“Willamette: Rebel River” by Merlin Blais, Oregonian, 28 February 1943
Used with permission from The Oregonian.
From the Cascades’ frozen gorges,
Leaping like a child at play,
Winding, winding through the valley,
Bright Willamette glides away;
Onward ever,
Lovely river,
Softly calling to the sea,
Time, that scars us,
Maims and mars us,
Leaves no track or trench on thee.
–Samuel L. Simpson’s “Beautiful Willamette”
The Willamette river’s destructive rampage of New Year’s, 1943, would not have occurred if the seven flood control reservoirs of the Willamette valley project had been in existence. Uncontrollable as the ranging waters may have seemed as they swept through towns and over farmlands, the seven dams would have “nipped in the bud” at least the costliest portion of the crest.
This is the conviction of the United Stated army engineers, executors of the $62,075,000 Willamette flood control project. And backing up that conviction is a mass of surveys and comparisons – and, lastly, the actual performance of the two completed units during the recent high water, that of the Cottage Grove and Fern Ridge reservoirs.
Most of Oregon’s million and more inhabitants live within a dozen miles of the Willamette’s inadequate banks, and few of these could doubt the seriousness of the New Year’s flood. In the six days from December 30 to January 4, the high-water crest roared along the river’s 185-mile course, taking ten human lives and inflicting property damage estimated as high as $7,000,000.
Nearly 2000 men, women and children evacuated their homes. Scores of shops, dwellings and farm buildings were ruined. Two hundred thousand agricultural acres were inundated, some of it denuded of top soil or covered over with gravel. Numerous bridges were washed out or damaged and valley highways and railroads were blocked.
Near Albany, a mother and infant were drowned as their automobile skidded off a flooded road. At West Salem, two state highway workmen were swept to their deaths as they tried to dislodge wreckage of a dance hall from a bridge approach. On a logging grade above Wendling two loggers died beneath a slide.
A Portland woman was drowned near Cottage Grove as a car plunged into a swollen creek. At Springfield, a paralytic woman died of shock after being rescued from her home in a row boat. A farmer lost his life near Corvallis when his boat overturned. An elderly man died in a flooded irrigation ditch near Molalla.
On its northward dash to the sea, the taupe-hued torrent inflicted its grim handiwork the length of the valley. More than 500 families were evacuated from West Springfield and Glenwood, two miles southeast of Eugene. Rich farm lands north of there washed out badly and evacuation of numerous families was handled by the army engineers, who themselves had to wade to their Eugene headquarters.
Soldiers: Helped to Rescue of Fleeing People
As the waters submerged bottomlands of Benton and Linn counties, troops from Camp Adair used assault boats and jeeps to rescue two marooned mothers with new offspring and bring many others. The furiously swollen Santiam struck at communities between Jefferson and Independence. Five hundred feet of new revetment washed out near Independence.
Looking like a vast lake, the waters spread havoc through West Salem factories, temporarily smudged Grand Island from the map, tore away costly log booms near Canby and sent 2,000,000 feet of logs spinning wildly downriver. At Oregon City, the flood ripped out a diversion dam, backed up the Clackamas river to flow past the first 40 homes and a dozen business houses. A wall of timbers kept the water off Main street. In Portland, shipyard work was curtailed and two ship launchings were delayed.
As the crest passed on into the Columbia, a valley three times the size of Rhode Island graspingly began restoring homes, shops and highways, with the aid of American Red Cross disaster workers and state and county crews.
In view of such widespread devastation, the question of how seven dams could have broken the anger of the mighty Willamette might seem beyond a reasonable solution. But the army engineers have that answer.
First of all, the Cottage Grove and Fern Ridge reservoirs, the two smallest in the series, have been completed and the record made by these in holding back the recent flood is a promise of what may be expected when the entire series had been completed and is in operation.
The $2,200,000 Cottage Grove reservoir, the engineers reported lowered the Coast Fork crest by an estimated ten feet at Cottage Grove, preventing a flood there of a magnitude expected only once in fifty years. During the New Year’s flood the water rose to within a few inches of topping the spillway, thus holding back 30,000 acre-feet.
Crest: At Eugene Lowered Six Inches by Dam
The crest at Eugene, however, was lowered by only about six inches by the dam’s action, it was estimated. The reservoir will hold back the equivalent of 5.41 inches of rainfall from its own watershed, but its 104 square miles of drainage area represents only about 5 per cent of the 2034 square miles lying above Eugene.
Not until construction of the Dorena dam on Row river and the Lookout Point dam or its equivalent on the Middle Fork near Oakridge will the Eugene Springfield area receive the protection now enjoyed by Cottage Grove, the engineering corps believes.
