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Home , Conklingville Dam, Hudson River, Rensselaer Lake, Sacandaga River

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n March of 1913, on flooding was part of a the nation: the creation Easter weekend and mammoth and violent storm of Great with no warning, system that hit about fifteen (in Fulton, Saratoga, and disaster struck upstate states in total and devastated Hamilton Counties) as part NewI York. Wreaking death half a dozen Midwestern of a statewide system of and destruction, the Hudson states, especially Ohio. But reservoirs for controlling the rapidly rose to flood the great 1913 flood in New flow of the ; heights that still stand as York brought two significant and dramatic proof of the records in some places. The legacies to the state and effectiveness of chlorinated

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The Great Easter Flood of 1913 was America’s most widespread natural disaster. But the damage it caused in State, particularly in Albany, led to scientific and engineering remedies that are still in force today.

Broadway in Albany, March 29, 1913, during the Great Easter flood. The Hudson River flooding in Albany eventually gave the New York State Legislature the political will to the Sacandaga Reservoir (now ) to regulate the Hudson’s flow.

drinking water to combat York could absorb no more heavy sleet downed tele- BY TRUDY E. BELL ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART LIBRARY typhoid fever and other water. On Good Friday, graph and telephone poles water-borne diseases. March 21, a strong arctic and wires across the east- high-pressure system swept ern half of the nation. The A One-Two Punch from Ontario to the Gulf of resulting communications After an unusually warm Mexico with sustained hur- outages prevented the U.S. and wet winter of soaking ricane-force winds that in Weather Bureau from rains and almost no snow, Buffalo topped ninety either gathering informa- the sodden soils across New miles an hour. Winds and tion or sending warnings

www.nysarchivestrust.org 14 NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES

about much worse to come. walls, and rose well above the as is still the case today— Runoff from On Easter Sunday, March lowlands into downtown city most homes and businesses 23, torrential rains began to streets, flooding streetcar lines, did not carry flood , saturated soil tripled pound. In New York, the power generating stations, nor was flooding covered by Genesee River rose so fast and treatment plants. standard policies. the discharge of both that it surpassed its previous In Watervliet, the angry waters the Hudson and height of 1865 and flooded reached five feet deep in Trying to Control Water downtown Rochester up to some streets. In Troy, burst By 1913, both major and minor Mohawk in six feet deep for three days. gas lines ignited fires that floods along the lowlands North of Albany, the equiva- raged through downtown, of the Hudson River were forty-eight hours, lent of four to six weeks of leaving smoking ruins. common. Moreover, as the giving them a normal rainfall fell in five days On April 5, a special report Industrial Revolution spread in over the watersheds of the in Dun’s Review estimated that the late nineteenth and early combined flow Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. direct damage to the state’s twentieth centuries, paper mills Runoff from saturated soil business property, and collateral and manufacturing plants equivalent to that of tripled the discharge of both effects from the interruption built along the Hudson relied the Niagara River. rivers in forty-eight hours, of transportation and industrial on both water power and giving them a combined flow activities, exceeded $1 million hydroelectric power. Not only equivalent to that of the (equivalent to about $22 million was flooding a problem, but Niagara River. Both the today), more than half of it so was low water during dry Mohawk and the Hudson suffered by Troy. But the report summers. reached record heights on did not tally losses for many As early as 1867, a series Friday, March 28. Worse, the cities, including of dams and reservoirs to crests of the two rivers coin- and Rochester, nor did it protect against floods was cided by the time high water include losses to agriculture first proposed to the New reached the rivers’ or damage to personal prop- York State Legislature—but to Above: Homes along the Hudson River in Fort Edward, Washington at Albany and Troy. erty, even though thousands no avail. In 1905, the state County, in the Adirondacks were The churning rivers tore out of homes and farms were established a Water Supply partially submerged during the bridges, undermined railway flooded. Such uncounted Commission to examine Great Easter 1913 flood. embankments, destroyed river losses ruined many: in 1913— regulation of the Hudson’s

