"Of adversity we of St. Johns have had more than our share, but no one is giving up."
I have been going through more of my research files and came across this follow-up article to the Lyman Dam break in 1915. It was a very devastating time.
St. Johns Herald and Apache News
Thursday, April 29, 1915
Report of Committee on Flood Situation
St. Johns Arizona, April 29—
It is now two weeks since the breaking of the Lyman
reservoir, the financial losses have been pretty accurately computer, the
people are busy repairing the lower ditches and dams, riddle fences are being
reconstructed, preparations to put in as much crop as possible are in progress,
plans are being formulated to put water into the higher Lyman canal for
irrigation of the bench land, six of the eight bodies of the drowned have been
recovered and buried, so that the town is somewhat normal again.
The direct losses total up about as follows:
- Lyman dam and
injuries to canal….$90,000.00
- Houses washed down at St. Johns…$7,000.00
- St. Johns irrigation company…$3,000.00
- Bridge at St. Johns…$2,500.00
- Bridge at Hunt…$2,600.00
- Crops & Fences ruined at St. Johns and Meadows…$10,000.00
- Meadows dam…$3,000.00
- Udall dam…$18,000.00
- Crops, fences, and ditches at Hunt…$8,000.00
- Woodruff dam…$17,000.00
- Crops and other injuries at Woodruff…$13,000.00
- Three-Mile steel bridge…$4,500.00
- Holbrook bridge…$3,000.00
- Other damage as livestock, etc….$5,000.00
- Total Direct Loss…$186,600.00
The indirect loss depends on so many contingencies that it
is hard to estimate, but this seems a fair, through low, estimate:
- Crop loss at St. Johns…$60,000.00
- Crop loss at Meadows…$5,000.00
- Crop loss at Hunt…$12,000.00
- Crop loss at Woodruff or extra cost if pumping is resorted
to…$10,000.00
Yet it is safe to say that other direct losses will make the
total up to a full hundred thousand, though in event that the Lyman dam were
never again built it would reach over half a million.
But the agriculturists of this town are well acquainted with
adversity, for they have had their “measure heaped up and running over.” The first farms the settlers developed along
the river valley went to alkali and salt grass and almost stopped farming here. They built the Salado reservoir in their days
of poverty to bring their better drained bench lands under cultivation, but ten
years ago it went out. They extended
their energies out to the lands of Hunt and built the Udall dam, but it has
been washed away three times. They
tried farming at the meadows and have lost two dams there, so that already
these hardy toilers have lost agricultural property worth half a million
dollars.
A good force is now at work on the town ditch and old field
ditch which belongs to the St. Johns Irrigation company, so that water will
soon be on the old fields and in town.
It is a puzzler to know what to do to put water in the Lyman canal and
on the bench, for the canal intake is the reservoir gate that stands 20 feet
above the river. Pumping and building a
high diversion dam are both proposed.
The chances are in favor of constructing a high, tight, earth diversion dam.
The fields of Hunt, the Meadows, and St. Johns are all so
wet and muddy that little can be done as yet, but as soon as they are dry
enough, as much crops will be planted as the natural flow of the river, with
last winter’s heavy snow fall, will supply adequate water for this year.
Many offers of relief have been received. We need relief, but it is not immediate
relief, for we have food in plenty and are able to temporarily care for those
of our number who lost their homes. But,
at the same time, many of our Spanish-American whose homes were washed down
were poor people and they need help to rebuild and refurnish. Our farmers were already in debt for the Lyman
reservoir and dam and their only hope of ever paying out now lies in rebuilding
the dam at an early date, and that will take at least a hundred thousand dollars
capital. If it is not rebuilt, and that right away,
bankruptcy awaits the entire community.
Woodruff has food and clothing for immediate relief, but this is the
eleventh time that those poor people have lost their diversion dam, and three
times it has been because of our reservoir breaks. The people of Hunt need relief, for they were
already heavily involved, and must go deeper in debt to rebuild their Udall
dam. We need capital to assist us in
rebuilding, we must have it. We must
find it, and then we can recover. Of
adversity we of St. Johns have had more than our share, but no one is giving
up. It only asks financial aid, and it
is willing to repay that.
George H. Crosby, Jr.
A.V. Gibbons
F.W. Nelson,
Committee.
Little "snippet" underneath this article:
"The Little Colorado is some creek when there is nothing to obstruct it. There wasn't much need of the bridge before it went out, but now it is hardly safe to try to cross in a boat. The water is deep and muddy."
I also had a file I had saved entitled: Dam Failures, Dam Incidents (near failures) Association of State Dam Safety Officials www.damsafety.org. That gives this little bit of information about the failure:
"thought to be due to sliding of the puddled core which had not dried out, but it appears the dam failed by piping. Poor construction may have played a role."
I wasn't sure what "piping" meant so I searched and found this: "Internal erosion (called “piping” by dam engineers) of an earth dam takes place when water that seeps through the dam carries soil particles away from the embankment, filters, drains, foundation or abutments of the dam. ... When a backward-eroding pipe reaches the reservoir, a catastrophic breaching of the dam can occur."
The database also lists the losses at $500,000 to $1 million.
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