Colfax hit high water mark 100 years ago

“The face of Colfax is turned toward the rising, not the setting sun.”

William Goodyear wrote the preceding in the March 11 edition of the Weekly Commoner, after “Colfax and surrounding country is visited by the highest flood ever known to white man.”

The hills around Colfax were covered with 16 inches of snow, the accumulation of two weeks of heavy snowfall, when the citizens of Colfax doused their lamps and went to bed Sunday, Feb. 28, 1910.

Twenty-four hours later, the bedrooms of many of those same people were resting in heaps of torn lumber, mangled from an immense flood – the result of a wild weather pattern that struck the Pacific Northwest at the end of the 1910 winter.

As temperatures warmed and rain began to fall, the snow melted quickly, draining from the hills surrounding Colfax and sending an onslaught of water down on the town.

Walter Buchanan took up a perch on the east hill and scrawled down the mayhem as the raging floodwater claimed bridge after bridge, business after business and home after home. Some of his diary entries are included in the following story.

The “Devastation of Water” – as the headline in the Commoner declared - began shortly after noon.

“Water rushed down Main Street from Cooper Lake to the brewery to the depth of from four to six feet,” read the Commoner.

The brewery at that time was at Main and Stevens.

Destruction began when the wooden bridge connected to the Ridgeway Theatre was washed downstream, taking with it the bridge at Spring Street, which ran into the wagon bridge at Wall Street, all of which landed flush in the mouth of the Main Street bridge at the courthouse, which stood as the only remaining crossing of the South Palouse river.

12:15 (p.m.) – Spring St. bridge washed out.

“This always has been a town of many bridges,” said Ruth Henderson, Colfax’s eldest stateswoman at 102 years young. “But I hear a lot of them got wiped out during that flood.”

Mrs. Henderson was a two-year old toddler living with her family, the Baldwins, in their Thorn Hill house in 1910.

She told the Gazette this week that she did not remember much about the flood, outside of stories she heard from her older sister, Grace.

“I can remember hearing people talk about how bad it was,” she said. “My sister was old enough that she could come down and watch it.”

Grace Baldwin was a young teen in 1910. She went downtown after the flood, and years later regaled Ruth with tales of seeing houses picked up off their foundations and floated down the South Palouse into bridges.

That house was likely Don Baker’s, which at 2:30 p.m., the Commoner reported, floated off its foundation and took out “the expensive steel bridge at Cooper Lake.”

1:35 – An Inland trolly cable falls on cars in the yard, a car containing sugar prevented a bad fire. The Spokane & Inland Electric Railway took a massive hit from the flood. Its depot was across Main from the present-day site of the courthouse.

The depot was lifted from its perch and carried downstream, crashing into rail cars and causing thousands of dollars of damage after it ended its journey, crashed into the Farmers Union warehouse

2:00 – Water rising very rapidly.

Records show the 1910 flood was the highest ever recorded.

According to the weather service records, the South Fork’s crest on March 1, 1910, was 11.8 feet, which is 4.8 feet above flood stage. Most of the water mass came from snowmelt.

“In 1910, there was rain, but it wasn’t anything like the ’96 event,” said John Livingston, meteorologist in charge with the National Weather Service at Spokane.

More than an inch and a half of rain fell during the 1910 flood, while three and a half inches fell during the 1996 flood which sent the North Fork of the Palouse over its banks at Palouse and close to jumping the channel walls at Colfax.

The river channel has kept the second, fourth and fifth highest floods in recorded history within its concrete banks. Those included the 1996 flood, and high waters in 1979 and 1974.

The second highest level of the Palouse River was on Feb. 26, 1948. That also flooded the streets of Colfax, though not to the disastrous extent of 1910.

Gazette accounts say the 1948 flood prompted city leaders to turn to the Corps of Engineers for a flood solution. Fifteen years later, construction on the concrete river began.

The winter of 1910 saw wild weather events all over the Pacific Northwest.

A lethal accident happened on Stevens Pass, when an avalanche killed 96 people that had been trapped for six days aboard a Great Northern train.

2:21 – Several houses in Russiatown are floating.

“J.R. Butcher started out in a very poor excuse of a boat and rescued several families in the north end of town.”

Heavy waters swept dozens of Colfax houses away, leaving many homeless, and providing plentiful opportunities for heroism.

“Tip, Ernest and George Hamblen did noble work with a boat. They first rescued their mother from their own home, which was being flooded and destroyed. Their next rescue was of their brother Lewis, his wife and their five children. In North Colfax, they rescued Mrs. Ed. Davis and two children, one suffering from scarlet fever; also John Canutt and mother, Mrs. Sallie Canutt, aged 84.”

3:00 – Water backing up towards city pump station.

The flood left the city without lights, electricity or any potable water.

Neighbors with wells from above Colfax brought down drinkable water until the water mains at the destroyed bridges could be repaired.

Toilets connected to the sewer had to be flushed out with a pail under orders of Mayor Julius Lippett.

Relief was not readily available, Mayor Lippett, who served three terms, ordered all saloons to close and patrons to assist in immediate clean-up.

According to a copy of the March 3, 1910 edition of the Morning Oregonian, posted on GenDisasters.com, communication with the outside world was limited to a single wire from Colfax to Portland, via Walla Walla.

Tales of the flood were sent out on that wire, many losing the facts along the way. The Portland Journal reported 250 deaths, according to the Commoner.

Train cars of relief provisions, principally bread, potatoes and smoked meats, were sent from Spokane and Garfield, and were brought in by wagons until train service was restored.

3:47 – Fire breaks out in Easum Bros. Warehouse in South end, started from lime slacking.

The fire spread to the neighboring Cornelius garage, burning with it $60,000 worth of automobiles.

Fire Chief Smuck offered from his own pocket $100 to anyone who could cross the street and fight the fire. Five men did so and used buckets and wet sacks to douse the flames.

Heaviest hit in the flood were J.R. Good & Co., who lost a large stock of lumber and had their building wrecked. The Commoner reported the firm suffered a $25,000 loss.

Recovery came quick to Colfax.

The Hotel Colfax was cleaned up and open for business early Wednesday morning.

As rumors of fatalities were routinely found to be false, the residents of town “imbued with the Colfax spirit,” began to cheerfully clean it up.

In the ensuing weeks, the Good Co. rebuilt a new corrugated iron warehouse on the site of their wrecked factory.

Bridges were quickly constructed across the South Palouse.

The council determined it would rebuild a better Colfax, with “Forward, March,” being the rally slogan. They determined to pave Main street with concrete and macadamize Mill street from Canyon to Park.

The pictures featured on this page were provided to the Gazette courtesy of the Whitman County Library District. Patrick McDonald allowed the library to scan his postcard collection as part of its Rural Heritage project. Many more pictures of the 1910 flood can be viewed on the Rural Heritage section of the library’s web site. The section also contains a number of other stunning images that give a pictoral history of communities throughout Whitman County.