By James Bond
“[1]Jack Maddux, a middle-aged
man from Yorktown, stood on the High Street Bridge with a long pole in his
hands during the great Easter flood of 1913. He and fellow employees of the
Union Traction Company electric railway system were defending the bridge from
log jams. As Maddux leaned out to dislodge a log, it was suddenly sucked under
the bridge. Maddux lost his balance and fell into the murky, frigid floodwater
on the east side of the bridge. Hundreds of onlookers saw Maddux reappear on
the west side, swimming easily at first. But as the current carried him
downstream, he began to tire and cried out for help. Herman Hugle, a young
draftsman, peeled off his coat and jumped in after Maddux, who was last seen
being sucked under the Washington Street Bridge. Hugle survived.” (1) Though
this event occurred in Muncie, that evening, a swarm of tornadoes shredded
cities across the Indiana, killing countless people and causing many more
fatalities. Once the winds and rain came to a halt towns across the state were
left to pick up the debris and for many their lives. The near-biblical deluge
flooded cities all around the state. On the 101th anniversary of the Great
Flood of 1913, let’s take a look back at on the worst natural disasters not
just in Indiana but also in the entire United States.
Life before the flood of 1913
was filled with changing scenery for the city of Indianapolis. During this time
the Great Migration was happening. Indianapolis along with Detroit and Chicago
were destinations of many African Americans migrating from the South. By 1870
the influx of African Americans from the south had nearly doubled the city’s
population. More blacks came to Indianapolis compared to anywhere else in
state. “By the early 1900’s black had comprised nearly 10% of the city’s
population. The growth of the black man would change the landscape of the
“Hoosier” state. African Americans in southern states heard about
opportunities in the North through labor recruiters, black-run newspapers,
relatives, and friends. Besides the lure of jobs in the North, a number of
factors pushed many African Americans to leave the South. Between 1900 and 1920
natural disasters in the South, such as floods, drought, and boll weevils,
destroyed the crops that many African-American farmers depended on for their
livelihood.” [2]The
blacks of the south came to the north for the jobs through the industrial
industry. This was a result of World War I stopping the flow of European
immigrants from coming across the Atlantic to come and work these industrial
jobs, as a result industrial companies had to seek workers from the south. “African
Americans arriving from the South in the early 1900s found an established black
community with churches, businesses, and social organizations. Indianapolis had
three black-run weekly newspapers by 1900, the Freeman, the Recorder and
the World. The Recorder often ran a directory of
African-American businesses in its Christmas issue.” [3]In
1901, this listing included restaurants, hotels, and grocery stores, as well as
barbers, physicians, dentists, lawyers, dealers in coal, ice, oil, and junk,
and even a clairvoyant.”
For many African Americans newly arrived from the
South Indianapolis and other northern cities may at first have seemed places of
great equality. For example, the unsettling signs "FOR WHITE" and
"FOR COLORED," symbols of a visible "color line," were
missing from public places. “Though the north was more welcoming to blacks they
still felt constant discrimination in northern cities including Indianapolis. Many
white storekeepers plus restaurant and theater owners refused to serve African
Americans or attempted to drive them away by rude treatment or inflated
prices.”[4]
The Great Flood that swept through Indianapolis
and the rest of the state of Indiana was essentially predicted 80 years prior.
“On January 1, 1830, Catharine Merrill noted in her diary that she heard some
men tell her Pa the future of Indianapolis looked bleak. The new capital city
was “situated in a vast mud-hole which could never be dried up so as to be
depended upon. There’s White River, they said, overflows its banks. Fall Creek
overflows its banks, and Pogues Run, though the least of the three, is the very
worst to spread out over everything, . . . That bayou is awful. It’s mostly
made up of mud, and mud drowns worse than water”, [5]crazy
to think that people predicted the disaster such a long time before. The “Great
Flood” of 1913 affected the entire Midwestern section of the United States and
received national attention. “According to a United States Congressional
report, the flood of 1913 stood out from its predecessors especially because of
the exceptional magnitude and intensity of the storms and because the greatest
damage occurred along tributaries, which in the past had not been the case.” [6]The
United States Weather Bureau reported a rain total in excess of six inches
during those five days. According to the Weather Bureau, the flooding that
resulted “cost the lives of scores of people, rendered many thousands homeless,
and destroyed property beyond estimate. . . . “The enormous losses over such an
extended area is unprecedented in the history of this portion of the United
States, and it must follow that an occurrence so unusual must have been
produced by extraordinary weather conditions.” [7]Therefore,
the 1913 flood was in part a natural occurrence. However, the devastation from
the flood in Indianapolis was an artifact of the city’s development and
attitudes toward the use of the river.
