FLOODS – Pumpkin Freshet of 1903 – It was a year for bad weather, full of rain storms and lightning strikes. Oct. 8 and 9 were days of heavy rain, then the Frenchtown Star gives this account of Saturday, Oct. 10:
“In the morning there was a freshet, at noon there was a flood, at evening there was a torrent of angry waters rushing down the Delaware Valley carrying away or destroying everything that came within their whirling, relentless grasp; at midnight there was a deluge. It was no longer a sight to look at or a topic of conversation – it became a monster, rushing and doubly destructive. Bridges were as tinder boxes set up on stakes above this mad, foreboding stream. Lumber, boats, logs, buildings that stood within its grasp became objects of its fury.”
People in the lower part of town sought refuge with friends as the water filled cellars, and got into a few homes. Upstream, the Jersey-most span of the Milford covered bridge was washed toward Frenchtown. It was believed to be the floating mass that hit a pier of the covered bridge here. That wreckage “was shoved up by the pressure of the water against the bridge, shoving it off the pier, when it dropped into the river and floated away.” That pier was the one supporting the two eastern-most spans. Left standing were the two-thirds of the Pennsylvania end of the bridge. It was pointed out later that the flood crested “about even with the bridge” and that it would have survived intact if that huge piece of bridge hadn't come hurtling downstream.
Cellars filled with water, H.B. Hawk and Ella Little each got 1.5 feet of water on their first floor, and their outbuildings floated away. Hawk's kitchen and Little's chicken house fetched up against G.R. Stryker's apple trees. The old foundry building (in what is now Sunbeam Lenape Park) flooded, floating away some of Elijah Case's lumber and ruining some stored salt belonging to J.S. Manners & Co. The water was deep enough in front of the Warford House (now the Frenchtown Inn) to row a boat, and boats were used as a matter of practicality on the low part of Cemetery Street (Trenton Avenue). The water was up around the depot and on the railroad tracks, even at Twelfth Street. On the good side, the receding water left behind some valuable timber.
The Riegelsville bridge had been swept away. Downstream, the Point Pleasant-Byram iron bridge had lost all but its Pennsylvania-side span; Lambertville lost all but one Jersey-side span; and the bridges at Washington's Crossing and Yardley, Pa., had disappeared. Most of the bridges between Port Jervis, N.Y., and the tidewater were carried away or badly interrupted.
For the rest of October, toymaker John M. Crosby was taking people back and forth to Pennsylvania in his motorized launch. Temporary ferry service began early in November.
“Now whenever any of our old bald-headed, gray-bearded people start in and mention 'the fresh of '41,' he should be called down quickly, energetically and forcibly if necessary. It is a duty we owe to the great flood of 1903 which has so far outstripped all previous records… Inform the old gent kindly but firmly that he is out by 3 feet and some inches.” – the Star
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The National Weather Service data on the water depths of floods show the Flood of 1903 to be Frenchtown's second worst. At the Frenchtown bridge, where a depth of 16 feet is considered “flood stage,” the gauge measured:
27.79 feet on Aug. 20, 1955 (caused by two hurricanes)
24.40 feet on Oct. 10, 1903 (heavy rain)
23.60 feet on April 4, 2005 (heavy rain)
23.40 feet on June 29, 2006 (heavy rain)
21.93 feet on March 19, 1936 (snowmelt)
21.70 feet on March 13, 1936 (snowmelt)
“Some inches” less than 21.4 feet on Jan. 8, 1841, per the Frenchtown Star
20.70 feet on Sept. 19, 2004 (tropical storm)
19.02 feet on Sept. 9, 2011 (rain, tropical storm, hurricane)
18.60 feet on May 24, 1942 (heavy rain)
The causes are supplied by the Delaware River Basin Commission.
Keep in mind that as the river rises and expands into wider and wider flood plains, it takes more and more water to raise the water level. So the 1955 volume of water was exponentially greater than the 1903 volume and so on down the list.
From Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia
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