Paducah Postcards + Miamisburg Marker

One reader’s query leads to solving a Kentucky mystery; another reader invites viewing of a new historical marker on the 1913 flood in Ohio 

Out of the blue the morning of June 2, 2018, this email message arrived:

Ms. Bell. I stumbled upon your blog a couple of years back while trying to identify a group of flood postcards I have. I thought they were from Paducah, KY, but didn’t know the year. Turns out 

This scene during the 1913 flood is one of seven mystery postcards received from Mike Kunz. It is of downtown Paducah, Kentucky: specifically, Broadway seen from Second Street. The water flooding the city was deep enough for boats.

they were from 1913, and show some of the ‘Water Carnival’ in that city. I have collected and sold cards for years, never being aware of the importance of the 1913 flood. I have read all of your past blogs and have told a number of collectors and dealers at shows about the site. I have 

All seven postcards from Mike Kunz
correspond to scenes depicted in
this souvenir booklet, with a few
minor differences in the way images
were cropped.

gained much from this sight and I have enjoyed it’s educational value. To thank you for your efforts I would like you to have these Paducah cards. I would rather see them go where they would be appreciated than to someone for resale. I’m not trying to sell you something. If you want them, just send me an address, and will send them to you.

Keep up the good work. Mike Kunz, Petersburg, Tn.

South Third Street from Broadway in 

Paducah; at left is the Citizens Savings

 Bank and at right is First National Bank.

In this and other images, the faint vertical
marking that seems disembodied in the
sky is actually a streetlight hanging from
electrical wires.

The “water carnival” to which Mike Kunz referred was the appalling belittling of the horrific magnitude of the 1913 flood in Paducah, Kentucky, recounted in this blog’s September 2014 post “Spurning Disaster Aid.” 

At the time I wrote that post—indeed, until last month—I had never seen photos of the 1913 flood in Paducah as the city newspaper then did not publish images.

South Fourth Street from
Broadway. At left in the
foreground is the dry goods
business W. M. Rieke & Co.,
and in the background is
City Hall. At right in the
foreground is the Paducah
Banking Co.

Immediately, I wrote back to Mike, thanking him and accepting his generous offer. A few days later, seven black-and-white postcards arrived by mail. 

All of them showed flooded street scenes of a city with a few people in distant boats. The postcards were lithographed: they had a halftone screen dot pattern, suggesting they might have been printed for mass distribution or sale (as opposed to being real photographic prints made from a glass negative in an enlarger). None of them had been used; none had any printed caption; a few had cryptic handwritten identifying markings on the front (clearly on the original negative).

Broadway Avenue looking
east from Fourth Street.
The City National Bank
is at the left.

When I asked Mike what led him think they were of Paducah, he responded:

Trudy, the one card depicts the 3 Links Bldg, and I have had another view of that building that identifies it from Paducah. Also, the street names match some in Paducah. I have tried to find info on the store names visible on the images, but had no luck. You probably have access to better sources than I, so that might help. I have been able to pinpoint other locations that way. I think these cards were probably printed by a newspaper or local printer, but it unusual for them not to be identified as such. Please let me know what you come up with. Good luck with your search, Mike.  

Map of Paducah, KY, showing where
the seven postcard images were
photographed during the 1913 flood.

His guess triggered a memory of another blog post I wrote, “Grisly Souvenirs,” on the commemorative booklets—including booklets of postcards—published in many cities of local Great Easter 1913 flood and tornado devastation. The very first image in that post was of just such a booklet for Paducah, which at that time (November 2015) I had never seen and could not find online.

North Fourth Street from
Broadway Avenue.

Well, sometime in the intervening two-and-a-half years, images of the booklet’s interior pages made their way onto the internet. 

Broadway Avenue between
Fourth and Fifth Streets. The
author of the souvenir booklet
spins reality by noting that the
scene shows “johnboats of every
description in which the citizens
enjoyed the Water Carnival.”

Those pages definitively revealed that all seven postcards indeed were of the 1913 flood in Paducah depicted in the booklet, including identifications of the street locations. No name is given for the booklet’s author, but the photographs were credited to Paducah photographers Sacra & Cook.

