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Flood of 1964
by JIM MANN/The Daily Inter Lake: used by permission Daily Interlake. Published 7 Jun 2014
Fifty years ago today, the biggest flood on record in Montana began to sweep over the Flathead Valley and communities east of the Continental Divide, the result of a freakish combination of meteorological forces.
A new sign was unveiled last week at the Teakettle fishing access site near Columbia Falls showing the exact level the Flathead River reached when the river crested on June 9, 1964.
The line on the sign, well above the reach of any person, denotes the 25.8-foot level the river reached with flows surging to 176,000 cubic feet per second on June 9, 1964.
By comparison, the Flathead River has been at the 11-foot level recently with flows at 33,000 cfs. Flood stage is 13 feet and 44,000 cfs.
“It’s a sign that Mother Nature can really get out of control,” said National Weather Service hydrologist Ray Nickless, who gave an overview of the turn of events leading to the epic flood.
A low-pressure weather system, common at this of year, was circulating counter-clockwise in northern Wyoming, drawing a system loaded with precipitation from the Gulf of Mexico into the northern Rockies, where it collided with another front moving south from Canada.
The drenching result: Over a 30-hour period, 14 to 16 inches of rain fell on the Continental Divide in what is now the Bob Marshall and Great Bear wilderness areas, causing a flash runoff of mountain snowpack that was well above average.
That’s more precipitation than many Montana communities get in an entire year.
“It was really the rainfall that caused the problem,” Nickless said. “It’s one of those events that can happen over time but it is extremely rare.”
Charles Parrett, a hydrologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey for 30 years, gave a lecture Thursday along with his son, Aaron, on the 1964 Flood at Flathead Valley Community College during an event sponsored by the Flathead Conservation District and the Daily Inter Lake.
“The really interesting thing is that [the rainfall] was focused right over the center of the Continental Divide,” he said as he displayed a map showing the tightly concentrated area of heavy rainfall.
That caused catastrophic flooding both east and west of the Divide, inundating the Flathead Valley, Choteau, St. Mary, parts of Great Falls and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where 30 people died.
Parrett noted that the largest known flood on the Flathead River prior to 1964 occurred in 1894 when the river peaked at 150,000 cubic feet per second. That’s considerably short of the 176,000-cfs peaks flows of 50 years ago — and the 1894 flood happened before the construction of Hungry Horse Dam.
In 1964, the dam successfully held back high flows from the South Fork Flathead drainage.
If the dam hadn’t existed, Flathead River flows at Columbia Falls during the Flood of ’64 would have reached nearly 250,000 cfs, Parrett said.
The chance of a 1964-magnitude flood recurring twice in a century is considered to be 1 percent every year, said Parrett, who likened that to the chance of drawing a full house two times in a row in a game of poker.
“It’s really rare, but it can happen,” he said.
A lot has changed in terms of forecasting for floods since 1964, Nickless said.
“We do have a lot more information” as the result of high-tech automated snow and rain gauges in the mountains, Nickless said. “We’re more advanced with our atmospheric models also.”
Fifty years ago, there were warnings that could have helped communities far downstream from the Continental Divide, Nickless said.
“But to really convince people that it’s going to be that bad, that’s the hard part,” Nickless said. “You wouldn’t think that all that water is going to come out of those mountains.”
On the Blackfeet Reservation, there was no warning because the flash flooding that killed 30 people was the result of dams on Birch Creek and the Two Medicine River being breached.
Aaron Parrett, an author and professor from the University of Great Falls who has written at length about the flood and the lives lost, remarked about how people tend to recall their lives in terms of events such as the 1964 Flood.
“People think about their lives in terms of their memories of meteorological events,” he told the standing-room-only crowd at the college’s large conference room. “People tend to date their histories in terms of these events.”
The big flood is the subject of a hardcover book, “Torrents of Rain, Miles of Misery: Flood of ’64” produced by the Daily Inter Lake and the Hungry Horse News. The 128-page book costs $39.95 and is available at the Inter Lake office, 727 E. Idaho St. in Kalispell, or by calling 755-7000.
Fifty years ago today, the biggest flood on record in Montana began to sweep over the Flathead Valley and communities east of the Continental Divide, the result of a freakish combination of meteorological forces.
A new sign was unveiled last week at the Teakettle fishing access site near Columbia Falls showing the exact level the Flathead River reached when the river crested on June 9, 1964.
The line on the sign, well above the reach of any person, denotes the 25.8-foot level the river reached with flows surging to 176,000 cubic feet per second on June 9, 1964.
By comparison, the Flathead River has been at the 11-foot level recently with flows at 33,000 cfs. Flood stage is 13 feet and 44,000 cfs.
“It’s a sign that Mother Nature can really get out of control,” said National Weather Service hydrologist Ray Nickless, who gave an overview of the turn of events leading to the epic flood.
A low-pressure weather system, common at this of year, was circulating counter-clockwise in northern Wyoming, drawing a system loaded with precipitation from the Gulf of Mexico into the northern Rockies, where it collided with another front moving south from Canada.
The drenching result: Over a 30-hour period, 14 to 16 inches of rain fell on the Continental Divide in what is now the Bob Marshall and Great Bear wilderness areas, causing a flash runoff of mountain snowpack that was well above average.
That’s more precipitation than many Montana communities get in an entire year.
“It was really the rainfall that caused the problem,” Nickless said. “It’s one of those events that can happen over time but it is extremely rare.”
Charles Parrett, a hydrologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey for 30 years, gave a lecture Thursday along with his son, Aaron, on the 1964 Flood at Flathead Valley Community College during an event sponsored by the Flathead Conservation District and the Daily Inter Lake.
“The really interesting thing is that [the rainfall] was focused right over the center of the Continental Divide,” he said as he displayed a map showing the tightly concentrated area of heavy rainfall.
That caused catastrophic flooding both east and west of the Divide, inundating the Flathead Valley, Choteau, St. Mary, parts of Great Falls and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where 30 people died.
Parrett noted that the largest known flood on the Flathead River prior to 1964 occurred in 1894 when the river peaked at 150,000 cubic feet per second. That’s considerably short of the 176,000-cfs peaks flows of 50 years ago — and the 1894 flood happened before the construction of Hungry Horse Dam.
In 1964, the dam successfully held back high flows from the South Fork Flathead drainage.
If the dam hadn’t existed, Flathead River flows at Columbia Falls during the Flood of ’64 would have reached nearly 250,000 cfs, Parrett said.
The chance of a 1964-magnitude flood recurring twice in a century is considered to be 1 percent every year, said Parrett, who likened that to the chance of drawing a full house two times in a row in a game of poker.
“It’s really rare, but it can happen,” he said.
