Floods of 1951
- Jane Hoskinson
- Jul 15
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 15
June: Flash Flood
On Friday morning June 22, 1951, in Perry, Kansas, the telephones began to ring. Oma Marrs, chief telephone operator was broadcasting a warning: Flood waters from the Delaware River and Wild Horse Creek were sweeping through the town. The flood raced down the north-south streets, pouring into cellars and submerging floors. Homeowners rushed to move furniture to upper levels and to rescue belongings from their basements.
Eighty-year-old Charles Tabbert hurried down to salvage his canned fruit, with the help of Marlene Abel. Before he finished, a basement wall collapsed, pinning him beneath dirt and debris. Abel, uninjured, called for help. Several men responded as the waters rushed in. The basement quickly filled, and Tabbert drowned before rescuers could free him.
Business owners watched as their stores were inundated. The all-important telephone switchboard was raised on cement blocks so that Mrs. Marrs and her operators could continue fielding frantic calls.
The Perry Mirror reported rescuers sailing the city streets: “A little before noon, motor boats appeared on the streets, the drivers keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might need assistance and transportation.” The Delaware crested Friday afternoon, reaching 27 feet.
Train and bus services to Perry from Topeka and Kansas City were canceled, and the Lecompton bridge collapsed, endangering Perry’s natural gas line. The Mirror reported, “The bridge across the Kaw at Lecompton was built in 1900 and was the only one across the river between Lawrence and Topeka. By this bridge going out, those who did their trading in Perry will be cut off from the south.”
Union Pacific railroad tracks near Perry were undermined, some of them forced ten feet to the south. Section crews began repairs on Saturday, using seven bulldozers to pull the tracks back into temporary position. By Monday morning, trains had begun to get through. Mail service resumed.
Mildred Weltmer, associate publisher of the Perry Mirror, wrote of her reaction to the flood: “I’ve had several nightmares in my lifetime but never experienced one quite like the one that I thought I had Friday. I never wakened from this one like I always did with the others and found things as they should be. Instead, this nightmare went on for several days, time seemed to stand still and people seemed to be every place, dirty, smelly water was everywhere you looked.”
Perry suffered from the effects of flooding in neighboring areas as well. The June 28 Oskaloosa Independent reported, “Highway traffic was severely curtailed, on U.S. 24, which normally carries the heaviest traffic west from Kansas City, being blocked on both sides of Perry. Direct traffic from Leavenworth was halted by an overflow of Big Stranger [Creek] at Easton. Traffic from Lawrence was hindered by overflow of the Kaw in North Lawrence; some of the traffic has come through by taking a rocked road east of Midland which joins ‘old Forty’ east of the Indian Tepees.”
Recovery work got under way quickly in Perry. Electric service was restored. The State Highway Commission and the Highway Patrol volunteered eight portable truck-mounted pumps to drain basements. The Red Cross set up a local unit in the lobby of the Bank of Perry. The town’s water supply remained safe. But the rivers had not finished their rampage.
July: The Streams Run Backwards
Under threatening skies, Perry continued to clean up, “keeping a weather eye out for the expected rise in the Delaware River,” according to the Perry Mirror, July 12, 1951. The paper’s “work was rushed in order that the readers would have their paper on time, and preparations were made to prevent further loss in the shop.”
The July 19 Mirror ran a full-page headline: “All Flood Records Broken at Perry.” A second flood had drowned Perry just three weeks after the first one. During twelve hours of rain on July 11-12, the waters returned. Perry lost its natural gas service Wednesday night when the north span of the Lecompton bridge fell, severing the gas line.
Thursday morning, the electric power went out. Many residents had taken steps to secure their valuables. Some had left town. Others were picked up by boat and ferried east over U.S. highway 24 to higher ground. Volunteers assisted in the evacuation, driving cars, boats, trucks and a school bus. Evacuees found shelter in homes all over the county.
Three families, Mr. and Mrs. C.J. Wright, Mrs. Eloise Magnusen and two children and Mr. and Mrs. Neil Hupe and two children, escaped the flood by driving down the railroad tracks to Williamstown in the Wrights’ Plymouth. The three-mile journey took three hours.
Henry and Mildred Weltmer, publishers of the Perry Mirror, and staff member Charles Knouse watched the rising waters from the Weltmers’ front porch. Henry Weltmer wrote, “We were certain when we were taken away by boat at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, our residence would take a terrific beating from the vicious waters which were flowing down upon us.”
Unlike the June flood, July’s waters did not flow downstream. The Oskaloosa Independent said, “The Delaware was unable to deliver its water to the Kaw. Muddy Creek, which normally runs due south on the east side of Grantville was for awhile flowing due north with a visible current. Swiftness of the currents in overflow areas was responsible for much of the flood’s vicious destructiveness.”
The Mirror reported, “The crest of the water [in town] was reached about noon, Friday, July 13, and stood at about seven feet in the street at the junction of Front and Elm streets, near the ‘Tree of Knowledge.’” The water didn’t begin to subside until Monday.
Tessie and Helen Trant, whose home west of the Delaware was near the site of the June Union Pacific track wash-out, suffered a boating mishap during a July rescue attempt. There were no serious injuries. The Mirror made light of the incident. Along with Georgia Stark, the Trant sisters “were being taken by boat to the water’s edge east of the city. George Killinger (the Admiral) and Jim Lester (Galley) and mate “Red” Reynolds, were manning the craft when it capsized. A naval investigation has not yet revealed whether it was an accident caused by too much training in seacraft or an act of sabotage.”
