which we have detailed information.

*We are now in the bicentennial of a quiet catastrophe that brutalized Europe and North America – the Year Without a Summer. Snow feel every month of 1816, and frost formed very month. Tuscarora Creek had half an inch of ice in May, and a quarter inch in September. Crops failed, and livestock died.

*This is all believed to have resulted from the gigantic eruption of Mount Tambora in the East Indies, along with several other major eruptions and a low sun cycle. Steuben County was only 20 years old, so this was till largely frontier back then.

*Because of the smaller numbers involved, and because of the limited collateral damage, we don’t usually think of highway wrecks in terms of disasters. But several major crashes stand out.

*The Cady Crash took place August 23, 1936. Nine members of the Cady family were coming back from Woodhull when Forrest Cady, driving a 1935 coach in the rain, missed a curve at Jasper Five Corners, crossed a ditch, sideswiped a maple tree, then hit another maple head-on. Six of the nine occupants were killed, and one of them was only a few days from giving birth, meaning the loss of the unborn child as well. The six dead were buried side-by-side in Troupsburg Cemetry.

*The Avoca Bus Crash, December 14, 1943, I suppose was our county’s biggest highway toll. A busload of workers were heading from Avoca to their defense jobs at Ingersoll-Rand when the bus was sideswiped by an oncoming tractor-trailer at about 5:30 AM — still pretty dark in December. The bus was thrown over onto its right side, and then caught fire. Eleven men, including the driver, were killed. In year 2000 a monument was erected in Avoca.

*The Benton Amish Crash, July 19, 2012, actually took place in Yates County, but the victims were all from Jasper and Woodhull. A driver attempted to pass a slow-moving tractor on Pre-Emption Road in Benton. He struck an oncoming van carrying Amish farm folks who were on a tour to study agricultural techniques. This crash spun the van into the path of the tractor, which crushed it. Six people were killed and eight injured. The dead included a husband and wife who left 12 children ranging in age from 9 months to 18 years.

*Naturally this created a crisis not just for the families but for the Amish community and for the larger community as well. “English” neighbors provided transportation to and back from Strong Hospital, pitched in with farm work, helped to shield their neighbors from the morbidly curious.

*Floods have a long history in our region. One study, running from 1784 to January 1999, lists 84 significant floods, including the Ice Flood, the Big Flood, the Great Inundation, and several Pumpkin Floods.

*Probably the two worst, both within living memory, were the 1935 flood (44 dead) and the 1972 Hurricane Agnes flood (19 dead in Steuben County). They had eerily similar footprints and similar dates (late June, early July), and both sprang up in the early morning hours.

*They clobbered Corning, Bath, Elmira, Hornell, Hammondsport, Ithaca, Wellsville, Rochester, Owego, Binghamton – everything. It would take years of work and millions in treasure to recover.

*I’ll be speaking on these and other regional disasters (including fires, epidemics, and train wrecks) at the next Steuben County Historical Society presentation, 4 PM Friday September 9 at Bath Fire Hall. The event is free and open to the public, and we’ll also have copies of my book, “The 1972 Flood in New York’s Southern Tier,” for sale. Hope to see you!

Eighty Years Ago — the Horrendous Flood of 1935

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Once upon a time there was a flood that sprang up in the pre-dawn hours of an early summer’s morning, snatching away lives and houses while wrecking railroads, bridges, and highways. Many reading these words will say, “ah, yes, I remember it well.”
Maybe not. Because we’re speaking of the 1935 flood, which burst forth in the early-morning hours of July 8, eighty years ago this week.
While the 1972 flood arose from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes, the flood of 1935 sprang from several days of heavy rain – the earth and the watercourses just couldn’t hold any more.
As in 1972, the waters broke forth while most folks were sound asleep – a factor (in both cases) that contributed to tragedy.
When the 1972 flood struck the Corning-Painted Post area, many people at best got a few minutes of warning. But in 1935 a great many people had no telephone. Scarcely anyone outside the cities and villages had a radio, or even electricity. So for many people, there was no warning at all.
So… what happened?
The Genesee River flooded, inundating Wellsville, Mount Morris, and Rochester.
Crosby Creek, Bennett’s Creek, and the Canisteo River flooded, putting much of Hornell underwater. Hornell was an important rail center, and this flood ripped many of the lines to shreds. Farther downstream, Addison too was flooded.
The Conhocton River flowed into the grounds of the “Soldiers Home,” or Bath V.A. All of downtown Bath flooded, with people using canoes and rowboats out as far as the post office at William and Liberty Streets. A few steps up Liberty, the flood spared the municipal building by literally the width of the sidewalk. Davenport Library was in the flooded zone, leading to the loss of historic documents. Once again, railroad lines were wrecked. Upstream and downstream, Kanona and Savona flooded.
Most of Hammondsport village was inundated. Some streets, most of them still unpaved, were gouged into canyons. The churches, many homes, and the downtown business district were all trashed.
Torrents pouring out of the Glen tore through the Mallory Mill and its grounds, where Roualet Wine Company had stored casks of brandy. These were dumped all across the village as far down as the waterfront, leading to numerous local family legends as to who got the casks, how they got them, and what they did with them afterward. (Roualet went bankrupt.)
Cataracts rushing out through Watkins Glen tore away the state park gatehouse, and carried it down toward Seneca Lake. Ithaca flooded.
Farm livestock was carried away from Coopers Plains.
Painted Post and Corning flooded on both sides of the Chemung River, including Market Street, Corning Glass Works, and Ingersoll Rand. Rising water threatened the painstakingly-made 200-inch disc for Mount Palomar observatory, which was in the midst of a months-long cooling period. Rising water forced Glass Works men to move the generator that powered temperature-control equipment, meaning no control at all for several days. To everyone’s relief, the disc came through unscathed.
Elmira flooded. Owego flooded. Binghamton flooded. As in 1972, it would take a week or more just to sort out what had happened, and where everybody was.
Governor Lehman rushed to the area, as did Red Cross, Salvation Army, and National Guard. Hornell Armory and Hammondsport Presbyterian Church were two of many local centers where drinking water was trucked in. This was the midst of the Depression, but men with horse teams suddenly found themselves (and their animals) in high demand for cleanup and construction work.
This was a hydrologically-complex flood… actually a widespread set of simultaneous separate floods. One, for instance, occupied the north-flowing Genesee River and its tributaries. A separate flood flowed from the east-running Conhocton-Canisteo-Chemung System. Another flood followed the west-flowing Susquehanna and its tributaries. Three separate floods engulfed Hammondsport, Ithaca, and Watkins Glen.
New Deal programs set to work ameliorating the problem. C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys worked on hoe-and-shovel drainage projects, while Alfred and Almond dams were soon rising. The 1972 flood, believe it or not, would have been worse without this earlier work.
And, believe it or not, 1935 was arguably worse than 1972, with forty-four dead region-wide, as opposed to nineteen. Of course, the 1935 flood WAS essentially a regional event, while the total nationwide death toll from Hurricane Agnes was around 130, plus more in the West Indies. Since only 37 years separated the two disasters, a great many people in 1972 must have experienced an utterly horrifying déjà vu.