A lot has changed in terms of forecasting for floods since 1964, Nickless said.
“We do have a lot more information” as the result of high-tech automated snow and rain gauges in the mountains, Nickless said. “We’re more advanced with our atmospheric models also.”
Fifty years ago, there were warnings that could have helped communities far downstream from the Continental Divide, Nickless said.
“But to really convince people that it’s going to be that bad, that’s the hard part,” Nickless said. “You wouldn’t think that all that water is going to come out of those mountains.”
On the Blackfeet Reservation, there was no warning because the flash flooding that killed 30 people was the result of dams on Birch Creek and the Two Medicine River being breached.
Aaron Parrett, an author and professor from the University of Great Falls who has written at length about the flood and the lives lost, remarked about how people tend to recall their lives in terms of events such as the 1964 Flood.
“People think about their lives in terms of their memories of meteorological events,” he told the standing-room-only crowd at the college’s large conference room. “People tend to date their histories in terms of these events.”
The big flood is the subject of a hardcover book, “Torrents of Rain, Miles of Misery: Flood of ’64” produced by the Daily Inter Lake and the Hungry Horse News. The 128-page book costs $39.95 and is available at the Inter Lake office, 727 E. Idaho St. in Kalispell, or by calling 755-7000.
‘When All Hell Came Down the Mountains’An oral history of the flood of 1964By Justin Franz // Mar 28, 2014 // by permission Flathead Beacon
Editor’s Note: This is one of the stories you will find in the spring edition of Flathead Living magazine. Pick up a free copy on newsstands throughout the valley.
Fifty years after the water receded, the memories of the flood of 1964 are still vivid. For residents of a certain age in the Flathead Valley, those June days are something they will never forget.
On June 7 and 8 of that year, 10 to 14 inches of rain fell over the Continental Divide. That rain, combined with a massive and melting snowpack, resulted in the largest flood in the Flathead Valley in nearly a century. On June 9, the Flathead River through Columbia Falls hit 25.58 feet, shattering an 1894 record of 19.7 feet. It was, as NOAA Hydrologist Ray Nickless said, “an extreme flood.”
A half-century later, local residents remember the images of dead animals floating down the river, homes destroyed by a powerful force of nature and a community lifting itself from muck, mud and despair; memories of the day when, as one local described it, “all hell came down from the mountains.”
According to a government report released after the flood, precipitation between January and April of 1964 was normal, but for May it nearly doubled.
Tom Siderius, 24 years old in 1964 and a farmer near Kalispell, was working with his brother in Glacier National Park: In ’64, we had this heavy snowpack. I was plowing snow on May 30 on the Going-to-the-Sun Road and in some places we had 90 feet of snow we were pushing.
On May 30, Siderius’ brother was plowing when he was caught in an avalanche and tumbled nearly 350 feet down a slope. He survived and had his picture printed in the Hungry Horse News, then owned by Mel Ruder.
Siderius: Mel Ruder was the editor of the Hungry Horse News at the time and he thought that was the story of the year. That was until the flood of 1964 hit.
Below-normal temperatures between March and May delayed the normal mountain snowmelt pattern and as a result many streams were at a high level by June when the heavy rain began.
Ron Buentemeier, 22 years old in 1964, was working for F. H. Stoltze Land and Lumber at the time: There was a weather guy named Ray Hall – I think that’s what his name was. He predicted the big rainfall and he tried to get people excited about it, but no one listened until it happened. When they got the big rain, they knew it was on the way.
Moist air from the Gulf of Mexico spread north over the western plains and Rocky Mountains in early June. On June 7, the Flathead River began to rise, causing flooding from Marias Pass down to Flathead Lake. That afternoon and evening, people slowly began to realize the nature of the storm.
Francis VanRinsum, 33 years old in 1964, was a farmer and chief of the Somers Fire Department: It had been raining hard for three days and everything was soaked, even at the farm. It was raining so hard we couldn’t do anything.
The U.S. Forest Service ranger up there at Nyack Flats (near Glacier Park) – I forget what day it was – but in the morning he didn’t like what was going on. The creek was over its banks and he looked up the hill and he could see the snowbanks up there starting to slide because it was raining so hard. He went inside the house and told his wife to get the papers together because they were getting out of there.
Buentemeier: Around Columbia Falls there was a big effort to move people’s homes, their mobile homes, out of the way. So they would use Plum Creek’s log yard equipment to hook on and drag it away. They didn’t bother unhooking the water or the electricity. They just went.
VanRinsum: The flood came out of Bad Rock Canyon, as one of the engineers later said, like a ball of water. It was just a massive ball of water that came into the valley.
Larry Wilson, 27 years old in 1964, was a schoolteacher in Columbia Falls and the son of Flathead County Sheriff Ross Wilson: That night (June 7), we started pulling trailers out from along the river, but the water kept coming up. It was coming up 3 or 4 inches every five minutes. It was mind-boggling.
Overview of the Kalispell area during the flood of 1964. – Photo Courtesy of the Museum at Central School
We spent all night getting people out of the river area between the U.S. Highway 2 bridge in Columbia Falls and the old Red Bridge. As the night progressed, and those people were out of the way, my dad told myself and others to go to Evergreen and start getting those people out. The thing is nobody believed it’d be that bad – they just didn’t believe it no matter how fast the water was rising. They just didn’t believe it would get any higher than it had in years past.
Clifford Brenneman, 33 years old in 1964, was a farmer near Kalispell, along the Flathead River: I was at home with a small baby that was two weeks old. We weren’t concerned about it, but my mother-in-law kept calling and saying we better get out. So around midnight we got out and stayed with my parents over in Creston. When we came back the next morning we couldn’t get within a mile of the house.
VanRinsum: I was a member of the church in Somers and we were in the middle of building a brand new church. Every Monday night we had our building meeting and we had a fellow there who worked for the telephone company who was on the board. He came in and said he had to work because of the flood. He was always a big jokester and so we all thought he was pulling another one on us because we had never heard of the flood. I mean we knew the river was running high, but not that much. Anyway, he excused himself and left pretty quick. Then the chairman of the construction board came in – he was a local contractor – and he said he couldn’t stay either because of the flood. That’s when we thought, “Jesus, maybe we better get home and see what’s going on.”
The water continued to rise early on the morning of June 8. Flathead Lake was at or near full pool and, according to some accounts, as water filled the lake it began to back down the river and flood Evergreen and the Lower Valley.
VanRinsum: The Somers Fire Department got a call from the Sheriff’s Office and he tells us that we’re the only fire department that’s going to stay high and dry. He asked us if we could put up 3,500 people and so we got ready.