After Oskaloosa attorney Jim Lester helped to clean the Trants’ home on Tuesday, he claimed to have caught a catfish in their icebox.
Damage was extensive. Mirror staffer Charles Knouse described layers of mud in the Reynolds Laundry, six escaped pullets in Heck & Seyler Farm Supply, Perry’s fire engine sitting in water up to its headlights, floating merchandise in Dale Stark’s store, and a nine-inch “water dog” salamander “making its temporary home in the front window of the bank.”
Knouse reported, “The front office of the Mirror Press gave the impression that a political brawl had taken place and the whole front office was full of papers and other equipment floating on top of the water – none of it fit for use in the publication of a newspaper. The water reached a depth of 51 inches in the front office and covered all the presses in the back shop.” The Mirror moved to Oskaloosa, using the Independent’s machinery until the paper was able to return to its own shop on August 9.
When the power lines from Lawrence failed, the town had no way to pump water into its water tower. Army units from Fort Leavenworth connected a mobile electric power system when the flood receded.
Perry physician Dr. C.J. Bliss said that he believed the town’s water was safe, although he urged residents to receive typhoid immunizations. By July 26, about 700 people had received at least one of the three required shots, and more than 200 had completed all three shots.
The Red Cross set up a dining room for evacuees in the American Legion building in Oskaloosa and provided sandwiches and coffee for clean-up crews in Perry. Every town in the county provided meals on a rotating schedule. Nortonville’s Weishaar Brothers installed 40-50 butane tanks in Perry homes and businesses. Valley Falls provided a loaner fire truck. John Crawford of Valley Falls loaned out several washing machines. Almost 200 people from Perry, Newman and Grantville took shelter in Oskaloosa. Many more dispersed to towns and farms throughout the county.
Upstream on the Kaw from Perry, the town of Grantville also went under water. Mrs. Everett Zinn reported to the Perry Mirror, “There has long been a legend here, handed down by the Indians, that waters of the Kaw once spread from bluff to bluff. This . . . will never be questioned again . . . Water from bluff to bluff as far as the eye could see, was the sight that met the eye on Friday, July 13. By 4 p.m. the water was nearing Front Street and everyone was leaving.”
Neighbors in the nearby hills took in the Grantville residents. Medicine was air-lifted in after a message went out, written in cornmeal on a paved spot on the bluff. A helicopter set down an emergency transmitter for radio station WREN. But after seeing the damage to other towns and cities, Mrs. Zinn wrote, “Here in the village we feel we should not even murmur.”
The Lawrence underpass had just been pumped out after the June flood, when the July inundation filled it again. Washouts east and west of Lawrence and the flooding Kaw to the north cut off traffic to the city. Railroad service at Ottawa was disrupted by flooding on the Marais des Cygnes River, completing Lawrence’s isolation. The mail carrier from Lawrence was unable to reach Jefferson County for four days.
Evacuation of North Topeka was ordered as a precaution on July 11. On July 19, the Oskaloosa Independent reported on former Jefferson County residents and relatives in Topeka. The July flood made 10 to 15 thousand Topekans homeless. Thirty Topeka churches were damaged. Jefferson Countians pitched in to help: “Herb Mize turned boatman for fifteen long hours last Thursday when he took an assignment to evacuate people from North Topeka homes. He began at 6 a.m. and quit at 9 p.m. He was too tired to go back Friday, anyhow his 12½ HP motor was regarded too small to risk the strong currents, and the Government was bringing in bigger boats, amphib planes and helicopters for rescue work.”
The Independent expressed hope and confidence in a July 19 editorial, “Watch Kansas Rise Again.”
“Kansas has suffered the greatest disaster of its history. The people of its rich valleys have been the chief sufferers but the effects of the flood are felt throughout the state. From a dust bowl of fifteen years ago the Kansas scene has become a series of elongated lakes with turbulent rushing waters. The story of these past seven days has been repeated by press and radio and television and carried by word of mouth until it is known all over the nation.
“Out of these inundated Kansas valleys one may expect to see arise a humbled and thankful but a more determined population, people with faces set to the tasks of rehabilitation and rebuilding on a better pattern than heretofore. A pattern more intelligent, with a clearer eye to self-protection and the protection of others.”
Can the 1951 Flood Happen Again? The answer is yes. The occurrence of the 1951 flood helped initiate the construction of numerous flood-control reservoirs and levees that have helped to reduce the inundation by subsequent floods in Kansas. Thus, although a flow of a magnitude comparable to the 1951 flood is certainly possible, the associated flooding would likely be less due to storage of flood waters in the reservoirs. . . . Given the right combination of circumstances and conditions, a flow of equal or greater magnitude is possible. . . . Major floods occur occasionally, and the risk of an extraordinary flood like those of 1844 and 1951 will always be with us. From The 1951 Floods in Kansas Revisited, Juracek, Perry and Putnam, U.S. Geological Survey, 2001
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By Jane Hoskinson, with thanks to Ardie Grimes and Deb Case for research and technical support.
This article appeared in “Yesteryears” in October 2021. https://www.jchsks.com/publications