The flood water didn’t do that much damage to the
east side of Indianapolis and even to the downtown section the area it really
affected was the white river area and the entire west side. “Industries along
the river were swallowed up in the flood. The Indianapolis & Vincennes railroad bridge over the White
River collapsed that same day and the Washington Street Bridge gave way the
next. Factories such as Kingan Meat Packing Company, positioned along the banks
of the White River, sank into the waters, altering the city’s industrial
landscape. Varying reports state that between four and six square miles of the city
were under water. Nearly 4,000 families lived in the working class
neighborhoods that were flooded.”[8]
The flood waters were now stagnant pools of water filled with raw
sewage, rotting food, dead pets and livestock, bugs, snakes, and
disease-carrying rodents. Day after day, Hoosiers were bombarded with newspaper
headlines warning of looting and arrests, waterborne disease wielding
parasites, guards posted to keep away opportunistic invaders, health agencies
warning of the dangers to unsuspecting children and dangerous siphons caused by
clogged drains.
With no
government intervention to help right after the storm Indianapolis was left on
their own for a few days. At the time, there was no Federal Emergency
Management Agency, and the American Red Cross wasn't set up for such an
emergency, so Mayor Samuel L. Shank created the General Relief Committee for
Flood Sufferers.” [9]The
stations were opened in available buildings and distributed donated food and
clothing. Residents received "relief
cards" that indicated the size of their household, employment and other
basic information, and they were allotted supplies accordingly.
Tensions in
Indianapolis raised during and after the flood had occurred. Many people on
Indianapolis’s west side were not fully respecting this storm that was headed
there way, In those days, what was then-known as the National Weather
Bureau didn't have the sophisticated technology available to weather experts
today, and they were further hampered when basic communications systems failed.
Workers of the industrial industries along the white river even worked the day
before the flood hit and speculation of a storm was barely even talked about. “To
this day it is believed that high ranking Indianapolis officials left the west
side and especially residents along the White River in the dark about the
chance of these rains causing massive problems.”[10]
Racial tensions also heightened after the flood, whites of the city believed
they should be helped first over their black neighbors throughout the city. For
the most part though the city of Indianapolis came together after the flood.
Following the lead of their mayor the city residents all contributed to the
pickup after the flood. People contributed their time to the General Relief
Committee’s all around the city and especially on the west side. Citizens
donated food and clothing to the committee’s. Different from the floods in the
Mississippi, Indiana resident all came together no matter skin color and
reached for a common outcome. “For the
west side of Indianapolis the flood changed many things. After the flood much
of the west end of west Indianapolis was flooded by the waters of the White
River; this resulted in a geographical and social distinction that still exists
in west Indianapolis. The flood covered everything east of the railroad tracks
just east along Harding Street. This area became known as the “Valley.” The
west part of west Indianapolis was called the “Hill”. A local resident was
quoted in an interview as saying, “When I was young, eyebrows would be raised
if a girl or boy form the “Hill” dated someone from the “Valley.” Later the
southwest became known as the “Hollow.” The northeast became known as the
“Bottoms.” [11]After
the flood relief was needed for much of Indianapolis and especially the West
side. On the 26th of March just a few days after the flood a state
of emergency is issued for Indiana and Ohio cities, then problems start to
arise. With the rising flood waters relief supplies ordered by President
Woodrow Wilson take many more days than anticipated to arrive due to hampered
rail lines. For some time the citizens of Indianapolis had to go off the
general relief committee’s.