George Ostrom, 35 years old in 1964, was a radio announcer for KOFI Radio in Kalispell: I went to work at about 5 a.m. at KOFI Radio and I was telling people that there was a flood coming to Evergreen. The Army Corps of Engineers, the sheriff’s office, everyone is calling me, the phone is ringing off the hook and I’m telling everyone on air that they better prepare. Bill Paterson, who owned the radio station and was a good friend, called me and said “George, George, George, stop it! You’re scaring the hell out of people!” And I said, “Bill, it’s going to happen and I’m sorry but I’ve got to do what I think is right.” He said “Alright, but soft pedal it.”
At 1:30 that afternoon, I went down with my motorboat to help Bill take things out of his house.
Robin Street, 30 years old in 1964, was farming with his family north of Kalispell: My dad called and said that the water was coming up and our friend George needed help moving his cattle … after, we needed to get some pigs that were surrounded by water, so I got in the boat and ran over there. Well, we got one back over to dry land and I went back for another. The water was running high, though, and the pig kept going under. When I got back to shore, I pulled her up and she wasn’t breathing, so I gave her artificial respiration by jumping on her belly three times and then poof! She got up and ran away. There were a lot of pigs and cattle that got killed in that flood.
Ken Louden, 12 years old in 1964, was living on a farm with his family in the Lower Valley south of Kalispell: We were just trying to keep the cattle safe and build dikes where we thought they would help. Some of the dikes we made were totally useless, but when it starts to flood you never know how far it’ll actually come up.
VanRinsum: I went out to help my wife’s brothers in Creston with their dike because they had a low spot. The river was really scary at that point. So we were on our hands and knees building up the dike with sod (turf grass or soil) … but we lost it pretty quick. After it failed, some dang kids, seven or eight of them, got up on their knees and locked arms and they actually stopped the water, they plugged it up. So we hurried up and got some sod and plugged it, but even after that it was obvious it wouldn’t hold.
Siderius: We had cows and I was wading up to here, up to my neck in water, trying to cut fences to let the cows go. After that we went back to the house but we couldn’t leave. The only way to get to town was with a boat.
Wilson: I had my dad’s cruiser and I was helping to get people out of Evergreen. There was this elderly couple, both of them big heavy folks, and I talked to them about leaving but they said, “Oh no, young man. You see back in 1948 it got up to the base of that fence and it’s not there yet and it won’t be.” Well, I went on and warned others but when I came back the water was halfway up that fence post. The elderly couple was standing in water and it took five minutes to get her in the car. By the time we got in, the gully was too full of water and I couldn’t get the car through, so we parked on a high spot and watched the water come up and up and up. I disconnected the car battery, took the guns out of the car and put them on the roof and I was about get on the roof myself. When the water started to come up to the back seat of the car, that woman was ready to get out, too! At about that time a guy with a front-end loader, with the air intake up high, came along and the guy was up to his shoulders in water! He came, hooked on to us and dragged us to an island and we spent the night there.
By 5 p.m. on June 8, the heavy rains had ended except for a few light showers.
Jerry Mahugh, 19 years old in 1964, was just finishing his freshman year of college in Eugene, Ore.: I was on my way home from school, driving my 1952 Ford, and I was happy-go-lucky. I was anxious to be home and get to work, to do something other than school. I was coming from Hot Springs towards Elmo and I came down the big hill and saw the huge panoramic view of Flathead Lake and I couldn’t believe it. The lake was chocolate brown and there were houses and parts of houses and entire trees with leaves and root systems just floating around. I was in a state of shock because nobody had told me anything and I had no idea what happened. I thought the dam had broke or someone had bombed it.
Louden: There was just so much debris – it was amazing. At times it was like you could almost walk across the river, there were so many logs coming down.
As night fell, Wilson and a group of people were still stuck on an island in Evergreen.
Wilson: I had been up all day and all night, so the first thing I did was sleep. I found a big tree and fell asleep under it. Everyone else on the island was in the farmhouse, but I was tired of listening to them … The next morning, Jack Thompson with search and rescue showed up with an airboat and picked us up.
A displaced home along the Flathead River. – Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service
On June 9, the Flathead River through Columbia Falls peaked at 25.58 feet; normal flood conditions are between 12 and 14 feet.
Bruce Young, 19 years old in 1964, lived along Flathead Lake and flew with his father over the flood: My dad was a pilot and he kept his airplane at the City Airport south of Kalispell. When we knew the flood was peaking, he said, “Let’s take a look,” and so we did. We flew low and over the whole flood. It was spectacular … We saw many houses in Columbia Falls with just the rooftops showing; we saw that the river had widened out of its banks, in some places a mile out. There were animals standing in fields with just their heads above water. There were dead pigs floating down the river. There was so much in the river that shouldn’t have been there … Once you see something like that, you realize the power of water and how it can change people’s lives in an instant.
Buentemeier: There wasn’t anything normal about the next few days because a lot of our men at Stoltze were trying to save their homes. It was devastating. Most of the people who lost their homes were in shock – I mean they lost everything.
Over the next few days, people would find freezers and they would try and get ahold of the owner. A lot of people had put their valuables in the deep freeze before the flood but then it would float away. They thought it would be a place that would be protected because it’s watertight and it’s heavy so it wouldn’t float away. Well, it wasn’t there when they came back because the house wasn’t there.
Wilson: The Hungry Horse News’ Mel Ruder was everywhere that week. He took pictures with his old Speed Graphic and he was lugging around a sack of negatives everywhere. He put out two papers that week.
Ruder’s coverage would later win a Pulitzer Prize, and his photos have become iconic images of the 1964 flood.
The flood inflicted more than $24 million worth of damage west of the Continental Divide; however, it paled in comparison to the pain east of the mountains. Amazingly, no one died in the Flathead Valley because of the flood, but nearly 40 people died on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
Nearly 400 homes in Kalispell, Evergreen and Columbia Falls were flooded, and miles of highway and railroad were destroyed. However, survivors say the damage would be considerably worse if it were to happen in 2014; after all, 50 years ago, the Flathead Valley was a much smaller community. In 1960, about 32,000 people lived in Flathead County. Today it’s three times that amount.
Young: That was a 500-year flood and I think we should pay attention to it as we build out in areas that are prone to flooding.
Siderius: In 1964 we watched cattle come down the river, but when the next one comes we’ll be watching houses and people coming down the river.
Ostrom: Psychologically, some people will never recover. All sorts of things affect us – you know, a death in the family and so on – but the biggest investment some of us have is our home and when you see that go to hell, it leaves a scar. I talk to people about the flood and they still have thoughts and dreams about it.
Buentemeier: We need to realize that Mother Nature can be really cruel and we can’t underestimate what she can do.
Young: Mother Nature makes the rules and it could happen again. We’ve been lucky, in my opinion, because it’s not if, it’s when.