Thank you, Mike Kunz! 

Fifth and Kentucky Avenue, showing the
Three Links Building.

This post reproduces all seven of the postcards he kindly gave to me, identifying their locations.

 

Miamisburg 1913 flood marker

Meantime, a couple of weeks earlier, on May 22, 2018, another reader emailed: 

Hard to believe it's been 5 years since we recognized the 1913 flood in Miamisburg.  If you are in the area on June 19, 10:00 am Riverfront Park, we are dedicating an Ohio Historical Marker. Would be nice if you could be there.  Carol O'Connell, Miamisburg Historical Society
 

When it turned out that the dedication was to be “merely a pause in the many activities” that day celebrating the bicentennial Miamisburg (southwest of Dayton), and that I live 200+ miles away diagonally across the state, Carol promised to send me a copy of the program after the event.

She was as good as her word, supplemented by photos of the historical marker by local photographer Jay Robinson. Jay’s images of the front and back of the marker are here; additional images he took of the entire unveiling of the marker are on Facebook.

When I asked Carol what her role had been in securing the historical marker, she replied:

I completed the application for the Ohio History Connection marker.  It's akin to writing a research paper.  It was my donation to Miamisburg's Bicentennial celebration. It was unveiled at the site that was inundated by the flood. The land is repurposed as Riverfront Park. The marker stands in front of the levee along the Great Miami River constructed by the Miami Conservancy District.
  

Historical images of Miamisburg during the 1913 flood appear on the city’s website.

Thank you, Carol and Jay!

Speaking of historical markers…

After hearing from Carol, I wondered what other historical markers might commemorate the 1913 flood. A quick Google search revealed that another one was installed a year ago (June 2017) by the Indian Lake Historical 

Society. It is in Russells Point, OH (Logan County) along the Great Miami River—only about 75 miles northeast of Miamisburg, in case someone wants to visit them both in a day. Both photographs of the Indian Lake marker were taken by Rev. Ronald Irick.

Installation of historical markers commemorating the widespread Great Easter 1913 tornadoes and flood 

in any state is the type of news I would love to feature in this research blog. Heck, I’d love simply to learn the locations and see images of long-existing historical markers that describe a landmark that existed until destroyed by the Great Easter tornadoes or flood, even if the disaster itself is not the main focus of the marker…

It’s always fun to hear from readers with queries, updates, images, leads to new information, or invitations to speak or to attend relevant events, so please contact me!  

©2018 Trudy E. Bell

Next time: Desperate Medicine

Selected references

The 1913 flood is commemorated in some paintings in floodwall murals—see “Magnum Opus.” 

Bell, Trudy E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control, including several pictures of Cox. 

(Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus $4.00 shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me), or order from the publisher.

Mapping Disaster

What is revealed when 1913 high-water measurements are input into today’s Geographic Information System (GIS) computational tools? By guest author Barry Puskas of the Miami Conservancy District

[Note October 2, 2016: I am in the process of moving both my office and household 40 miles away. As a result of the inevitable chaos, my next post will be November 1. Thank you for your understanding. - T.E.B.]

Beginning Easter Sunday 1913, 9 to 11 inches of rain fell within three days, March 23–25, throughout the Great Miami River watershed. The massive deluge surged through downtown Dayton and a host of other cities and towns, 

Dramatic digitized map of 1913 flood depths in Dayton, Ohio, was one of nine geo-referenced maps created by Barry Puskas and colleagues at the Miami Conservation District (MCD) between 2008 and 2012, synthesizing data from 1915 hand-drawn maps with modern GIS techniques. For this poster, which also paired photographs of submerged locations in Dayton with similar views of the same locations today, Puskas was received the Map Gallery People’s Choice Award from the Ohio GIS Conference (OGISC) of 2013. High-res digital maps of the 1913 flood in Dayton and eight other cities are available from the MCD (more info below)

drowning or otherwise killing more than 360 people throughout the Miami Valley—60 percent of Ohio’s death toll in just 10 percent of its area. In addition, property damage throughout just that southwestern corner of Ohio exceeded $100 million in 1913 dollars, equivalent to between $2.5 billion and $44 billion in today’s economy (see the discussion at the end of this post on converting the value of historical dollar figures, as well as details about fatalities in “’Death Rode Ruthless…’” and about property damage in “Like a War Zone”).

