1913 -- even more fun than factual

 The origin of this blog was attached quite firmly to flooding on the Whitewater River.

The flooding created a need for a dam and the rest is history.

But some history just defies even logic of the time. In the days immediately after the Great Flood of 1913, any story that could be told was as good as any they hadn't dreamed up yet. If the story was good enough, it made sense.

Nothing made sense in the 1913 flood. The scope of the calamity defies human comprehension.

But an article on March 27, 1913, in the Richmond (IN) Palladium-Item, is frighteningly hysterical in the face of more than a century of knowing what was real and what was not. To be fair, some of this likely was factual.

• Laurel was not wiped out.
• Nobody from Metamora died in the flood.
• The story about the rockets over the river is too funny to imagine.
• There were fatalities in Brookville. One family was washed away.
• People who did not live in the valley did not abandon their homes. They made room for others.
• Getting from Liberty to Brookville on the old winding road WAS impossible for a time. On the best of days, it was a challenge.

The headline:

BROOKVILLE

IS CUT OFF

FROM WORLD

LIBERTY, Ind., March 26 (11 p.m.) – Brookville's inhabitants are quarantined tonight in the court house and the school house and the school building.

Even those residents of the higher section of the city, which has not been touched by the flood waters of the Whitewater River, have abandoned their homes to take up quarters in the two public buildings to conserve the scanty fuel supply.

Four people living in the lower section of the town are known to be dead and a dozen are missing and have been in all probability, drowned. The town is in absolute darkness.

Will Ketner, a farmer, living seven miles north of Brookville, telephoned to Liberty tonight that all today unsuccessful efforts had been made to shoot a line across the river with rockets to send provisions to the river besieged townspeople. Only one bridge is standing in Franklin County and it is impossible to enter Brookville. Every house in the lower section of the town has been washed away.

At Metamora, Franklin County, only three houses are standing. The rest have been washed down the river. The loss of life there cannot be estimated. It is believed the entire town of Laurel has been wiped out.

OUR INITIAL BLOG ENTRY ON 1913.