SPECIAL THANKS
The Flathead Conservation District and Assistant Conservationist Kari Musgrove deserve special thanks for assisting Flathead Living with this story and finding and assisting with interviews. The conservation district works locally to fulfill the state’s policy to conserve soil, water and other natural resources, and without them, this story would not have been possible. For more information, visit www.flatheadcd.org. The conservation district is also hosting a presentation about the flood on June 5 at 7 p.m. at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell.
Flathead Living would also like to thank the Northwest Montana Historical Society and The Museum at Central School for assisting in finding photographs.
Editor’s Note: This is one of the stories you will find in the spring edition of Flathead Living magazine. Pick up a free copy on newsstands throughout the valley.
Fifty years after the water receded, the memories of the flood of 1964 are still vivid. For residents of a certain age in the Flathead Valley, those June days are something they will never forget.
On June 7 and 8 of that year, 10 to 14 inches of rain fell over the Continental Divide. That rain, combined with a massive and melting snowpack, resulted in the largest flood in the Flathead Valley in nearly a century. On June 9, the Flathead River through Columbia Falls hit 25.58 feet, shattering an 1894 record of 19.7 feet. It was, as NOAA Hydrologist Ray Nickless said, “an extreme flood.”
A half-century later, local residents remember the images of dead animals floating down the river, homes destroyed by a powerful force of nature and a community lifting itself from muck, mud and despair; memories of the day when, as one local described it, “all hell came down from the mountains.”
According to a government report released after the flood, precipitation between January and April of 1964 was normal, but for May it nearly doubled.
Tom Siderius, 24 years old in 1964 and a farmer near Kalispell, was working with his brother in Glacier National Park: In ’64, we had this heavy snowpack. I was plowing snow on May 30 on the Going-to-the-Sun Road and in some places we had 90 feet of snow we were pushing.
On May 30, Siderius’ brother was plowing when he was caught in an avalanche and tumbled nearly 350 feet down a slope. He survived and had his picture printed in the Hungry Horse News, then owned by Mel Ruder.
Siderius: Mel Ruder was the editor of the Hungry Horse News at the time and he thought that was the story of the year. That was until the flood of 1964 hit.
Below-normal temperatures between March and May delayed the normal mountain snowmelt pattern and as a result many streams were at a high level by June when the heavy rain began.
Ron Buentemeier, 22 years old in 1964, was working for F. H. Stoltze Land and Lumber at the time: There was a weather guy named Ray Hall – I think that’s what his name was. He predicted the big rainfall and he tried to get people excited about it, but no one listened until it happened. When they got the big rain, they knew it was on the way.
Moist air from the Gulf of Mexico spread north over the western plains and Rocky Mountains in early June. On June 7, the Flathead River began to rise, causing flooding from Marias Pass down to Flathead Lake. That afternoon and evening, people slowly began to realize the nature of the storm.
Francis VanRinsum, 33 years old in 1964, was a farmer and chief of the Somers Fire Department: It had been raining hard for three days and everything was soaked, even at the farm. It was raining so hard we couldn’t do anything.
The U.S. Forest Service ranger up there at Nyack Flats (near Glacier Park) – I forget what day it was – but in the morning he didn’t like what was going on. The creek was over its banks and he looked up the hill and he could see the snowbanks up there starting to slide because it was raining so hard. He went inside the house and told his wife to get the papers together because they were getting out of there.
Buentemeier: Around Columbia Falls there was a big effort to move people’s homes, their mobile homes, out of the way. So they would use Plum Creek’s log yard equipment to hook on and drag it away. They didn’t bother unhooking the water or the electricity. They just went.
VanRinsum: The flood came out of Bad Rock Canyon, as one of the engineers later said, like a ball of water. It was just a massive ball of water that came into the valley.
Larry Wilson, 27 years old in 1964, was a schoolteacher in Columbia Falls and the son of Flathead County Sheriff Ross Wilson: That night (June 7), we started pulling trailers out from along the river, but the water kept coming up. It was coming up 3 or 4 inches every five minutes. It was mind-boggling.
Overview of the Kalispell area during the flood of 1964. – Photo Courtesy of the Museum at Central School
We spent all night getting people out of the river area between the U.S. Highway 2 bridge in Columbia Falls and the old Red Bridge. As the night progressed, and those people were out of the way, my dad told myself and others to go to Evergreen and start getting those people out. The thing is nobody believed it’d be that bad – they just didn’t believe it no matter how fast the water was rising. They just didn’t believe it would get any higher than it had in years past.
Clifford Brenneman, 33 years old in 1964, was a farmer near Kalispell, along the Flathead River: I was at home with a small baby that was two weeks old. We weren’t concerned about it, but my mother-in-law kept calling and saying we better get out. So around midnight we got out and stayed with my parents over in Creston. When we came back the next morning we couldn’t get within a mile of the house.
VanRinsum: I was a member of the church in Somers and we were in the middle of building a brand new church. Every Monday night we had our building meeting and we had a fellow there who worked for the telephone company who was on the board. He came in and said he had to work because of the flood. He was always a big jokester and so we all thought he was pulling another one on us because we had never heard of the flood. I mean we knew the river was running high, but not that much. Anyway, he excused himself and left pretty quick. Then the chairman of the construction board came in – he was a local contractor – and he said he couldn’t stay either because of the flood. That’s when we thought, “Jesus, maybe we better get home and see what’s going on.”
The water continued to rise early on the morning of June 8. Flathead Lake was at or near full pool and, according to some accounts, as water filled the lake it began to back down the river and flood Evergreen and the Lower Valley.
VanRinsum: The Somers Fire Department got a call from the Sheriff’s Office and he tells us that we’re the only fire department that’s going to stay high and dry. He asked us if we could put up 3,500 people and so we got ready.
George Ostrom, 35 years old in 1964, was a radio announcer for KOFI Radio in Kalispell: I went to work at about 5 a.m. at KOFI Radio and I was telling people that there was a flood coming to Evergreen. The Army Corps of Engineers, the sheriff’s office, everyone is calling me, the phone is ringing off the hook and I’m telling everyone on air that they better prepare. Bill Paterson, who owned the radio station and was a good friend, called me and said “George, George, George, stop it! You’re scaring the hell out of people!” And I said, “Bill, it’s going to happen and I’m sorry but I’ve got to do what I think is right.” He said “Alright, but soft pedal it.”
At 1:30 that afternoon, I went down with my motorboat to help Bill take things out of his house.