This slide and others like it are courtesy Barry Puskas, Miami Conservancy District

In response to the flood, the some 23,000 citizens of the Miami Valley raised local donations of $2.2 million (in 1913 dollars) by the end of May for a permanent flood protection system (see “Morgan’s Cowboys”). The Miami Conservancy District (MCD) was formed as a regional agency for the entire watershed; construction was finished in 1922 and the system completely paid for 1949 (see “Morgan’s Pyramids”). The MCD has been providing flood protection since. 

The MCD system consists of five major dry dams (slide 14) that hold back floodwaters in excess of what can be handled by 55 miles of levees and 35 miles of improved channel downriver. The system protects not only Dayton but

The Miami Valley is the land area surrounding the Great Miami River in southwest Ohio that encompasses about 10 percent of the area of Ohio. This area suffered 60 percent of the state’s deaths in the massive 1913 flood and close to half its property damage.

also select areas in the cities of Franklin, Hamilton, Huber Heights, Miamisburg, Middletown, Moraine, Piqua, Tipp City, Troy, and West Carrollton.

The system was designed to protect the valley from not just another 1913-scale flood but also an additional 40% more runoff. The 1913 flood exceeded a 500-year flood (that is, one with only 0.2 percent chance of occurring any year), and some statistics I’ve seen indicate it even exceeded a 1000-year flood (one with less than 0.1 percent chance of occurring any year). So the MCD system protects the valley against a 1000-year flood plus potentially 40% more. That’s a heck of a lot of flood protection.  But after suffering through the 1913 flood, the citizens of the Miami Valley did not and do not want to experience such a catastrophe ever again.

Need for maps

To design, engineer, and construct the effective dams, levees, and improved channels, MCD engineers needed several sets of data including: 1) detailed topographic information of the cities and rural regions swept by the flood; 2) the actual peak heights and extent of the floodwaters for calculating the volume and forces exerted; and 3) some realistic sense of the probability of a future flood of the same or greater magnitude for calculating an adequate safety margin.

 

But in 1913, only 1:62,500 scale U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps existed of the Miami Valley. Those USGS maps were of only limited use, however, as the usual USGS elevation contour interval was 20 feet, far too coarse mapping of elevations for the MCD’s flood-protection needs.

Just months after the Great Easter 1913 Flood, Arthur E. Morgan, founder of Morgan Engineering Co., deployed 50 engineers around the Miami Valley watershed to calculate the actual volume of water in the 1913 flood. In the absence of reliable maps, Morgan’s men—some dressed as cowboys—went house to house interviewing residents to record the times of flood stages, and surveyed the land themselves. The goal: to deduce the maximum possible flood and engineer fix-it-forever flood protection for Dayton. [Photo credit: Miami Conservancy District]

So, to gather the additional data, MCD chief engineer Arthur E. Morgan famously sent teams of surveyors armed with buckets of white paint fanning out throughout the Miami Valley, interviewing residents about flood heights and times, marking flood heights on buildings and trees with white paint all the way from Piqua (pronounced PICK-wah) to Hamilton.

 

Then, using traditional surveying tools and techniques, they meticulously measured horizontal lines of sight and (vertical) elevations. They determined elevations to 1-foot contour intervals on flat ground for the whole river corridor where it flooded, and 2-foot intervals on steeper slopes up to 50 to 75 feet elevation above the flood zone. 

By 1915, they completed about 100 hand-drawn, black-and-white paper maps of the valley’s topography and high-water marks plus property boundaries and other essential features. The contour maps included topographical information, 1913 flood limits, and observed high water marks. In some areas, they even mapped river bottom elevations that would have been below the water’s surface. The maps were so careful and precise that they were used by the MCD for nearly a century for estimating flood depths.

 

Bringing the maps into the digital age

Beginning in 2008, the MCD wanted to digitize the maps so that they could be geo-referenced to a modern geographic coordinate system where the data could be manipulated using computerized Geographic Information System (GIS) methods. By 2012—in time for the centennial of the Great Easter 1913 Flood—the MCD produced dramatic new maps of the 1913 flood. 