This winter’s heavy rainfall filled the $2,200,000 Fern Ridge reservoir early in December and again at the time of the New Year’s overflow. The water held back each time, the engineers reported, was the full 95,000 acre-feet live storage capacity of the reservoir and it was the release of the natural flow of the stream when the automatic crest gates opened which gave rise to the rumor that the dam had failed. The dam had not failed in any particular, but had operated perfectly. It was several days after the peak of the flood had passed before any part of the 95,000 acre- feet live storage was released.
Concerning the operation of the Fern Ridge dam, Resident Engineer Mongold had the following to report:
“During the flood we never sent a rescue party into the Long Tom valley, nor was there a single request for help. This is believed due to the fact that the dam made it possible to predict 24 hours in advance the time when the automatic crest gates of the dam would open, thus giving ample time to warn farmers to get their stock and, if need be, themselves and their belongings out of reach of the rising water. As a result there has been no report of stock lost in this valley.”Also, the dam made it possible to hold back the peak discharge of the Long Tom until after the crest of the flow coming across the country from the Willamette had passed Monroe.”
The low-lying Long Tom meanders across flat country, and during floods some of the Willamette’s waters sweep across from their own course to the Long Tom.
Farmers living along the Long Tom river below Fern Ridge dam have been inconvenienced and disappointed in that during the present winter of high precipitation the water released from the reservoir has for extended periods spread out over the bottom lands. This has been caused by the very indefinite channel and flat slope of the Long Tom river and can only be remedied by a channel improvement. Extent and need for this work is now being investigated by the engineers.
From the competent showing of the Cottage Grove reservoir and the work of the Fern Ridge unit, whose principal difficulty is believed remediable, the army engineers are convinced of the potential flood-breaking ability of the seven-dam project. How, then, would the entire system – the five unbuilt units are the Dorena, Sweet Home, Detroit, Quartz Creek and Lookout Point dams – have skimmed the destructive crest from a flood such as that of New Year’s?
The Cottage Grove and Fern Ridge dams have a combined usable capacity of 125,000 acre-feet which is less than 10 per cent of the whole project’s flood-holding capacity of 1,345,000 acre-feet. Actually, this capacity is the equivalent of the main Willamette valley “floor” covered one foot deep, or is more than one-twelfth of the Willamette’s entire average annual runoff of 15,800,000 acre-feet at Salem.
The army engineers estimated that the seven dams would have reduced the New Year’s overflow.
Dams: Would Have Checked Flood at Eugene
At Eugene, in other words, the dams would have limited the flood to a mere six inches above the stage where damage begins. The three dams above that city are designed to control an area which contributes 75 percent to flood runoffs there.
At Albany and Salem, the dams would have reduced the flood crest by about six feet, still leaving four feet in excess of the damage stage. The less effective result in mid-valley would be expected because the streams controlled by the reservoirs contribute only 53 percent to the flood runoff at Albany and 57 percent at Salem.
The seven dams, if they were to cope with a repetition of the long-remembered high water of 1890, which is the second highest in Willamette records, would make a truly great showing. Major-General Thomas M. Robins, now assistant chief of engineers and former division engineer from 1934 to 1938, found in his basic project report of 1937 to the war department and congress that the reservoirs would have achieved the following control:
| . | Eugene | Albany | Salem |
| Observed stages | 23.0 | 33.0 | 37.1 |
| Reduced Stages | 13.5 | 25.1 | 26.9 |
This relatively better control job would be possible because a greater proportion of the 1890 flood came from drainage areas above the dam sites. Prior to the recent New Year’s flood, all of western Oregon was thoroughly saturated by more than 12 inches of rainfall in December alone. When a soaking three-day rainstorm moved in near the month’s close, the waters quickly gathered in flood. The valley itself became a large source of overflow.
Although the New Year’s flood may have set a near-record for damage, it came as no surprise to army engineers – or to Oregon old-timers for that matter. The Willamette goes on a roaring rampage of that magnitude about once every five years. At Albany and Salem the recent flood stands only fifth on the destruction-marred list for the past 85 years, and at Eugene is only the 13th highest on record.
Flood: Of 1861 Worst in Valley History
Then, there is the lurking horror of another super-flood such as that of 1861, or even the better-remembered but lesser 1890 torrent. In the Civil war-time disaster, the waters virtually destroyed the towns of Champoeg, Orleans and Linn City. The Oregonian of that time reported how Champoeg’s “half-dressed people awakened and fled in the foothills,” how at Linn village (West Linn) the “Island mills were swept from their foundations . . . taking with them the mills of Dr. McLoughlin and the workers’ homes below,” how “houses could be seen plunging over the Oregon City falls at almost any hour of the day.”
