A 981-Mile Flood
Wednesday, January 20, 1937
Today, the Ohio River was in flood throughout its entire length of 981 miles, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois.
In particular, the Ohio was rising along a 700-mile stretch from Belleville, West Virginia, to the mouth at Cairo. Above Belleville, all the way to the river’s headwaters in downtown Pittsburgh, the Ohio was stationary, neither rising nor falling.
The Mississippi River, also flooded in part, was overburdened at the confluence of the two rivers near Cairo. This meant that the Ohio, the larger of the two rivers where they met, could not empty into the Mississippi, which flowed for more than 2,000 miles from northern Minnesota to the Mississippi Delta in the Gulf of Mexico.
Flooding tributaries were also backing up. There was a major traffic jam of rising water in the Ohio River basin.
Mama Bondurant
Not far down the Ohio River from Louisville near Brandenburg, Kentucky, Mama Bondurant had been watching the falling rain and rising river for at least two weeks.
On Wednesday, January 6, she went to prayer meeting. “Only a few there,” she wrote in her diary, “rainy night.”
On Saturday, January 9, she recorded, “Gloomy rainy day.” Mama went with her husband on business appointments. The couple ate lunch in Hardinsburg. “Rained all day.”
On Wednesday, January 13, Mama made a coconut pie and buttonholes for a brown linen dress before going to prayer meeting. “It rained hard.”
On Sunday, January 17, Mama wrote, “Raining again. The river is nearly to the water trough.”
For Sunday dinner, they ate roast beef, potatoes, hot rolls and lettuce. After going to Sunday school and church service that morning, the weather kept them in that evening.
“Still raining hard and we didn’t go to [evening] church,” she wrote.
Arthur Smith
Arthur Smith, an auto mechanic in Jeffersonville, Indiana, was a river watcher who anticipated that a bad situation would only get worse.
“Well,” Smith later said, “I would say anytime that anybody that pays any attention to river stages and all, reads daily quotations in the paper [about] what the river is doing, more or less knows what’s going on.”
Closing the sewers kept the Ohio River out of Jeffersonville for the time being. So did the levee. But, as Smith recalled, the water “kept coming.”
He added, “It was evident there was trouble ahead.”
Read or listen to the introduction to The 1937 Flood Journal or access the archives for the full chronology and anything you’ve missed.
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