The new digital maps are scientifically important, because much topography today has been altered from what it was in 1913 as a result of major changes—including construction of the MCD flood protection works themselves. The new maps would allow us to overlay the current MCD levees and channel improvements. Making the maps digitally accessible also would allow us to understand some of the dynamics of the 1913 flood in greater detail as described by observers or survivors. 

The new digital maps are also historically and culturally important. Mapping the 1913 flood over today’s geography brings home to current residents the phenomenal extent and power of the natural disaster against modern landmarks. Thus, the maps may be freely used by historical societies and other groups throughout the Miami Valley. A few communities—notably 

Large (9 x 21 inches) utility-grade stickers are available from the Miami Conservancy District for communities wishing to commemorate 1913 flood heights. Credit: Sticker courtesy Barry Puskas, MCD; photo by Trudy E. Bell

Dayton, and Franklin, Hamilton, and Troy—have chosen to use the maps to guide them in prominently marking the peak flood heights of the 1913 flood along downtown streets to encourage walking tours of local history. To that end, the MCD also produced utility-grade stickers that can be affixed to light poles and other smooth surfaces to mark 1913 high water.

Converting from then to now

In a nutshell, the MCD generated the new digital maps from the century-old paper maps. As just one example, I’ve zoomed into one area in Piqua: a peninsula jutting into the Great Miami River that we dubbed the Piqua nose, which shows the hand-drawn streets as they existed in 1913. 

First, we took the black-and-white maps and raster-scanned them to convert them into digital form. Then we digitally stitched them together to give us one gigantic map of the entire Miami Valley, through all five counties along the Miami River corridor. To tie them to modern geographic reference systems—specifically to the Ohio State Plane coordinates—we needed features that have not changed since 1913. Streets are sometimes dug up and moved, buildings razed, canals filled in or otherwise destroyed, bridges replaced, etc. But in general, railroad tracks don’t shift much. So the railroad tracks were essential in allowing us to carefully tie the century-old maps to today’s widely used coordinate system.

We also wanted to separate out the topographic contour intervals along with their associated elevation information. We did that through what is known as a raster-to-vector conversion, which simply means converting a hand drawn line from an image to a digital (or computerized) line object. 

That allowed us to create a digital elevation model (DEM) of the region’s topography in 1913, extracting three-dimensional information from the two-dimensional maps. That’s important because water runs downhill—river hydraulics is all about topography and gravity—and features obstructing floodwater flow that can change or alter flow patterns and flood depths.

On that 1913 digital elevation model, we were then able to plot all the high water marks that Morgan’s surveyors had painted and measured—shown as red dots. They plotted and recorded some 1,900 high water marks along the river corridor. 

Then, from those high-water marks, I made some flood water surface lines, that is, making lines that would represent the maximum or peak surface of the 1913 floodwater from one side of the river valley to the other. 

Now here comes the power of digital manipulation. The digital 1913 flood water surface was interpolated to map the edge of the flood boundary.In addition, the data were used to calculate flood depth for every 10 foot by 10 foot area on the ground. The detailed depth mapping was a new look of the flood that depicted much more detail than the 1915 maps. The newly created flood boundary from GIS matched very well to the 100-year-old paper maps; even the dry areas, or as I call them "islands," complemented the original maps.

From this stage, we can now display today’s aerial imagery view of Piqua’s city streets to create a flood depth map for the city and whole region. Once again picking on Piqua, this view reveals how the 1913 floodwaters—which were up to 20 feet deep in this region—would have inundated the streets of Piqua as they exist today. This, of course, is what happened before the MCD flood protection system was built.

Equally dramatically, now that everything is georeferenced, we can digitally superimpose other layers from current aerial photography or any other digital information. For example, we can overlay the MCD’s current flood protection measures: the long orange line around the Piqua nose marks the MCD levees, and the little green squares mark some floodgates on storm sewer outlets so water can’t get back underneath the levees and inundate the city. 

