Through 'High Water and Hell,' Kentuckians Fight Against Disasters

The devastation across the southern U.S. from recent hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods made me think about historic floods and how people dealt with them.

“Man, indeed, cannot control the rainfall,” wrote R. L Duffus in 1944. “He can alter the courses of streams only slightly. The water that falls on the high places must eventually go down to the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the sea, and by the ancient routes. But man can determine somewhat the time and manner of its passage. He can hold it back to prevent floods.”

The 1937 flood affected towns along the Tennessee
River, including Gilbertsville, KY, near where
Kentucky Dam was built in the 1940s.

A quick search produces a list of multiple significant floods in every decade, in all parts of the country. But since I grew up in Kentucky, where my current works-in-progress are set, this article will focus on what is called the Great Flood of 1937. In January and February that year, record levels of precipitation fell across the Ohio Valley, from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River. The resulting flood left 1 million people homeless, killed 400, and caused $500 million (nearly $11 billion in today’s dollars) property damage, with Kentucky being particularly hard hit.

Before construction of dams by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from 1933 to 1944, residents living near the Tennessee River and its tributaries endured flooding as a regular part of life.

While TVA had multiple goals—production of electricity, improved navigation on the Tennessee, a stronger economy in the region, higher living standards, and soil conservation—flood control was high on the list.

Towns on the Cumberland River were also affected
by the Great Flood of 1937, as shown by this barn,
left upended in Kuttawa.

One farmer explained, “When these (river) bottoms flood and wipe out our corn and bean crop that leaves us with nothin’ to feed the stock in winter, not to mention, nothin’ to sell.”

That person spoke only of damage to crops, which happened frequently, not the devastation caused by major floods.

The west Kentucky city of Paducah sits at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers, with the Cumberland flowing into the Ohio about 20 miles upstream. When record rainfall during January and February 1937 combined with rising waters flowing from the Appalachia Mountains to the east, the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio Rivers all began to swell and overtake their banks. Sleet and ice on Jan. 10 downed telephone, telegraph, and power lines, cutting off communications for the city. By Jan. 17, the looming disaster had become evident.

Flooded streets in Paducah, KY, became "rivers
of muck" when cold temperatures added ice.

This photo of a cow that survived
 the flood on the balcony of a house in
Paducah, KY, for 3 weeks appeared
in National Geographic Magazine.

Continuing rain, compounded by cold temperatures, turned streets into “rivers of muck,” wrote Charlie Jackson, who spent six weeks living on the second floor of a house abandoned as the waters rose. He survived using a hastily made wooden boat which allowed him to retrieve food, coal, and whiskey from vacated buildings. Jackson, who helped rescue people and discourage looters, called his experience “about three weeks of high water and Hell.”

Some 27,000 residents fled Paducah, with complete evacuation supervised by the military beginning Jan. 30. The water level crested at 60.8 feet on Feb. 2, submerging nearly 95 percent of the city, but water continued to rise until mid-February.

More than 200 miles northeast, the much larger city of Louisville, located on the Ohio River, received a record 19 inches of rain that January. With the Ohio River reaching a crest of 57 feet of water, or 27 feet above flood stage, an Army engineer called it a flood of “almost biblical proportions.” Three-fourths of the city was covered, forcing more than 230,000 Louisvillians to evacuate. Ninety people died, and damages were estimated at more than $54 million (equivalent to about $1.2 billion today).

After that flood, one letter to the editor, published in the Louisville Courier Journal, said of the people of Kentucky, “When ‘the chips are down’ and the going is rough, they all throw their shoulders back, stick together, and fight. Those are your God-fearing people, as the saying goes.”

In spite of some looting, violence, and discrimination in providing relief that Jackson described, citizens of all the cities and towns affected by the flood worked together to rebuild.

Seems resilience is one characteristic the victims of the latest disasters have in common with Kentuckians of 1937.

Sources:

The Valley and its People: A Portrait of TVA, (c)1944
Renie from Golden Pond by Barbara Hilliard, (c)1998
McKenzie Martin, “The 1937 Flood,” ExploreKYHistory, https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/369.
Robertson, J. E. L. (2004). “High Water and Hell So Far”: A Paducahan Remembers the 1937 Ohio Valley Flood. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 102(2), 183–206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23386285
Historical Photos from archives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and McCracken County (KY) Public Library

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. An unpublished novel, Shifting Currents, which takes place during construction of Kentucky Dam, placed third in Inspirational Romance in the nationally recognized Maggie Awards, and second in Historical Christian Romance in the Touched By Love Awards.

Her historical short story, “All That Glitters,” was included in the 2023 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction collection and is now available free when you sign up for Marie's newsletter here. In her newsletter, she shares about her writing, historical tidbits, recommended books, and sometimes recipes.