Excerpt from: Taylor, Leonard M.D and Taylor, Robert Ph.D. The Great California Flood of 1862.

The Fornightly Club of Redlands 2007. Web 18 Jan. 2013. THE FLOOD IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, FOUR CONTRIBUTING FACTORS FOR THE DEVESTATION The great California flood of 1862 devastated Northern California as well as Southern California. That is one of the most remarkable aspects of this flood; it was statewide. Floods were occurring everywhere in the state at nearly the same time. Bridges were washed our as far north as Trinity and Shasta Counties (Secrest, 2006). Four factors contributed to this greatest of Californias historic floods. 1) Record Rainfall 2) High Population based along streams and rivers 3) Melting of snow 4) Hydraulic mining. The rainfall in Northern California set records not yet matched. The following graph shows the average rainfall for San Francisco. Also shown is the rainfall for the two wettest seasons, 1861-1862 and 1997-1998. The rainfall in January 1862 has never been equaled; it was an amazing 24.36 inches. The second wettest month was February 1998, with about 15 inches of rain. Brewer was in San Francisco on January 19, 1862, and wrote: The amount of rain that has fallen is unprecedented in the history of the state. In this city accurate observations have been kept since July 1853. For the years since, ending with July 1 each year, the amount of rain is known . . . This year, since November 6, when the first shower came, to January 18, it is thirtytwo and three-quarters inches and it is still raining! But this is not all, generally twice, sometimes three times, as much falls in the mining districts on the slopes of the Sierra. This year at Sonora, in Tuolumne County, between November 11, 1861 and January 14, 1862, seventy-two inches (six feet) of water had fallen, and in numbers of places over five feet! And that in a period of two months. The unseasonable melting of the snow pack set the stage for down-stream disaster. Heavy rain caused damaging floods in Sacramento during December 1861 when nearly 10 inches of rain fell. However, a lot of the December rain in Northern California was stored in Californias greatest reservoir, the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The depth was 10-15 feet. January brought more rain and warm winds and John Muir (1900) describes very well what happened: The Sierra Rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow as regularly as the famous old Nile. Strange to say, the greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose all the wild waters would be muffled and chained in frost and snowBut at rare intervals, warm

rains and warm winds invade the mountains, and push back the snow line from 2000 to 8000, or even higher, and then come the big floods. In 1862 more people lived in Northern California than in Southern California. More people mean more property and the potential for more damage. The total population of California in 1862 was about 500,000 people, of which 100,000 lived in San Francisco. People tended to live along streams and rivers because water was necessary for agriculture, transportation, and mining. Of course, the flood risk was greatest near the streams and rivers. Mining aggravated flooding in Northern California. The streams and rivers of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California were being filled with an enormous volume of debris from mining, particularly hydraulic mining (Bancroft, 1890, p647). Log dams had been erected to retain this debris. These dams failed in the onslaught releasing a great wave of debris that surged downstream into the rivers and delta. The channels of the Feather, Yuba, and American Rivers were choked with boulders, cobbles, gravels, sand, and mud progressively down stream. A wave of fine sand and mud boiled down into the delta and ocean. The bed of the Sacramento River at Sacramento was raised more than 7 feet; the 2-foot tides were no more (Brewer, 1966, and Bancroft, 1890). The rivers flooded at lower flows because the channels were filled in. Gilbert (1917) estimated the volume of mine debris reached more than 1.5 billion cubic feet, before the practice of hydraulic mining was stopped by law Bloomfield vs. Woodruff, 1882). (This was the first federal environmental case, and the ruling was in favor of farmers, who were losing agricultural land, and against the miners who were releasing debris into the watersheds.) No single industry in the history of California has generated more long-term environmental damage for such a meager economic return (Mount, 1955. p. 210). WHAT THIS GREAT FLOOD DID. There are hundreds of first-hand accounts of the great 1862 flood. We have read many of the newspaper accounts. Many other first-hand accounts are preserved in personal correspondence of the time, as well as in legal and government documents. More information appears every year through the eye of the Internet, fed with a growing interest in genealogy and local history. Some of the accounts stretch the imagination, others, such as Brewers, are the masterful writings of a seasoned observer. Taken together a clear picture of this devastating storm emerges. There are no reliable estimates of the total loss of life in this flood. An intelligent Chinaman said that the number of countrymen destroyed in the state in the December flood was 500. This newspaper quotation is one of the few estimates, and it was for the lesser flooding of December 1861. (The quotation certainly reflects attitudes of the time toward all but white immigrants.) The Sacramento Daily Union reported that 1/3 of the taxable property in the state of California was lost, and also estimated that of all cattle were drowned (200,000). One house in eight was destroyed and 7/8 of all houses were damaged. The loss of all property was between $50 and $100 million (Brewer, 1966, p246). This sum corresponds to an average loss of between $100 and $200 for every person in the state. (The loss of cattle by flood, and the record drought year that followed, ended the early California cattle industry, and the cattle-based ranchero society (Jelinek, 1998/1999). Brewer writes, on January 19, 1862: The great central valley of the

state is under water the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys -- a region 250 to 300 miles long and an average of at least twenty miles wide, or probably three to three and a half millions of acres! Although much of it is not cultivated, yet a part of it is the garden of the state. Thousands of farms are entirely under water cattle starving and drowning. All the roads in the middle of the state are impassable; so all mails are cut off. We have had no Overland for some weeks, so I can report no new arrivals... The telegraph also does not work clear through, but news has been coming for the last two days. In the Sacramento Valley for some distance the tops of the poles are under water. The entire valley was a lake extending from the mountains on one side to the coast range hills on the other. Steamers ran back over the ranches fourteen miles from the river, carrying stock, etc, to the hills. Remember Judge Field? He was responsible for support for Whitney and Brewers investigations. His home, although located on one of the higher areas of Sacramento, was filled with two feet of mud after the food waters subsided. For a week the tides at the Golden Gate did not flood, rather there was continuous and forceful ebb of brown fresh water 18-20 feet deep pouring out above the salt water. A sea captain reported that his heavily laden ship foundered in the Gulf of the Farallons off of San Francisco, due to the layer of fresh water. Fresh-water fish were caught in San Francisco Bay for several months after the peaks of the flood. These events have not happened since. (Ellis 1936) Bosque (1904) gives an account of flood damage to his farm in Moraga: During the winter of 1861-1862 a phenomenal rainfall flooded the country, involving great destruction of property in every direction. Our place, like others, suffered great damage. Some of our cattle and horses were drowned, and the center of the valley below our house, which had been a beautiful broad meadow before the flood, was washed away to a bed of sandstone forming its foundation. The valley was scarred by deep impassable bareness thirty to forty feet deep, and the face of the once beautiful place so changed that one could scarcely recognize it. Mats of tulles mile of a side broke free of the delta islands and were carried out to sea in the flood. The mats moved down the coast in the prevailing southerly currents and were then driven on shore by wind, ending up on shores around Monterey Bay. Local farmers used pitchforks to kill the snakes, which came out of the grounded mats of tulles onto the beaches. (The Times of London, 1862) The California State Capital was moved from Sacramento to San Francisco because of high water.