Finally, we can map the area of Piqua—or elsewhere along the Great Miami or other rivers—now protected by the MCD system today.

Sidebar: Gallery of digitized maps

Below are thumbnail images of the digitized maps of the 1913 flood depths in eight cities along the Great Miami River corridor, in addition to the map of Dayton shown as the lead (top) photo in this article. High-resolution versions of the maps are available from the Miami Conservancy District, especially for those communities that wish to create exhibits or otherwise commemorate the 1913 flood as part of their local history. For more information about the digitized maps and high-water stickers, contact the author Barry Puskas c/o t.e.bell@ieee.org.

Digital map of 1913 flood in Franklin, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood in Hamilton, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood in Miamisburg, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood in Middletown, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood in Moraine and West Carrollton, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood in Piqua, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood in Troy, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Digital map of 1913 flood north of Troy, Ohio. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Barry Puskas, P.E., G.I.S.P.—shown here with the Map Gallery People’s Choice Award he received at OGISC 2013—has been manager of technical services for the Miami Conservation District in Dayton, Ohio, since 2007. Before that, he was a hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Mr. Puskas has professional experience in civil engineering projects such as land development design, hydraulic and hydrologic studies, and dam/levee safety engineering. A graduate of The Ohio State University, he is a registered professional engineer (PE) and geographic information system professional (GISP). His technical expertise is in hydrologic and hydraulic modeling; FEMA flood studies; geographic information systems; flood forecast modeling; flood protection system operations; and engineering design and analysis of dam safety and levee safety projects. Mr. Puskas also has experience in management of information technology (IT) including servers, virtual servers, network systems, work stations, laptops, and mobile devices. He may be reached c/o t.e.bell@ieee.org.

©2016 Barry Puskas

Next time: Racing Against Epidemic

Selected references

The text and most of the illustrations in this guest post are based on half the conference presentation by Barry Puskas supplemented with information gathered during a telephone interview with him on June 24, 2016. Listening to his full 45-minute presentation online while watching his full slide presentation is highly recommended for his additional discussion comparing photographs taken during the 1913 flood in half a dozen cities with photos of the same locations today.

There are at least seven separate methods for assessing the present value of historical money (all seven are discussed at the excellent site MeasuringWorth.com by two economics professors at the University of Illinois). They are all correct in different contexts, yet they all yield answers that differ widely. Since natural disaster losses pertain to damage to and rebuilding major projects such as bridges and railways, the most relevant method for this purpose seems to be the “relative share of the GDP,” which allows comparison of the cost of construction of a major project in historical times to the value in the economy at the time as a percentage of the GDP. To compare capital losses in 1913 dollars with 2014 dollars (the latest given on Measuring Worth.com), the “relative share of the GDP” calculator multiplies 1913 dollars by a factor of 439 to reach today’s value. So $100 million in 1913 would translate to about $44 billion today. 

For more information, see Officer, Lawrence H. and Samuel H. Williamson, “Measuring Worth is a Complicated Question”; for the actual calculator, see “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to Present.” See also their discussion “Choosing the Best Indicator to Measure Relative Worth,” using the cost of constructing the Empire State Building as an example.  

Miami Conservancy District, The. A Flood of Memories. One Hundred Years After the Flood: Images from 1913 and Today. The Miami Conservancy District. 2013. ISBN 978-0-615-75860-2. 128 pages. Hardbound. Colorful coffee-table book depicts the dramatic 1913 flood side-by-side with images of the same areas today captured by photographer Andy Snow. Dayton, Franklin, Hamilton, Miamisburg, Middletown, Piqua, Troy, and West Carrollton are all included. Each pair of images has brief descriptive text, but the bulk of every page is reserved for the striking contrasts between devastation in 1913 and the safety and vibrancy these communities enjoy now.

Some two dozen more books plus several documentary films have been published about the 1913 flood in various cities in the Miami Valley, including many for the 2013 centennial commemoration. For detailed listings and descriptions of them, see “Book Report!”, “Centennial Highlights—and Legacy”, “Centennial Year + 2”, and “1913 Flood + 3”.

Bell, Trudy E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control, including several pictures of Cox. (Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me.)