PORTSMOUTH, OHIO — The situation was growing desperate. Multiple shifts of men were working around the clock to reinforce and raise Portsmouth’s 62-foot floodwall with thousands of sandbags. The river had climbed to within four feet of the top of the concrete barrier.
The river stage reached 57.8 feet at 2 p.m. It had been rising at a rate of about an inch an hour since Tuesday. More rain was expected tonight, with snow showers probable on Thursday.
The Associated Press reported, “Portsmouth’s uneasiness was increased by the rising Scioto River to its north.”
As high waters threatened the city on two sides, Portsmouth’s flood defense included more than 500 men who patrolled the five miles of floodwall and levee, plugging seepage with sandbags. More seepage was expected, but the use of sandbags helped to decrease pressure on the city’s pump stations.
Four hundred of the men were a crew from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), led by WPA general superintendent of flood defense Frank Burgess.
A growing number of public officials, veterans and others were responding to the flood threat. City manager Frank Sheehan “is the commander-in-chief of the flood campaign,” reported The Portsmouth Times. Sheehan’s team included three engineers: city engineer Charles Stevenson, assistant engineer C. H. Samson and the chief engineer of the pumping stations, Floyd Pyles.
The newspaper said, “Scores of city employees are on the job. Waterworks, engineering and labor crews are working hand in hand.”
At the Portsmouth Sand & Gravel Company, a crew of 43 workers filled sandbags while city, county and state trucks hauled empty and filled bags in a coordinated effort to bolster flood defenses.
An emergency unit of the American Legion patrolled on Tuesday night after setting up headquarters in the basement of Memorial Hall. And Veteran of Foreign Wars commander W.B. Gardner advised the city manager of the availability of 25 members for flood duty.
There would be no Portsmouth as it existed in the first weeks of 1937 were it not for the confluence of the Ohio and Scioto rivers. Named after Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it was founded in 1803 by Henry Massie.
However, the area’s first town was Alexandria, which was settled in 1799 on the western bank of the Scioto River where it entered the Ohio River. The location was highly susceptible to floods so resettlement occurred on the higher side of the river, in Portsmouth, which was chosen as the seat of Scioto County.
Portsmouth became a business hub that supplied stone, brick, steel and wood products. The town benefitted from traffic along the rivers and the construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal, which carried freight from the Ohio River to Lake Erie.
Later in the 19th century, the Norfolk and Western Railway and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad arrived in southern Ohio. At the intersection of rails and rivers, Portsmouth turned into an industrial center. More companies sprang to life, making bricks (up to two million per day in 1916), stoves, steel, engines, furniture, clothing and countless shoes and shoelaces. For a time, Portsmouth was known as the shoe capital of the world.
The city’s two football teams were the Portsmouth Shoemakers and the Portsmouth Shoe-Steels, Ohio’s first professional football team. In 1927 the legendary Jim Thorpe came out of a short retirement to be player-coach for the Shoe-Steels.
Despite Portsmouth’s robust industries and transportation advantages, the Great Depression dealt a heavy blow to the city of 40,000 people. Now the Ohio River was on a rampage, again.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. Weather Bureau senior meteorologist W.C. Devereaux predicted the Ohio River would be in flood for up to four weeks below Louisville and “for at least a week between Portsmouth and Louisville.”
Devereaux utilized river observers throughout the Ohio Valley, all of whom filed reports to him from more than 20 points along the Ohio River.
One of Devereaux’s river observers was Fred B. Winter in Portsmouth.
Winter, who lived at 824 Second Street, appeared on the front page of today’s Portsmouth Times. He is sitting at his desk wearing a suit, spotted tie and wide-brimmed hat. Papers are stacked on each side as he reviews a document with pencil in hand.
“Every day for 21 years — and twice or more a day in flood times,” the newspaper wrote, “Mr. Winter has gone to the long river gauge at the foot of Madison Street to read the Ohio River stage and report officially to W.C. Devereaux, U.S. meteorologist at Cincinnati, who compiles the river reports between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.”
Winter read the gauge at 8 a.m. every morning and telegraphed his report to Devereaux. The report included any rainfall and volume in the preceding 24-hour period.
The official gauge was embedded “in the concrete runway” on a road that cut through the floodwall at the bottom of Madison Street. A splashing river made accurate readings more difficult to obtain, but Winter was a veteran of every situation and routinely sent accurate readings and reports.
“When the river is rising near or at flood stage, we take another official reading at each observation point along the stream at 2 p.m. and make a supplementary report to Mr. Devereaux,” Winter said.
If people wondered about the importance of Winter’s job, they could visit his office at the Portsmouth Meal & Feed Mills on Front Street.
“As the water rises,” said the newspaper, “creating more anxiety among the city’s residents, clusters of men and women can be seen about Mr. Winter’s office almost constantly all day long, studying the chart he pastes in his window and discussing the prospects for a dangerous or not dangerous crest.”
With the reports from Winter and other river observers, “[senior meteorologist W.C. Devereaux] is able to predict with almost uncanny accuracy the probable crest at any of the points along the [Ohio River],” wrote The Portsmouth Times.
Several factors went into Devereaux’s predictions, including activity on tributaries, the amount of rain and snow (both fallen and expected), and the rate at which the Ohio was rising.
Decades of experience observing weather and river conditions made Devereaux a respected authority in his field, even a kind of mastermind judging from the newspaper’s flattering words. Yet his forecasts were limited to the tools available to him.
In the end, it was one man analyzing a set of data in large part collected by other men. The one man had seen a lot through the years, but he was still one man.
Thank you for reading. If you liked this installment, please click the 🤍. Access the archives for the full chronology of The 1937 Flood Journal.
I'd never heard of river observers, but it makes sense that there would need to be a way to collect weather data to be used by the meteorologists. Do you know if the river observers did other analysis and prediction work or was this just a side gig where they sent in their daily measurements and then had an unrelated job?
This is an excellent piece of historical writing, pulling together so much context. As I learn more about this place, its history, and the people who lived there, I care more and more about what will happen to them. Essential reading.