Statewide, about
200,000 people were routed from their homes. [12]The state's population at
the time was about 2.8 million. Some homes could be salvaged, but many homes
and businesses were beyond repair. And the immediate cleanup was brutal: Within
days, the waters receded but the temperatures plummeted from the 60s to the
20s. And, it snowed. The cold might have inhibited the growth of mold, a danger
to buildings after many floods, but didn't stop the spread of typhoid, which
claimed even more lives in the flood's aftermath, After the government aid came
in the relief committee’s around the city closed up. In the past 100 years,
emergency aid, communications and other components of disaster preparedness
have improved. Infrastructure changes and population growth helped the city. “Actually,
disease percentage dropped heavily after the flood, especially to residents on
the west side. The flood almost acted as a cleansing tool to the city both
physically and socially.”[13]
“In the decades following the flood of 1913,
government projects were undertaken to prevent future flooding. During
Roosevelt’s presidency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) dredged and
widened bends in the White River near Muncie. WPA employees also built levees
and flood walls. In 1940s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built floodwater
pumping stations to regulate water levels in case of another flood. These
structures (levees, flood walls, and the pumping stations) are permanent
reminders of the devastation caused by the flood of 1913 and are proof that the
natural disaster not only altered Indiana’s built landscapes by sweeping away
farms and neighborhoods and damaging bridges; it also resulted in intentional
changes to the landscape to prevent future destruction.”[14]
It is crazy how if a city can come together
during a disaster how much easier the clean up work can be. This is living
proof with Indianapolis, the Hoosiers all came together through every social
class and race and helped each other out.
Work Cited
Catharine Merrill: Life and Letters,
collected and arranged by Katharine Merrill Graydon (Greenfield, Indiana: The Mitchell Company, 1934), 13.
Carolyn M. Brady, "The Transformation of a
Neighborhood: Ransom Place Historic District, Indianapolis, 1900-1920"
(M.A. Thesis, Indiana University, Indianapolis, 1996), 25-26.
Edward A. Leary, Indianapolis: The Story of a City
(Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc.,
1971), 21 and 56
Emma
Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a
Minority (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957; reprint,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 229n, 265.
"Flood
of 1913 Still the Greatest." The Star Press. N.p., n.d. Web.
03 Mar. 2014.
“Indiana Flood Damage,” by Dennis
O’Harrow, State Planning Board of Indiana, February, 1937, located at the
Indiana State Archives.
Population figures from Encyclopedia of
Indianapolis, s.v. "Overview: African-Americans" by Emma Lou
Thornbrough
Star, Diana Penner The Indianapolis.
"Indiana Flood of 1913 Remembered." USA Today. Gannett,
24 Mar. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
The
Indianapolis News, 25 March 1913, p. 11.
“West
Washington Bridge Gives Way,” The Indianapolis News, 26 March 1913, p. 2.
William Beck, St. Vincent: The Spirit of Caring, 1881-2006
(Indianapolis: St. Vincent Health, 2006), 35-37.
Wiltz, John Edward. “In the Flood of 1913: Tragedy at Blue
Hole. Indiana Magazine of History.
77, no. 1.
March 1981. 33-55.
[1] "Flood of 1913 Still the
Greatest." The Star Press. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
[2] Population figures from Encyclopedia of Indianapolis,
s.v. "Overview: African-Americans" by Emma Lou Thornbrough.
[3] Carolyn M. Brady, "The Transformation of a Neighborhood:
Ransom Place Historic District, Indianapolis, 1900-1920" (M.A. Thesis,
Indiana University, Indianapolis, 1996), 25-26.
[4] Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before
1900: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau,
1957; reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 229n, 265.
[5] Catharine Merrill: Life
and Letters, collected and arranged by Katharine Merrill Graydon
(Greenfield, Indiana: The Mitchell
Company, 1934), 13.
[6] Edward A. Leary, Indianapolis: The Story of a City
(Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc., 1971),
21 and 56.
[7] Wiltz, John Edward. “In
the Flood of 1913: Tragedy at Blue Hole. Indiana Magazine of History.
77,
no. 1. March 1981. 33-55.
[8] The Indianapolis News,
25 March 1913, p. 11.
[9] William Beck, St.
Vincent: The Spirit of Caring, 1881-2006 (Indianapolis: St. Vincent Health,
2006), 35-37.
[10] “West Washington Bridge
Gives Way,” The Indianapolis News, 26 March 1913, p. 2.
[11] “West Washington Bridge
Gives Way,” The Indianapolis News, 26 March 1913, p. 2.
[12] Star, Diana Penner The
Indianapolis. "Indiana Flood of 1913 Remembered." USA Today.
Gannett, 24 Mar. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
[13] The Indianapolis Flood
of March, 1913, and Measures for Relief of Flood Victims, Secretary’s Report.
(Indianapolis:
Cornelius Printing Company, 1913), 5.
[14] “Indiana Flood Damage,”
by Dennis O’Harrow, State Planning Board of Indiana, February, 1937, located at
the Indiana State Archives.