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flow during both floods and to clarify the water, then the droughts to keep hydroelectric filtered water was chlorinated turbines turning. In 1907, the to disinfect it. Municipal disin- commission proposed a system fection of water supplies, of reservoirs throughout the which added small amounts of state for storing water in times hypochlorite of lime (basically of excessive runoff and releas- powdered bleach) to combat ing it as needed to maintain serious waterborne diseases stable river flows. Pulp and such as typhoid fever, was still paper mills also proposed controversial in 1913; indeed, the building of an enormous the two cities that pioneered water storage reservoir on chlorination— City, New the in the Jersey and , Illinois— Adirondacks, the largest trib- had started doing so only five utary of the Hudson River years earlier. Thus Albany RENSSELAER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TROY, NEW YORK entering from the west. Yet was one of the first cities to the monumental scale and chlorinate its drinking water. cost of engineering such a By 8 a.m. on Thursday, system were daunting, and March 27, the Hudson River the proposals nowhere. was rising so fast that workers In 1913, Albany drew its at the drinking water from two hilltop barricaded the doors and reservoirs, each of which caulked all cracks with oakum delivered water through sepa- (tarred fiber) to prevent river rate pipes and supplied about water from entering and half of the city. Bleecker contaminating the filters and Reservoir was fed primarily chlorination facilities. Despite from in Albany these precautions, water pres-

(itself fed by several surface sure from the swollen river RENSSELAER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TROY, NEW YORK streams), as well as from the burst the door of one of the Hudson River. The other, regulator houses at about sioner of Public Works Wallace Top: A fire in Troy. One of the Prospect Reservoir, was fed 4 a.m. on Friday morning, and Greenalch immediately notified ironies—and tragedies—of the only from the Hudson. Before untreated river water flooded all newspapers to warn Albany Great Easter 1913 flood was fire being pumped uphill to the filters and halted the citizens to boil their water for from broken gas mains. Troy these reservoirs, however, the disinfection operation of the at least fifteen minutes before suffered more damage from fire than from water; raging floodwaters Hudson’s water was first treated pump station. The Hudson drinking it. Pump station prevented firefighters from putting by the Albany Pump Station stayed high enough to keep engineers flushed all the water out the flames. (then called the Quackenbush the station’s filters submerged mains by opening the hydrants, Pumping Station), located for thirty hours—and thus and within twenty-four hours Bottom: Foot of , Troy. riverside on Quackenbush and raw river water, including they had set up a temporary Both the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers reached record heights on Montgomery Streets just off contamination from human chlorination plant. Friday, March 28; worse, the crests Broadway, which ran parallel to waste, was pumped up to of the two rivers coincided by the Saving Albany’s Water the river downtown. Today the Prospect Reservoir. time high water reached Albany pump station’s original build- Knowing that rural areas However, despite these quick and Troy. The water was so force- ings survive as a well-known upriver still relied on outhouses actions, when the State ful that it ripped buildings from restaurant and brew pub. rather than indoor toilets, and Department of Health sampled their foundations. Suspended particulates in that flooding and runoff would water in the two reservoirs the cloudy river water were have swept human waste into they found organisms from filtered out by the pump station the Hudson, Albany Commis- raw sewage contaminating

www.nysarchivestrust.org 16 ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART LIBRARY