Robin Street, 30 years old in 1964, was farming with his family north of Kalispell: My dad called and said that the water was coming up and our friend George needed help moving his cattle … after, we needed to get some pigs that were surrounded by water, so I got in the boat and ran over there. Well, we got one back over to dry land and I went back for another. The water was running high, though, and the pig kept going under. When I got back to shore, I pulled her up and she wasn’t breathing, so I gave her artificial respiration by jumping on her belly three times and then poof! She got up and ran away. There were a lot of pigs and cattle that got killed in that flood.
Ken Louden, 12 years old in 1964, was living on a farm with his family in the Lower Valley south of Kalispell: We were just trying to keep the cattle safe and build dikes where we thought they would help. Some of the dikes we made were totally useless, but when it starts to flood you never know how far it’ll actually come up.
VanRinsum: I went out to help my wife’s brothers in Creston with their dike because they had a low spot. The river was really scary at that point. So we were on our hands and knees building up the dike with sod (turf grass or soil) … but we lost it pretty quick. After it failed, some dang kids, seven or eight of them, got up on their knees and locked arms and they actually stopped the water, they plugged it up. So we hurried up and got some sod and plugged it, but even after that it was obvious it wouldn’t hold.
Siderius: We had cows and I was wading up to here, up to my neck in water, trying to cut fences to let the cows go. After that we went back to the house but we couldn’t leave. The only way to get to town was with a boat.
Wilson: I had my dad’s cruiser and I was helping to get people out of Evergreen. There was this elderly couple, both of them big heavy folks, and I talked to them about leaving but they said, “Oh no, young man. You see back in 1948 it got up to the base of that fence and it’s not there yet and it won’t be.” Well, I went on and warned others but when I came back the water was halfway up that fence post. The elderly couple was standing in water and it took five minutes to get her in the car. By the time we got in, the gully was too full of water and I couldn’t get the car through, so we parked on a high spot and watched the water come up and up and up. I disconnected the car battery, took the guns out of the car and put them on the roof and I was about get on the roof myself. When the water started to come up to the back seat of the car, that woman was ready to get out, too! At about that time a guy with a front-end loader, with the air intake up high, came along and the guy was up to his shoulders in water! He came, hooked on to us and dragged us to an island and we spent the night there.
By 5 p.m. on June 8, the heavy rains had ended except for a few light showers.
Jerry Mahugh, 19 years old in 1964, was just finishing his freshman year of college in Eugene, Ore.: I was on my way home from school, driving my 1952 Ford, and I was happy-go-lucky. I was anxious to be home and get to work, to do something other than school. I was coming from Hot Springs towards Elmo and I came down the big hill and saw the huge panoramic view of Flathead Lake and I couldn’t believe it. The lake was chocolate brown and there were houses and parts of houses and entire trees with leaves and root systems just floating around. I was in a state of shock because nobody had told me anything and I had no idea what happened. I thought the dam had broke or someone had bombed it.
Louden: There was just so much debris – it was amazing. At times it was like you could almost walk across the river, there were so many logs coming down.
As night fell, Wilson and a group of people were still stuck on an island in Evergreen.
Wilson: I had been up all day and all night, so the first thing I did was sleep. I found a big tree and fell asleep under it. Everyone else on the island was in the farmhouse, but I was tired of listening to them … The next morning, Jack Thompson with search and rescue showed up with an airboat and picked us up.
A displaced home along the Flathead River. – Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service
On June 9, the Flathead River through Columbia Falls peaked at 25.58 feet; normal flood conditions are between 12 and 14 feet.
Bruce Young, 19 years old in 1964, lived along Flathead Lake and flew with his father over the flood: My dad was a pilot and he kept his airplane at the City Airport south of Kalispell. When we knew the flood was peaking, he said, “Let’s take a look,” and so we did. We flew low and over the whole flood. It was spectacular … We saw many houses in Columbia Falls with just the rooftops showing; we saw that the river had widened out of its banks, in some places a mile out. There were animals standing in fields with just their heads above water. There were dead pigs floating down the river. There was so much in the river that shouldn’t have been there … Once you see something like that, you realize the power of water and how it can change people’s lives in an instant.
Buentemeier: There wasn’t anything normal about the next few days because a lot of our men at Stoltze were trying to save their homes. It was devastating. Most of the people who lost their homes were in shock – I mean they lost everything.
Over the next few days, people would find freezers and they would try and get ahold of the owner. A lot of people had put their valuables in the deep freeze before the flood but then it would float away. They thought it would be a place that would be protected because it’s watertight and it’s heavy so it wouldn’t float away. Well, it wasn’t there when they came back because the house wasn’t there.
Wilson: The Hungry Horse News’ Mel Ruder was everywhere that week. He took pictures with his old Speed Graphic and he was lugging around a sack of negatives everywhere. He put out two papers that week.
Ruder’s coverage would later win a Pulitzer Prize, and his photos have become iconic images of the 1964 flood.
The flood inflicted more than $24 million worth of damage west of the Continental Divide; however, it paled in comparison to the pain east of the mountains. Amazingly, no one died in the Flathead Valley because of the flood, but nearly 40 people died on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
Nearly 400 homes in Kalispell, Evergreen and Columbia Falls were flooded, and miles of highway and railroad were destroyed. However, survivors say the damage would be considerably worse if it were to happen in 2014; after all, 50 years ago, the Flathead Valley was a much smaller community. In 1960, about 32,000 people lived in Flathead County. Today it’s three times that amount.
Young: That was a 500-year flood and I think we should pay attention to it as we build out in areas that are prone to flooding.
Siderius: In 1964 we watched cattle come down the river, but when the next one comes we’ll be watching houses and people coming down the river.
Ostrom: Psychologically, some people will never recover. All sorts of things affect us – you know, a death in the family and so on – but the biggest investment some of us have is our home and when you see that go to hell, it leaves a scar. I talk to people about the flood and they still have thoughts and dreams about it.
Buentemeier: We need to realize that Mother Nature can be really cruel and we can’t underestimate what she can do.
Young: Mother Nature makes the rules and it could happen again. We’ve been lucky, in my opinion, because it’s not if, it’s when.
SPECIAL THANKS
The Flathead Conservation District and Assistant Conservationist Kari Musgrove deserve special thanks for assisting Flathead Living with this story and finding and assisting with interviews. The conservation district works locally to fulfill the state’s policy to conserve soil, water and other natural resources, and without them, this story would not have been possible. For more information, visit www.flatheadcd.org. The conservation district is also hosting a presentation about the flood on June 5 at 7 p.m. at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell.
Flathead Living would also like to thank the Northwest Montana Historical Society and The Museum at Central School for assisting in finding photographs.
Flood of 1964- used by permission Daily Interlake
posted: Sunday, May 8, 2011 2:00 am
WILLIAM L. SPENCE/Daily Inter Lake | 3 comments
Editor’s note: This story first was published in 2004, the 40th anniversary of the disastrous 1964 flood. It is being re-run because of the current flood potential.
