Toward the last of November a deluge of rain began, which, being protracted for several days, inundated all the valleys west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges, from southern California to northern Washington, destroying the accumulations of years of industry. No flood approaching it in volume had been witnessed since the winter of 1844. All over the Willamette the country was covered with the wreckage of houses, barns, bridges, and fencing; while cattle, small stock, storehouses of grain, mills, and other property were washed away. A number of lives were lost, and many imperilled. In the streets of Salem the river ran in a current four feet deep for a quarter of a mile in breadth. At Oregon City all the mills, the breakwater, and hoisting works of the Milling and Transportation Company, the foundery, the Oregon Hotel, and many more structures were destroyed and carried away. Linn City was swept clean of buildings, and Canemah laid waste. Champoeg had no houses left; and so on up the river, every where.[1] The Umpqua River rose until it carried away the whole of lower Scottsburg, with all the mills and improvements on the main river, and the rains destroyed the military road on which had been expended fifty thousand dollars.[2] The weather continued stormy, and toward christmas the rain turned to snow, the cold being unusual. On the 13th of January there had been no overland mail from California for more than six weeks, the Columbia was blocked with ice, which came down from its upper branches, and no steamers could reach Portland from the ocean, while there was no communication by land or water with eastern Oregon and Washington; which state of things lasted until the 20th, when the ice in the Willamette and elsewhere began breaking up, and the cold relaxed.
Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/501
A DISASTROUS FLOOD.
483
