Tuckaseigee's most damaging flood was 60 years ago

By Lynn Hotaling

The Aug. 30-31, 1940, flood was the worst ever recorded on the Tuckaseigee River, killing four and causing property damage estimated at $2 million. In the photo above (and in the first two below), after "cloudbursts" and "waterspouts" sent the river on a rampage, area residents surveyed the destruction in Cullowhee.

That's how the Jackson County Journal described the county's greatest natural disaster - the 1940 flood of the Tuckaseigee River and its tributaries ­ that occurred 60 years ago today (Thursday).

Torrential rains, which hit especially hard in the Canada and Caney Fork sections, fell throughout the night of Aug. 30-31, 1940, and caused Jackson County's most damaging flood. Four people in the Canada area were killed, and estimates placed the total property damage at some $2 million.

Flood waters crested at 15 feet above the dam at Cullowhee, and the raging river destroyed every bridge in Jackson County that crossed the Tuckaseigee.

Despite the day's hard rains, Queen said, the family was not especially worried and had gone to bed as usual. The noise that woke her was water hitting her house.

A "cloudburst" on the mountain above them sent a torrent of water down the normally placid creek a few yards from their house, Queen said. The force of the water was so great that it drove a poplar log partway through the wall.

Three of those killed by flood waters were Queen's neighbors. Albert McCall and his two children drowned after a tremendous slide hit their house and swept it away, according to The Sylva Herald's Aug. 30, 1951, county centennial issue. The force of the slide "carried Mrs. McCall across the raging creek where she caught the top of a tree and saved herself."

The body of the McCalls' 5-year-old son was swept nearly 60 miles by the flood waters and was found on an island near Bryson City, according to The Jackson County Journal's Sept. 5, 1940, edition. The bodies of Albert McCall and the other child were never found.

Sixty years ago, people gathered near the banks of the Tuckaseigee River to survey damage in the aftermath of the catastrophic Aug. 30-31, 1940 flood. Raging waters killed four and destroyed every bridge in the county that spanned the river. Estimates placed property damage at $2 million, with some $500,000 of that in the Cullowhee area. The rock building was Avery Mashburn's garage, which is located in Cullowhee on what is now the corner of Old N.C. 107 and Wayehutta Road. A second floor, added since the flood, housed Upstairs Sound. The house behind is the Junior Galloway house, which is also still standing. In the foreground are the remains of Victor Brown's ice cream shop, which, according to former Jackson County Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Hooper, was a fairly new rock building before the flood destroyed it.

"Everybody comments on how dark it was that night," Nicholson said. "But Ethel always said there was a light that guided her and showed her how to find her way to a neighbor's house."

The McCall house was last seen "plunging over a 50-foot waterfall," according to the Sept. 1, 1940, Asheville Citizen.

The fourth Canada resident to perish in the flood was Mrs. Vessie Mathis. The Jackson County Journal reported that her husband told of a slide and huge quantities of water coming down Pistol Creek and carrying his home away.

According The Herald's county centennial issue, Mathis said "he held onto his wife as long as he could, then grabbed something solid and pulled himself from the waters." His wife's body was found the next morning.

The concrete bridge at Cullowhee was destroyed by the flood of Aug. 30-31, 1940, as was every other bridge across the Tuckaseigee River in Jackson County. Buildings in the background are, from left, Robert Brown's house, Brown's store and Battle's Grocery, which also housed the Cullowhee Post Office. The old railroad from Sylva to East LaPorte is seen in front of Battle's store. The smokestack is on the Western Carolina University campus at the steam plant. Cullowhee Baptist Church's cemetery is also visible.

"It was pitiful. Their house was gone. But just a little way from where the house had been their pie safe was standing upright, just like someone had set there. All the food still looked good. The pickled beans they'd had for supper were right there and so was the cake she'd baked," Burrell said. "There was even a ten-dollar bill in one of the tea cups. That was to pay the granny woman when their baby came."

Most published reports indicate that Canada and Caney Fork were the hardest hit. The Jackson County Journal reported hundreds of places in those sections where "great streaks were stripped down the mountainsides, from top to bottom, carrying everything before them, down to the solid rock," and told of craters 30 to 40 feet deep. People in those areas said they heard loud sounds like the discharge of dynamite, and that water gushed from the earth, the newspaper reported.