When torrential rains poured on top of a heavy mountain snowpack on June 8-9, 1964, it caused, by some measures, one of the most powerful flash floods in the United States during the 20th century.
Water poured down both sides of the Continental Divide, tearing out roadways and rail lines and ripping away bridges. Three dams failed. Another was over-topped.
At least 28 people died and more than 2,200 homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed in seven counties and a dozen communities in Montana.
Nothing remotely like it had happened before, ever since white settlers first moved into the Flathead in the mid-1800s.
There had been prior floods, of course. Just 10 years earlier, peak flows along the main stem of the Flathead River topped 69,000 cubic feet per second — more than double the average flow during spring runoff and 50 percent higher than the flood stage flow of 47,000 cfs.
A 100-year flood — one of five that hit the Flathead during the preceding 50 years — took place on May 23, 1948. The flow at Columbia Falls peaked at 102,000 cfs, with a crest of 19.5 feet, 5.5 feet above flood stage.
However, the biggest flood in anyone’s living memory was in 1894, when the Flathead River roared through the valley at a monstrous 142,000 cfs, more than eight feet above flood stage. Old-timers said that event “backed water up from Flathead Lake almost to Kalispell.”
Still, no one was prepared for what happened in ’64.
John Dalimata, whose family farmed 800 acres in the Nyack Valley along the Middle Fork, said there was plenty of snow in the mountains that year plus cool spring weather that delayed any runoff.
“The ground was completely saturated,” Dalimata recalled. “We had a snow gauge up on the ridge above the farm. Old Rude Voss [Dalimata’s father-in-law] used to say that when the snow was gone from that ridge, we didn’t have to worry about flooding anymore. There was a lot of snow up there that spring.”
As of May 1, gauges across Northwest Montana were registering snow depths as much as 75 percent above average, with above-average water content.
Four days later, after storms dumped up to 13 inches of snow across the western half of the state, it already was the second-snowiest May on record, with more snow in the forecast. At least two new record lows were set during the month, and it wasn’t until just before Memorial Day weekend that the high temperatures broke 70 degrees.
On May 7, National Weather Service climatologist Richard Dightman issued the following caution: “We aren’t in trouble unless we get a sudden warming and the snowpack melts all at once. However, we don’t look for that to happen — very rarely does snowmelt by itself cause flooding. But if we get rain on top of it ... then we’re in trouble.”
The warning received little attention.
It started raining Sunday afternoon.
It wasn’t too bad down in the valley — a half-inch or so out at the airport.
But in the mountains it was a deluge: Essex got 11 inches in 30 hours; Marias Pass got 15.5 inches by Monday night.
Climatologists later determined that three storm systems had collided over the northern Rockies. Storms from the east and northeast combined with moisture-laden clouds from the south to produce a 37-hour torrent of rain — warm rain that cut through the deep, wet snowpack like a hot iron.
Quiet streams turned into boiling cauldrons. On Bear Creek, just west of the Continental Divide, the water scoured slopes down to bedrock, stripping them clear of trees, picking up massive boulders and tearing away part of the highway.
By Monday morning, June 8, Glacier National Park Ranger Bob Frauson and his wife, Ann, were evacuating their home in St. Mary on the park’s east side.
“We had to stay at the old 1913 ranger station,” Ann recalled. “About 50 of us were there. The whole valley was flooded. Divide Creek was a roaring river with big trees and rocks coming down. Bob and Ray Smith stayed on the main bridge into the park all day, pushing logs away.”
At 5:25 a.m., just east of Essex, the Middle Fork washed out a 200-foot section of the Great Northern railroad line. It took out the U.S. 2 bridge shortly thereafter, cutting off all ground transportation across the Divide.
Then it bore down on Nyack.
“The thing I remember is the noise, this great roar,” said Dalimata, who was 22 at the time. “It was terrifying.”
Dalimata’s home is about 30 miles west of the Divide and a half-mile south of the river. It’s also south of the highway and the railroad tracks, which split the valley east to west.
“We have 200 acres of hay meadow north of the tracks,” he said. “The week before, we’d moved our cattle over there, including about 100 yearling calves. We weren’t much worried about flooding. We’d had floods before, in ’48 and ’54, but they hadn’t done much damage. In an emergency, we just moved the cattle across the tracks to a Forest Service meadow we leased.”
But this time there was no warning, no indication of an impending disaster.
“The first I knew about it was when a big gush of water came out of the creek behind our house,” Dalimata said. “I jumped on a Cat [bulldozer] and started working in the creek, trying to keep it out of the wood pile. Then I dropped that and helped my dad try to get the cattle out. But we didn’t even come close. The water came up too fast.”
They drove into the meadow and started shaking pails of feed pellets — a sound that normally brought the cattle running.
“We tried to get them to follow us, but their instincts were to go upstream,” he said. “They ignored us. We followed, and that was almost our undoing. We barely made it out. I’m still not sure why we didn’t get carried away.”
As they did elsewhere in the Flathead, the Great Northern tracks acted as a dike, holding back most of the flood water.
“We ended up south of the tracks, by the state highway shed,” Dalimata recalled. “Dad and I sat there listening to the noise. There were cattle bawling, elk barking. Everything going down river. The force of the water was so great it would just snap trees off that were two or three feet in diameter. There were a bunch of log jams. When a big one broke upstream, a wall of water six feet high came down.
“My dad crawled up on a diesel tank by the highway shed and looked out over the tracks. That was probably hardest on him — he could see all those cattle and trees going down. All we could do was hear them.”
They lost 142 head, including the yearlings.
East of the Divide, the destruction was even greater.
Communities from Cut Bank to Great Falls experienced flood damage. Dams failed at Lower Two Medicine Lake and East Glacier. West of Dupuyer, Swift Dam failed as well, sending a 30-foot wall of water racing down Birch Creek. At least 28 people drowned.
West of Great Falls, there were reports that Gibson Dam had failed. A Forest Service pilot sent to investigate discovered a three-foot wall of water coming over the top of the dam — 66,000 cubic feet per second, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
But the dam held.
Back in the Nyack area, a Fish and Game pilot barely had time to land on the highway and evacuate a handful of people, including Dalimata’s wife, Ruth, and his mother-in-law.
“As Ruth was flying out, she could see the railroad tunnel just west of here,” Dalimata said. “There was a full stream of water squirting out of it like a garden hose.”
People in West Glacier and Columbia Falls were unprepared for what was coming. Radio reports advised them that the river would crest at 15.5 feet — 1.5 feet above flood stage, but 4 feet less than the ’48 flood, which did little damage.
