Southern Floods and Their Forestry Lessons 



By Herman H. Chapman 

 Professor of Forestry, Yale University 



ON SATURDAY night, July IStli, after a day of high ground, and have had some experience with floods, 

 rain, a continuous downpour set in covering the Many had narrow escapes. Rising waters warned most 

 mountainous region of Western North Carolina, families early in the evening. At the head of Clear Creek, 

 By morning from 10 to 15 inches of water had fallen, as from which the town of Marion, in McDowell County, 

 measured by the records of the Weather Bureau. Upon gets its water supply, the family of James Turner, a moun- 

 the Catawba river, whose sources lie in the Blue Ridge tain patriarch, took refuge at midnight in a small out- 

 east of Mt. Mitchell, a flood started which swept with in- building to escape the encroaching flood, which was whirl- 

 creasing velocity and dest'-uctiveness through the entire ing down trees and logs on its crest. At the instant when 



they had gained 

 this shelter an 

 enormous land- 

 slide started on 

 the mountain 

 directly oppo- 

 site, tore its way 

 down, c o m - 

 jdetely filling 

 and crossing a 

 small ravine, 

 causing the 

 earth to tremble 

 ,ind [dunged 

 nito the stream, 

 sending a great 

 wave up the 

 liank, which, 

 had it been a 

 few seconds 

 sooner, would 

 have eng^^lfed 

 the refugees. 

 \'iolent air cur- 

 rents were 

 caused by this 

 slide which 

 threw the chil- 

 dren about, but 



sands of feet long and from 50 to 300 feet wide in no one was injured. They then fled up the slope and 

 the forest cover, and precipitating the debris on roads, passed the night in the woods without shelter, listen- 

 railroads and into streams, where it was whirled away ing to the boulders grinding together in the flood as it 

 in the mad torrent to be deposited on fertile fields of swept away every vestige of their cornfield in the bot- 

 corn in drifts two to eight feet deep. Swelled beyond tom. Mr. Turner, 76 years old and suflfering from a 

 all previous experience, these raging floods viciously malignant cancer, had been bedridden for months pre- 

 gnawed into their banks. Protecting belts of trees were vious to this experience, but the shock and excitement 

 uprooted and whole fields, 30 to 100 acres in extent, melted restored his strength, and he was up and about, able to 

 into the current and were borne away, leaving a waste of talk of the events of the night with gusto, 

 boulders in place of soil worth $200 an acre. The extent George Bird, forest ranger, whose house was on the 



and suddenness of the damage were almost incredible, and flat, 100 feet from the old brook channel, became aware 

 unless one had seen conditions as they were before this early in the evening that the stream was destroying his 

 flood, he would not believe that the transformation and front yard and eating its way towards the house. He 

 ruin were the result of about twelve hours of high water. frantically emptied the structure of its furniture and 

 The death-list of over eighty persons was kejit down only children, and awaited the moment when it would dis- 

 by the fact that most mountaineers build their homes on appear down stream. But the flood spent itself just 

 476 



length of the 

 river to the sea, 

 carni'ing with 

 it, with one 

 or two excep- 

 tions, every 

 railroad and 

 turnpike bridge 

 on the stream, 

 no matter how 

 substantially 

 built or an- 

 chored. Simi- 

 lar floods oc- 

 curred on other 

 rivers flowing 

 both east and 

 west from these 

 mountain 

 chains. 



Accompany- 

 ing these floods, 

 great 1 a n d - 

 slides, or mud 

 avalanches, 

 occurred on the 

 steep mountain 

 slopes, tearing 

 gashes thou- 



VIEWS OF LANDSLIDES 



The photograph on the right shows where the big landslide has washed across the course of a stream, completely 

 blocking it. The second shows at close hand a part, and only a small part, of the devastation in the path of 

 a landslide. 