the reservoir, punched holes for typhoid. However, two to in the bags, and shook them three weeks after Prospect vigorously as they rowed Reservoir had been disinfected around the reservoir, releas- by the powdered bleach, the ing the bleach powder into incidence of new typhoid the water. The sterilization cases suddenly dropped. treatment was repeated two Meanwhile, areas of the city days later, on April 5. supplied by Bleecker Reservoir In 1913, major epidemics were less affected. of typhoid fever, a wasting The typhoid outbreak disease with a fatality rate of “constitutes one of the most about 10%, were still common, interesting and striking accounting for nearly 10,000 examples of an explosive deaths annually nationwide. epidemic due to a sudden… In those pre-antibiotic days, infection of a water supply,” Walter Reed and his co-workers wrote Theodore Horton, had demonstrated that infec- chief engineer of Albany’s tion was linked to unsanitary State Department of Health, TRUDY E. BELL conditions, including drinking in the weekly newspaper water contaminated by un- Engineering News. Horton treated human sewage. Before illustrated this with a graph the flood, Albany was essen- that plotted the rise and fall Top: The 1913 flood in Albany sub- Prospect Reservoir. But the tially free from typhoid fever, of the Hudson River, the merged the Quackenbush Pumping gate valve shutting off the but beginning on April 16 for times of the infection of the Station water purification plant, reservoir from the water about a week, at least 180 water supply, the sterilization located riverside just off Broadway. distribution system was stuck documented cases of typhoid of Prospect Reservoir, and Bottom: The Easter 1913 flood across open. So engineers decided broke out in the city, mostly the corresponding rapid rise New York State was part of the most on a desperate measure: they in the parts of the city supplied and fall of the number of geographically widespread natural would try to sterilize the entire by Prospect Reservoir and its typhoid cases several weeks disaster the has ever outdoor reservoir. On April 3, contaminated Hudson River later. Horton’s graph was suffered. The storm system loosed they loaded a small boat with water. The lag from March 28 widely reprinted in national tornadoes and floods that killed bags of hypochlorite of lime, to April 16 corresponded to engineering journals, medical more than 1,000 people and devas- rowed out into the center of the incubation period common and public health journals, tated parts of fifteen states.

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and reference textbooks to Control Commission. In 1922, flow 50% greater than the THE ARCHIVES demonstrate the effectiveness the Hudson River Regulating 1913 flood, even if the reser- CONNECTION of chlorinating drinking water District was formed and a plan voir were full at flood’s start. to prevent typhoid. was outlined for controlling the On March 27, 1930, the uch information flow of the Hudson through seventeenth anniversary of about the 1913 flood Disaster Spurs Political Will sixteen storage reservoirs on high water during the 1913 M damage in various New In November 1913, less than the Cedar, Hudson, Indian, flood, the gates were closed on York cities can be found in eight months after the Easter Sacandaga, and Schroon Rivers the new and local newspapers on micro- flood, the state legislature and other tributaries, with a the Sacandaga Reservoir (later film. I consulted newspapers passed the Burd Amendment total capacity of more than renamed Great Sacandaga in the public libraries of to the New York State Consti- 80 billion cubic feet and an Lake) began to fill. Had the Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, tution, which allowed up to estimated $30+ million cost. storage capacity of Great Albany, and 3% of state forest preserve A modified plan was approved Sacandaga Lake existed in for dates from March 21 land in the Adirondacks to in June 1923. The largest 1913, the Hudson’s flood until mid-April 1913. be flooded for state-owned reservoir—to be created by height at Albany could have A treasure trove of reservoirs that would be damming the Sacandaga at been lowered by three feet, scrapbooks and images of constructed to regulate stream Conklingville—would occupy and the city’s water treatment flooding and fire in Troy is flow, provide for the water 42.3 square miles (about the plant would have been spared. preserved at the Rensselaer supply, and generate water for same area as ) Since then, there have been County Historical Society . In 1915, the Machold and would store nearly half other floods on the Hudson in Troy. Storage Law allowed for the the water for the district. It due to ice dams, but not even The New York State creation of river regulating included a 400-foot concrete the flood of 1996 equaled Archives in Albany has districts, subject to review and spillway, the largest siphon the results—both negative photographs depicting approval by the Conservation spillway built to date, with and positive—of the Great 1913 Hudson River flooding, Department’s Water Power and the capacity for handling a Flood of 1913. n documents related to the regulation of the Hudson River and the creation of Sacandaga Reservoir, and relevant engineering journals and public health reports. Additional resources can be found at http://trudye bell.com/1913flood.php. My new blog, “Our National Calamity,” is at http:// nationalcalamityeaster 1913flood.blogspot.com/ .

The New York Central freight yard and roundhouse in Troy were left in ruins after the floodwaters receded. Dun’s Review estimated that half the business losses suffered

RENSSELAER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TROY, NEW YORK by New York State were in Troy.

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