Bulletin 1.pdf - California Department of Water Resources - State of ...

414 WATER RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA
flOOD FLOWS
Histories of early settlements in Sacramento Valley mention a great
flood in 1805 which is supposed to have covered the entire valley except
the Sutter Buttes. It is related that thousands of Indians were drowned.
Stories handed down by Indians and trappers tell of another flood of
large but indeterminate magnitude in 1825. There are reliable accounts of
devastation that year in the south, but the authenticity of Indian legends
regarding devastion in the north is questionable.
The Forty-Niners met their first flood in 1849-50, when the Sacramento
Valley was partially inundated. It is reported that small mountain
streams became raging torrents, and that the larger rivers generally
flooded wide stretches of the valley floor. According to one early writer,
"The valley of the Sacramento was like an inland sea, and the city of
Sacramento became a second Venice," and "instead of gondolas, the
honest miners navigated the submerged streets in wagon-boxes, bakers'
troughs, crockery crates, and on rafts made of whiskey-kegs."
Descriptions of the floods of 1861-62, by Thomas Rowlandson, are
contained in Bancroft's "Hand-Book Almanac for the Pacific States,
1863. " Following these floods, the author toured the West Coast from
Mexico to the Canadian border. He states that there were three heavy
storms between December 9, 1861, and January 10, 1862, extending the
full length of the Pacific Coast. Each was preceded by a heavy snowfall
that reached to the valley floors. According to William H. Brewer'8
description of these floods in "Up and Down in California in 1860-1864,"
the "great central valley" of the State was under water-"a region 250
to 300 miles long and an average of at least 20 miles wide, a district of
5,000 or 6,000 square miles, or probably three to three and a half million
acres." Thousands of farms, he stated, were entirely under water, with
cattle starving and drowning.
In January, 1862, the American River rose to a height probably not
since equalled. Many bridges were destroyed, isolating whole communities,
and at Folsom a flour mill was washed away taking with it a wire
suspension bridge. The attested high water mark of this flood, made on an
old stone stable on the left bank of American River 1.5 miles above Folsom,
indicates that the flood crest would have registered 39.3 feet on the
present gage at Folsom, or 7 feet higher than the crest of March, 1928.
After the flood of 1861-62, it was estimatedthat more than one-fourth
of all taxable property in the State had been destroyed, and the State
Treasurer thought the tax list would be cut one-third. This was the greatest
and most disastrous general flood in California of which there is
authentic record, and there is much interesting and reliable information
available regarding it. Some of the local newspapers, notably the" Sacramento
Union" and the "Alta California." carried day-by-day accounts
of its progress.
There have been many damaging floods in the Central Valley Area
since 1861-62. One of the greater of these was in 1907 when an estimated
300,000 acres of reclaimed land in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
was submerged. owing to the breaking of many levees. During four days
from March 18th to 21st the mean flow from the Sacramento and San
Joaquin River watersheds was about 732,000 second-feet. Floods in 1909
were comparable in runoff and disaster to any known up to that time, and
conditions were again critical in 1911. Records at gaging stations on many