Menu
Flood of 1935 -- 'The water actually roared'
Artie Lebsack was 15 years old when he witnessed Nebraska's deadliest flood in 1935.
"I remember the screaming of the cattle," he recalled. "I can still hear that sound in my ears."
His sister, Clara Adams, was four at the time. Her most vivid memory was hurrying up the hill to a neighbors house with her mother as she pushed her younger brother in a baby buggy.
"I'll never forget it," she said. "The water actually roared."
The Republican River flood swept into McCook May 31 with an 8-foot tall wall of water, Russ Dowling said at the McCook Heritage Senior Center last week.
Dowling, who was 21 at the time and remembers it clearly, presented a program commemorating the flood with photographs and newspaper accounts along with a tape converted from 16 mm film.
The tape showed in grainy black and white the aftermath of the flood, its rushing waters covering the area now known as Barnett Park.
With the nation gripped in the stranglehold of the Great Depression, farmers struggled not only economically but also with extreme weather conditions that seemed to strike one after another: ongoing drought, swarms of grasshoppers, devastating tornadoes and record heat waves. Dust storms were frequent and so powerful that residents in Washington, D.C., could feel grit in their teeth.
Then in May of 1935, rain started to fall. Dowling estimated 16 inches fell a week before the flood, with a cloudburst in Colorado adding to the precipitation.
The Republican River, already swollen by the rain, quickly rose to flood stage, with two crests recorded, the second larger than the first. Some records show the Republican rose 10 feet in 12 minutes in McCook, with water 20 feet deep in some places and two miles wide.
According to an account written by officials at the McCook Electric Co., which was located south of Barnett Park, the flood hit the McCook area around 10 a.m. with rapidly rising water.
The Republican River grew to an estimated 8,500 feet wide west of McCook, from its normal width of 225 feet, and to 4,100 feet wide east of McCook from 236 feet.
"It just rolled in," Adams said. "Dad couldn't believe a flood was coming."
The churning water brought with it tons of debris, including cattle, trees, telephone poles and houses caught by the wall of water.
Lebsack recalled watching as rooftops, cattle and horses surged by, and not being able to do anything.
The Benkelman Post, dated June 7, described the flood waters as a "vast panorama of dirty yellow water, where thousands of objects were apparent across the expanse of waves."
Accounts were given in the newspaper of residents helplessly watching as people went by on rooftops screaming for assistance, only to strike a tree or deep current and capsize, the bodies found later in the mud.
For cities located at higher elevations, or on a hill like McCook, most homes escaped unscathed. But for towns along the river and hundreds of farmers in the region, the flood was devastating. Positioned near the Republican, Benkelman was especially hard hit, with hundreds trapped as they slept and whole families being swept away.
Reports put the total death count at more than 100, in addition to thousands of lost livestock and massive property damage, railroad and personal losses.
Total farm losses were put at a conservative $26 million, with 74,500 acres of farmland damaged.
As flood waters receded, dead cattle and debris littered the landscape. People went to work freeing live animals caught in the mud and removing the dead carcasses, with 52,000 head of cattle later estimated to be killed.
Bartley alone had 200 head of cattle buried and rescued 75 live animals from sand bars in the river, according to the June 12 issue of The McCook Tribune.
The flood also deposited sand in its wake, along with hundreds of snakes, which Adams can attest to.
"They were coming out of the kitchen cabinets," she recalled, shaking her head. She and her family had returned to their house on South Ninth a few days later, as the water had finally receded from the main floor, although the basement remained flooded.
McCook wasn't left totally untouched. Electricity was out for three days, communication was cut off from the outside world and the water supply was contaminated.
The Tribune reported that 1,000 Civilian Conservation Corps men were allocated to the McCook area to help with the clean-up, with the Red Cross setting up lost-and-found centers and typhoid inoculation tents.
One farmer in the classified ads asked for help in locating 17 heifers and 13 calfs lost west of McCook, while Clark's Style Shoppe, at 217 Main, advertised "Flood Values" with silk dresses for $2.95.
Electricity was restored minimally to McCook after three days, thanks to the workers at the Electric Plant who wrapped the three generators with burlap, Dowling said. It didn't keep the water out as the plant was engulfed by flood waters and trapped 40 men on the roof until they were rescued a day later. But the burlap did keep the mud out, with one motor able to generate enough power to city residents as long as it was used sparingly, the Tribune cautioned.
Afterwards, the electric plant was literally filled with mud, along with branches, trees, and carcasses of dead animals, including a cow, coyote and others.
Although residents at first had to boil water, a chlorinator was hooked up to the water system at a cost of $1,500, according to the Tribune's city council report. The chlorinators "will not prove harmful used commercially but might hasten the action of home brew," a councilman candidly explained.
Since then, several dams and reservoirs have been constructed in the Republican Basin, most in response to the 1935 flood. Flow rates have also decreased over time due to irrigation.
For those who attended Dowling's program, memories of the flood mixed in with other recollections, such as when Lindbergh parked his plane in a McCook pasture and cows licked off the banana oil he used to coat the wings, or when the best hamburger in town could be had for five cents at the Dolliver and Kyle pool hall.
But Adams admitted that she never did learn how to swim, although she did learn how to dive into water.
"I just couldn't swim straight across," she said. "Whether that had anything to do with the flood, I don't know."