Today’s valley populace can look forward to such a catastrophe about once every 100 years, if elaborate expectancy graphs are correct. If this super-flood were to have recurred in 1936, the year the engineers made their valley property inquiry, it was estimated that 353,000 farm acres would have been submerged and losses would have totaled $10,640,000. Its clutching waters would have more or less inundated 7000 farm units, 3000 farms, villages and suburban homes and stores. Perhaps 10,000 persons would have been driven from their homes, to say nothing of the inevitable loss of life. And these losses would have been even greater in 1943.
Fantastic as this picture appears, the engineering corps confidentially predicts its actual occurrence unless the valley project is completed first. The greater annual loss, however, is attributed to the lesser, five year variety. The Great Flood, in terms of 1936, would inflict damage averaging $106,000 per year, spread over a 100-year interval. The five-year type causes more than ten times that much loss annually.
Major-General Robins’ historic report estimates annual flood losses in the valley at $1,693,000. He advocated a system of dams as the most practical weapon against the Willamette’s vicious vagaries – even though seven proposed units, together with related river improvements, would cost a whopping $62,075,000. Congress authorized the project in its flood control act of June 28, 1938. Speed of its acceptance within a few years of the day when Oregon leaders first joined in their plea for federal aid appeared all the more significant when it was remembered that many other projects, such as the vast Central Valley project in California, took 20 years to sell the nation.
Funds: For Certain Dams Got Work Started
The grant also granted $11,300,000 as the starting fund, enough to build the Fern Ridge, Cottage Grove and Dorena dams and to start relocation of the North Santiam highway around the Detroit site. No funds were provided for the Detroit, Quartz Creek, Lookout Point or Sweet Home dams, or for the new $2,500,000 lock at the Oregon City falls, the $1,100,000 navigational channel work for the Oregon City-Albany sector or the $1,000,000 fish propagation programs -all included in the approved project.
Expenditures to January 1, 1943, totaled $5,974,874, all covered by the $6,000,000 this far allocated by the war department. No construction work is under way at present, because the army engineers also are in the war and have to concentrate their biggest efforts on a formidable array of military installations in the Pacific northwest.
Field and drawing board labors are continuing, however. The New Year’s flood prompted immediate start of a two-month survey to check the engineers’ “spot” estimate of $6,684,000 in losses. Thousands of farmers, convinced now more than ever of the need for flood control, are helping the field men determine the pattern of damage.
The Willamette project is considered one of the most meritorious in the nation, partly because it will serve many purposes. O.D. Eby, chairman of the state’s Willamette basin commission, recently averred that the valley project stands within the first ten on the federal list and that it was being urged for early post-war completion.
The seven dams will benefit navigation by assuring a controlled depth of 6 feet as far as the mouth of the Santiam river and 5 feet as far upstream as Albany. Even the two small dams now completed, by releasing a steady flow of 500 second-feet for several weeks during the late summer and autumn of last year, increased the river stage by 6 inches and materially benefited the record-breaking transporting of logs in rafts to Portland during that period.
Reservoirs: Will Water Crops in Dry Weather
The reservoirs will encourage irrigation by releasing nearly their whole capacity during the three normally dry summer months. The valley contains 1,373,000 irritable acres, by agriculture department estimate, and the strengthened summer river flow might well lead to a 50 percent gain in production through irrigation of the valley’s principle crops.
Pollution, which in recent years has blighted the “Beautiful Willamette” of Sam L. Simpson’s immortal poem, also is expected to diminish before this added summer flow. Hydroelectric power has not been emphasized, but the project is expected to enlarge year-around output of Eugene’s plants on the McKenzie and the private plant at the Oregon City falls. A “coordinated plan,” shelved indefinitely, calls for boosted heights at three dams for power generation.
Opponents of the reservoir type of control, principally the Oregon and National Wild Life federations and Izaak Walton league, have urged a $34,000,000 river bank levee and revetment program as a substitute. The army engineers, however, believe bank works to be incapable of coping with the “bad boy” Willamette. The corps does favor revetment to augment the dams.
From 1938 to 1941, $1,560,903.99 of such work was done with funds from the flood control appropriation of 1936. The 22 contracts provided 55,355 lineal feet of bank protection, placed at vulnerable points along 130 miles of the Willamette and on the Clackamas, Molalla, Santiam and McKenzie.
But the seven-dam project is the war department’s best answer to Oregon’s plea for flood control on the Willamette – and the plan’s primary purpose is to reduce the valley’s recurrent damage from floods such as that of New Year’s. Military necessities have pushed the Willamette project temporarily aside. But if congress proves willing after the war, the army engineers will see this, one of their favorite and most ambitious peace-time undertakings, carried on to completion.
