On March 26, 1913, the Akron Beacon Journal headline screamed: "Worst Flood in Ohio History with Dayton Center of Horror." The accompanying article described "a calamity which can only be compared to the death, destruction, horrors, and devastation of war …"
Between March 23 and 27, 1913, the equivalent of two to three months' worth of rain fell across the Ohio Valley.
While destruction was centered in Dayton, impacts of the flood were broadly felt. Locally, the flood was known as the final blow to state operations of the Ohio & Erie Canal.
The experience in Akron illustrates how the damage to the canal became too much to repair. It is described by Cuyahoga Valley National Park Ranger Pam Machuga.
"By Monday, March 24, the Little Cuyahoga River had made an amazing transformation, overflowing its banks in east Akron," Machuga says. "Akron would get another 5 inches of rain in the next 24 hours. By Tuesday, a crowd gathered on high ground to watch as the raging river carried houses away.
"When Akron's east reservoir gave way, some thought it had been dynamited. Water roared over the gates of the canal locks to a depth of 8 feet, making them impossible to open. Lock 1 in Akron held back 9 miles of water. Canal cities were warned by those on horseback to evacuate the area.
John Henry Vance, a B.F. Goodrich engineer, used dynamite to blast open the lock gates. The water crushed gate after gate, ripping the clay lining off the banks of the canal, as it rushed north to Peninsula and Boston."
Downstream from Akron, Cuyahoga Valley residents and businesses along the Cuyahoga River were among the many battling floodwaters. Park Ranger Rebecca Jones describes the situation in the village of Boston.
"PEOPLE SAW their houses swept off their foundations," she says. "The Boodey family worried about their store, so opened the front and back door to try to prevent it from being lifted from the foundation.
They watched a log float through their store. People dropped dynamite onto the nearby dam on the Cuyahoga River to relieve water pressure.
"The Cleveland-Akron Bag Co. had to clean up for weeks before it could reopen after the flood. How do you clean a house or business that is layered thick with mud in the days before shop vacs and readily available chlorine bleach?"
The magnitude and the impacts of the flood were much more far-reaching than the local impacts.
Flood of 1913 expert Trudy E. Bell notes, "This mammoth storm system with its ferocious tornadoes and floods set records for fatalities and flood heights that still stand today -- and which dwarfed both Sandy and Katrina in geographical extent."
She says it also created institutions that evolved into today's United Way, Red Cross, Rotary, IBM, and Cox Communications.
An era of flood awareness followed immediately after the flood. New dams, levees, floodwalls, and the increased role of the federal government in large-scale emergency response all grew out of the Great Flood of 1913.
Natural resource protection is part of the conversation around flood control that has occurred since 1913. Wetlands protection gained support for slowing and filtering storm water.
In recent years, attention has focused on impervious surfaces, areas that water cannot infiltrate such as buildings and parking lots. Impervious surfaces increase runoff and flood risk. Cuyahoga Valley National Park supports development strategies that reduce runoff.
We are currently role modeling one approach through the porous pavement used in a new parking lot at Rockside Station.
Editor's note: Vasarhelyi is chief of interpretation, education and visitor services for Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
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