In the aftermath of 1940 flood, crews worked to repair the railroad track near East LaPorte (above) while Cullowhee residents (below) surveyed the debris lodged behind the ruined bridge (below).

Most of the damage occurred before daylight, said the late Arthur Moore, who lived on Caney Fork near the mouth of Sugar Creek during the flood. Moore remembered looking across the creek that morning and seeing that the store and house that had been there the night before were gone.

Several localized areas apparently received immense amounts of rainfall in a very short time. Some said they were "cloudbursts" while others called them "waterspouts," but all who remember that night agree that they happened.

Clark, who lived near East LaPorte some distance back from the Tuckaseigee River, remembered he heard hard rain that night but didn't know of the flooding until his father-in-law, Leon Moody, woke him up that Saturday morning (Aug. 31) and said that "nothing was left on the river."

Damage along Caney Fork was extensive, Clark said. "Caney Fork looked unreal. The course of the creek changed completely during that flood.

Clark and a neighbor built a raft so they could get across the river and see what had happened.

The Asheville Citizen reported that the flood left Cullowhee isolated from the rest of the region and parts of Cullowhee isolated from each other. Former Jackson County Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Hooper said he remembers people in Cullowhee shooting messages back and forth across the river with bows and arrows that Saturday morning.

Sylva Herald Publisher Jim Gray said that for a while the only way people in Cullowhee could drive anywhere was to go out Tilley Creek (S.R. 1001) and over to Franklin and then to Bryson City and back to Sylva.

"The bridge at Governor's Island and the bridge in Bryson City were the only ones left on the river," Gray said.

A temporary bridge at Cullowhee that opened to traffic Sept. 10, 1940, was the first bridge rebuilt across the river's main channel, according to the Sept. 12, 1940, Jackson County Journal.

The late Ayscue Hooper was working on Lake Superior when he heard a radio news report that the Tuckaseigee River in Jackson County, North Carolina, had "gone on a rampage."

Homes and businesses from Tuckasegee to Bryson City were destroyed by the flood. The Asheville Citizen reported at the time that property damage in the Cullowhee area had been estimated at $500,000. The Blackwood Lumber Co.'s drying house in East LaPorte washed away along with several hundred thousand board feet of lumber.

"East LaPorte felt the full force of the streams of Caney Fork and the (Tuckaseigee) river. Cullowhee village on the north side of the river was almost completely destroyed, and the destruction along the river at Webster, Dillsboro, Barkers Creek, Wilmot and Whittier was terrible. Homes and businesses went away at these places. The church at Barkers Creek was turned around. The village of Wilmot was almost demolished. Homes were lost at Whittier and the damage there was very heavy," reported The Herald's 1951 centennial issue.

Not all of the Tuckasegee's tributaries were affected. Bob Terrell of Asheville, who grew up in Addie near Scotts Creek, said he had seen Scotts Creek higher on several occasions than it was on Aug. 30-31, 1940. The late Lester Adams, who lived in Cullowhee's Speedwell community, said he didn't realize there had been any flooding until he went into Cullowhee Saturday morning.

"When I got to the Baptist Church (Cullowhee Baptist on the Western Carolina University campus), I could see houses floating past," he said. "The bridge was broken and turned sideways, but we didn't know that until the water went down some."

According to a Tennessee Valley Authority report prepared in March 1982, the 1940 flood was the maximum known flood at the Cullowhee dam. The river crested 15 feet over the top of the dam at a flow of almost 60,000 cubic feet per second. The average flow at this site is 580 cfs.

Data from the U.S. Geological Survey show that the river crested at 21.1 feet at Tuckasegee with a flow of 40,800 cfs. The drainage area of the Tuckasegee River at that point is some 143 square miles.

The Tuckaseigee's second-greatest flood, according to the USGS, occurred almost 100 years before in May 1840, when the river rose to 18 feet with a flow of 23,000 cfs at Tuckasegee.

Since the 1940 flood, Nantahala Power and Light Co. has constructed several dams and reservoirs on the Tuckaseigee River. The largest, Thorpe, located in Glenville on the river's west fork, was under construction in 1940 when the flood ripped through the county. The other four (Cedar Cliff, Bear Creek, Wolf Creek and Tannassee Creek) were built during the 1950s and are located in the Canada section on the Tuckaseigee's east fork.

Additional Flood Stories

Bessie's greatness surfaced during flood

Flood's raging waters caused long journeys home

Recollecting the flood

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