SOUTHERN FLOODS AND THEIR FORESTRY LESSONS 



477 



the farm owing to the desire of 

 renters to bring more land under 

 cultivation. Lacking this dense 

 protecting belt, the current first 

 gutted and destroyed the entire 

 island and then swept right on 

 across the old stream channel 

 and took the Carson farm with 

 it. At least 50 acres of bottom 

 land were ruined. Carson's 

 horses and cattle were abandoned 

 to their fates, tied in the barn, 

 but waters, which rose to a 

 height of five feet, receded, and 

 they escaped drowning. Two 

 small colts even managed to sur- 

 vive by climbing into the 

 mangers. Near the C. C. and O. 

 Railroad bridge, a tenant farmer, 



FLOODED CORNFIELD ON CATAWBA BOTTOM . -r i . 11 1 



„ ,, , . . ., , , ,,,„„ With his wite and two small boys. 



The flood swept over this as it did over hundreds of other productive cornfields, destroying them by burying them J 



m sand. The corn was in tassel and there is no possibility of a second crop. 



before the stone chimney was 

 undermined, and left the house 

 overhanging the bank, whence it 

 could be rescued and relocated 

 on higher ground. 



Bob Willett, farther down 

 the stream, found in the morning 

 that a new boulder-strewn chan- 

 nel, 150 feet wide, separated his 

 house from his barn, which still 

 stood intact on an island newly 

 formed by the destruction of his 

 best bottom land. 



On the Catawba river, the 

 farm of George Carson was 

 almost comi)letcly carried away. 

 This was in part due to the cut- 

 ting of a thick grove of timber ^ ^ ^^^ ^ ^^ ^^ bridge de.molished 



on an island lying directly above Thisbridge.southofSevier, and thirty-five feet high, was swept away by a flood which was twenty-five feet higher 



than the water level shown in the photograph. 



was seen gazing ruefully at the 

 once fertile land, now a mass of 

 iioulders and mud. He said : 

 " This don't look much like 

 bread!" One refugee reached 

 Marion bearing on his shoulders 

 a svcamore limb. He explained 

 that he had sat on that limb from 

 Saturday evening until Sunday 

 afternoon to escape being 

 drowned — so he sawed it ofif as 

 a memento. 



A trip to the top of Mt. 

 Alackey showed that the floods 

 had their origin on the steep 

 slopes of the higher ridges. The 

 greatest damage was done by the 

 crests which swept away the 

 A WAGON bridge, CATAWBA RIVER bridges, and by the enormous 



Both the approaches to this bridge were destroyed by the fiood. but the span was probably savtd by the white 

 oak which fell against it from the lower side, bracing it against the flood. 



