Willamette Christmas Flood

[bluefrog]

My dad sent me some of his old pictures of the Willamette flood of '64 (sorry for the huge image sizes)

These are all taken around West Linn and Oregon City.

River Street, West Linn

Looking into Oregon City from West Linn

 

[THE HCP]

Where is West Lin exactly?

 

[Haakzilla]

...nice vintage pics -- was this worse than the flood in 1996?!

 

[MARIS61]

Where is West Lin exactly?

The bottom pic of the OC bridge is taken from the West Linn shore.

 

[THE HCP]

ahhhh gotcha'. This wasn't the Columbus Day Storm my dad always talked about?

 

[MARIS61]

...nice vintage pics -- was this worse than the flood in 1996?!

Nice summary here:

http://lostoregon.org/2009/12/24/christmas-week-floods-1964/

Here's what Willamette Falls normally looks like.

https://www.google.com/search?q=wil...iJ-j62AXpgYHYDQ&ved=0CEUQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=637

I've got a box of pics I took with my Kodak Instamatic (redeemed cereal box tops for it) down at George Rogers Park when the water was over the Sucker Creek footbridge and flooding the lawn by the old smelter.

 

[MARIS61]

ahhhh gotcha'. This wasn't the Columbus Day Storm my dad always talked about?

That was in 1962.

Mother Nature spent much of the early sixties punishing the NW, most likely in retaliation for 150 years of clear-cutting forests and damming rivers.

 

[bluefrog]

This was a hundred year flood. There was one recorded flood in 1861 that was worse. The Christmas flood was much worse than the '96 flood. One of the main causes of damage were logs that came off of the barges and acted as battering rams downstream.

It's hard to get a sense of high how the water was from some of these pictures. Here is a picture from River Street, mentioned above, while the water is at normal height.

 

[Nikolokolus]

...nice vintage pics -- was this worse than the flood in 1996?!

Worse, but the killer was the hurricane force winds that hit the entire Western half of the state.