“We drove up to West Glacier on Monday morning and there were people standing out on the bridge watching the river,” recalled Katherine Lundstrom, whose husband, Darvin, was the Columbia Falls police chief at the time.
“Darvin’s mother and I and our daughter walked out there and could feel the whole thing shaking,” she said. “Darvin ran out and told us to get off, because he thought the bridge was going to go. After we came home, he changed clothes and left and I didn’t see him again for two days.”
Darvin and scores of other volunteers and professionals across the valley pitched in to help families evacuate. When the water got too high, they drove boats through the churning river to rescue people from rooftops and other high ground.
And the ground had to be much higher than anyone ever expected: The Flathead River level at Columbia Falls hit 15.5 feet at 4 p.m. By 8 p.m., it was at 18 feet and climbing a foot per hour.
The river finally crested Tuesday morning at 26.5 feet. Peak flows were an unheard-of 176,000 cubic feet per second.
By comparison, the Flathead is currently flowing at around 17,000 cfs; the river gauge is under 8 feet.
The flood waters spared little in the vicinity of the river.
More than 20 miles of U.S. 2 were damaged or destroyed, along with six miles of Great Northern track. A section of Blankenship Bridge collapsed Monday night and the bridge at West Glacier buckled. The eastern half of the Old Red Bridge in Columbia Falls also washed away, together with three homes; another 50 homes south and east of town were flooded.
“The water kept rising until it reached the bottom of ‘Dead’ on the Dead End sign on south Nucleus Avenue,” according to the Hungry Horse News.
Mel Ruder of the Hungry Horse News later won the Pulitzer Prize for his one-man, nonstop coverage of the 1964 flood.
Flathead County Commissioner Clifford Haines flew over the flood and described it in an interview: “It’s a solid river, three to four miles wide in many places. Many houses in the northern end of the valley aren’t just under water. They’re gone, completely washed away.”
Thousands of animals and whole forests washed away, too, clogging the river and Flathead Lake.
The final damage toll from the 1964 flood was estimated at $63 million — about $438 million in today’s dollars — including $28.4 million ($197 million in today’s dollars) in Flathead County.
The cleanup efforts took weeks. Great Northern hired 750 people and worked them 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to get its line across Marias Pass back in operation by June 29.
Glacier Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road, which washed out in several places, didn’t open across Logan Pass until June 30.
The Dalimata hay meadow was a jumble of downed trees and debris piles. Ten miles of fence had been swept away. Two or three feet of silt had piled up in some places, and in other places there were the remains of the terrified cattle that had tried to swim upstream.
“The county sent a crew out here to bury them,” Dalimata recalled. “But they didn’t have much equipment and weren’t able to do much. Then the grizzlies took over. I don’t know how many bears were out here digging them up.
“With the cattle gone, we didn’t have any farm income that year. We took a half-million board-feet of downed timber off our place. That’s what we lived on.”
If there was a bright side to the disaster, he said, it was the people. They started pulling together all across the valley. Those who lived in areas unaffected by the flood opened their homes to evacuees. Hundreds of others volunteered their time and effort during rescue efforts and the subsequent cleanup.
“We had several families here that wound up staying on our lumber mill yard,” Dalimata said. “The women would cook for everyone. We ate pretty good. Neighbors took care of each other.
“That’s one of my best memories of the flood. There’s blessings in everything, if you just look.”
WILLIAM L. SPENCE/Daily Inter Lake | 3 comments
Editor’s note: This story first was published in 2004, the 40th anniversary of the disastrous 1964 flood. It is being re-run because of the current flood potential.
When torrential rains poured on top of a heavy mountain snowpack on June 8-9, 1964, it caused, by some measures, one of the most powerful flash floods in the United States during the 20th century.
Water poured down both sides of the Continental Divide, tearing out roadways and rail lines and ripping away bridges. Three dams failed. Another was over-topped.
At least 28 people died and more than 2,200 homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed in seven counties and a dozen communities in Montana.
Nothing remotely like it had happened before, ever since white settlers first moved into the Flathead in the mid-1800s.
There had been prior floods, of course. Just 10 years earlier, peak flows along the main stem of the Flathead River topped 69,000 cubic feet per second — more than double the average flow during spring runoff and 50 percent higher than the flood stage flow of 47,000 cfs.
A 100-year flood — one of five that hit the Flathead during the preceding 50 years — took place on May 23, 1948. The flow at Columbia Falls peaked at 102,000 cfs, with a crest of 19.5 feet, 5.5 feet above flood stage.
However, the biggest flood in anyone’s living memory was in 1894, when the Flathead River roared through the valley at a monstrous 142,000 cfs, more than eight feet above flood stage. Old-timers said that event “backed water up from Flathead Lake almost to Kalispell.”
Still, no one was prepared for what happened in ’64.
John Dalimata, whose family farmed 800 acres in the Nyack Valley along the Middle Fork, said there was plenty of snow in the mountains that year plus cool spring weather that delayed any runoff.
“The ground was completely saturated,” Dalimata recalled. “We had a snow gauge up on the ridge above the farm. Old Rude Voss [Dalimata’s father-in-law] used to say that when the snow was gone from that ridge, we didn’t have to worry about flooding anymore. There was a lot of snow up there that spring.”
As of May 1, gauges across Northwest Montana were registering snow depths as much as 75 percent above average, with above-average water content.
Four days later, after storms dumped up to 13 inches of snow across the western half of the state, it already was the second-snowiest May on record, with more snow in the forecast. At least two new record lows were set during the month, and it wasn’t until just before Memorial Day weekend that the high temperatures broke 70 degrees.
On May 7, National Weather Service climatologist Richard Dightman issued the following caution: “We aren’t in trouble unless we get a sudden warming and the snowpack melts all at once. However, we don’t look for that to happen — very rarely does snowmelt by itself cause flooding. But if we get rain on top of it ... then we’re in trouble.”
The warning received little attention.
It started raining Sunday afternoon.
It wasn’t too bad down in the valley — a half-inch or so out at the airport.
But in the mountains it was a deluge: Essex got 11 inches in 30 hours; Marias Pass got 15.5 inches by Monday night.
Climatologists later determined that three storm systems had collided over the northern Rockies. Storms from the east and northeast combined with moisture-laden clouds from the south to produce a 37-hour torrent of rain — warm rain that cut through the deep, wet snowpack like a hot iron.
Quiet streams turned into boiling cauldrons. On Bear Creek, just west of the Continental Divide, the water scoured slopes down to bedrock, stripping them clear of trees, picking up massive boulders and tearing away part of the highway.
By Monday morning, June 8, Glacier National Park Ranger Bob Frauson and his wife, Ann, were evacuating their home in St. Mary on the park’s east side.
“We had to stay at the old 1913 ranger station,” Ann recalled. “About 50 of us were there. The whole valley was flooded. Divide Creek was a roaring river with big trees and rocks coming down. Bob and Ray Smith stayed on the main bridge into the park all day, pushing logs away.”
At 5:25 a.m., just east of Essex, the Middle Fork washed out a 200-foot section of the Great Northern railroad line. It took out the U.S. 2 bridge shortly thereafter, cutting off all ground transportation across the Divide.
Then it bore down on Nyack.
“The thing I remember is the noise, this great roar,” said Dalimata, who was 22 at the time. “It was terrifying.”
Dalimata’s home is about 30 miles west of the Divide and a half-mile south of the river. It’s also south of the highway and the railroad tracks, which split the valley east to west.
“We have 200 acres of hay meadow north of the tracks,” he said. “The week before, we’d moved our cattle over there, including about 100 yearling calves. We weren’t much worried about flooding. We’d had floods before, in ’48 and ’54, but they hadn’t done much damage. In an emergency, we just moved the cattle across the tracks to a Forest Service meadow we leased.”
But this time there was no warning, no indication of an impending disaster.
“The first I knew about it was when a big gush of water came out of the creek behind our house,” Dalimata said. “I jumped on a Cat [bulldozer] and started working in the creek, trying to keep it out of the wood pile. Then I dropped that and helped my dad try to get the cattle out. But we didn’t even come close. The water came up too fast.”
They drove into the meadow and started shaking pails of feed pellets — a sound that normally brought the cattle running.
“We tried to get them to follow us, but their instincts were to go upstream,” he said. “They ignored us. We followed, and that was almost our undoing. We barely made it out. I’m still not sure why we didn’t get carried away.”
As they did elsewhere in the Flathead, the Great Northern tracks acted as a dike, holding back most of the flood water.
“We ended up south of the tracks, by the state highway shed,” Dalimata recalled. “Dad and I sat there listening to the noise. There were cattle bawling, elk barking. Everything going down river. The force of the water was so great it would just snap trees off that were two or three feet in diameter. There were a bunch of log jams. When a big one broke upstream, a wall of water six feet high came down.
“My dad crawled up on a diesel tank by the highway shed and looked out over the tracks. That was probably hardest on him — he could see all those cattle and trees going down. All we could do was hear them.”
They lost 142 head, including the yearlings.
East of the Divide, the destruction was even greater.
Communities from Cut Bank to Great Falls experienced flood damage. Dams failed at Lower Two Medicine Lake and East Glacier. West of Dupuyer, Swift Dam failed as well, sending a 30-foot wall of water racing down Birch Creek. At least 28 people drowned.
West of Great Falls, there were reports that Gibson Dam had failed. A Forest Service pilot sent to investigate discovered a three-foot wall of water coming over the top of the dam — 66,000 cubic feet per second, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
But the dam held.
Back in the Nyack area, a Fish and Game pilot barely had time to land on the highway and evacuate a handful of people, including Dalimata’s wife, Ruth, and his mother-in-law.
“As Ruth was flying out, she could see the railroad tunnel just west of here,” Dalimata said. “There was a full stream of water squirting out of it like a garden hose.”
People in West Glacier and Columbia Falls were unprepared for what was coming. Radio reports advised them that the river would crest at 15.5 feet — 1.5 feet above flood stage, but 4 feet less than the ’48 flood, which did little damage.
“We drove up to West Glacier on Monday morning and there were people standing out on the bridge watching the river,” recalled Katherine Lundstrom, whose husband, Darvin, was the Columbia Falls police chief at the time.
“Darvin’s mother and I and our daughter walked out there and could feel the whole thing shaking,” she said. “Darvin ran out and told us to get off, because he thought the bridge was going to go. After we came home, he changed clothes and left and I didn’t see him again for two days.”
Darvin and scores of other volunteers and professionals across the valley pitched in to help families evacuate. When the water got too high, they drove boats through the churning river to rescue people from rooftops and other high ground.
And the ground had to be much higher than anyone ever expected: The Flathead River level at Columbia Falls hit 15.5 feet at 4 p.m. By 8 p.m., it was at 18 feet and climbing a foot per hour.
The river finally crested Tuesday morning at 26.5 feet. Peak flows were an unheard-of 176,000 cubic feet per second.
By comparison, the Flathead is currently flowing at around 17,000 cfs; the river gauge is under 8 feet.
The flood waters spared little in the vicinity of the river.
More than 20 miles of U.S. 2 were damaged or destroyed, along with six miles of Great Northern track. A section of Blankenship Bridge collapsed Monday night and the bridge at West Glacier buckled. The eastern half of the Old Red Bridge in Columbia Falls also washed away, together with three homes; another 50 homes south and east of town were flooded.
“The water kept rising until it reached the bottom of ‘Dead’ on the Dead End sign on south Nucleus Avenue,” according to the Hungry Horse News.
Mel Ruder of the Hungry Horse News later won the Pulitzer Prize for his one-man, nonstop coverage of the 1964 flood.
Flathead County Commissioner Clifford Haines flew over the flood and described it in an interview: “It’s a solid river, three to four miles wide in many places. Many houses in the northern end of the valley aren’t just under water. They’re gone, completely washed away.”
Thousands of animals and whole forests washed away, too, clogging the river and Flathead Lake.
The final damage toll from the 1964 flood was estimated at $63 million — about $438 million in today’s dollars — including $28.4 million ($197 million in today’s dollars) in Flathead County.
The cleanup efforts took weeks. Great Northern hired 750 people and worked them 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to get its line across Marias Pass back in operation by June 29.
Glacier Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road, which washed out in several places, didn’t open across Logan Pass until June 30.
The Dalimata hay meadow was a jumble of downed trees and debris piles. Ten miles of fence had been swept away. Two or three feet of silt had piled up in some places, and in other places there were the remains of the terrified cattle that had tried to swim upstream.
“The county sent a crew out here to bury them,” Dalimata recalled. “But they didn’t have much equipment and weren’t able to do much. Then the grizzlies took over. I don’t know how many bears were out here digging them up.
“With the cattle gone, we didn’t have any farm income that year. We took a half-million board-feet of downed timber off our place. That’s what we lived on.”
If there was a bright side to the disaster, he said, it was the people. They started pulling together all across the valley. Those who lived in areas unaffected by the flood opened their homes to evacuees. Hundreds of others volunteered their time and effort during rescue efforts and the subsequent cleanup.
“We had several families here that wound up staying on our lumber mill yard,” Dalimata said. “The women would cook for everyone. We ate pretty good. Neighbors took care of each other.
“That’s one of my best memories of the flood. There’s blessings in everything, if you just look.”
1977 Newspaper- Daily Interlake
