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Excerpt from: Taylor, Leonard M.D and Taylor, Robert Ph.D. The Great California Flood of1862. The Fornightly Club of Redlands 2007. Web 18 Jan. 2013.

THE FLOOD IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, FOUR CONTRIBUTING FACTORS FOR THEDEVESTATION

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 wereoccurring everywhere in the state at nearly the same time. Bridges were washed our as far northas 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 showsthe 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 anamazing 24.36 inches. The second wettest month was February 1998, with about 15 inches ofrain.

Brewer was in San Francisco on January 19, 1862, and wrote: The amount of rain that hasfallen is unprecedented in the history of the state. In this city accurate observations have beenkept since July 1853. For the years since, ending with July 1 each year, the amount of rain isknown . . . This year, since November 6, when the first shower came, to January 18, it is thirty-two and three-quarters inches and it is still raining! But this is not all, generally twice, sometimesthree 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 twomonths.

The unseasonable melting of the snow pack set the stage for down-stream disaster. Heavy raincaused 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. Januarybrought 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 thefamous old Nile. Strange to say, the greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose allthe wild waters would be muffled and chained in frost and snowBut at rare intervals, warm

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rains and warm winds invade the mountains, and push back the snow line from 2000 to 8000, oreven higher, and then come the big floods.

In 1862 more people lived in Northern California than in Southern California. More peoplemean 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 livealong 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 SierraNevada 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 thisdebris. These dams failed in the onslaught releasing a great wave of debris that surgeddownstream into the rivers and delta. The channels of the Feather, Yuba, and American Riverswere choked with boulders, cobbles, gravels, sand, and mud progressively down stream. A waveof 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, andBancroft, 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 thepractice of hydraulic mining was stopped by law Bloomfield vs. Woodruff, 1882). (This was thefirst federal environmental case, and the ruling was in favor of farmers, who were losingagricultural 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 damagefor 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 thenewspaper accounts. Many other first-hand accounts are preserved in personal correspondence ofthe time, as well as in legal and government documents. More information appears every yearthrough the eye of the Internet, fed with a growing interest in genealogy and local history. Someof 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. Thisnewspaper quotation is one of the few estimates, and it was for the lesser flooding of December1861. (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 Californiawas lost, and also estimated that of all cattle were drowned (200,000). One house in eight wasdestroyed 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 $100and $200 for every person in the state. (The loss of cattle by flood, and the record drought yearthat 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

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state is under waterthe Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys -- a region 250 to 300 miles longand an average of at least twenty miles wide, or probably three to three and a half millions ofacres! Although much of it is not cultivated, yet a part of it is the garden of the state. Thousandsof farms are entirely under watercattle starving and drowning. All the roads in the middle ofthe 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 beencoming for the last two days. In the Sacramento Valley for some distance the tops of the polesare under water. The entire valley was a lake extending from the mountains on one side to thecoast 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 forWhitney 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 forcefulebb of brown fresh water 18-20 feet deep pouring out above the salt water. A sea captainreported 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 severalmonths 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 of1861-1862 a phenomenal rainfall flooded the country, involving great destruction of property inevery direction. Our place, like others, suffered great damage. Some of our cattle and horseswere drowned, and the center of the valley below our house, which had been a beautiful broadmeadow before the flood, was washed away to a bed of sandstone forming its foundation. Thevalley was scarred by deep impassable bareness thirty to forty feet deep, and the face of the oncebeautiful 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 theflood. The mats moved down the coast in the prevailing southerly currents and were then drivenon shore by wind, ending up on shores around Monterey Bay. Local farmers used pitchforks tokill the snakes, which came out of the grounded mats of tulles onto the beaches. (The Times ofLondon, 1862) The California State Capital was moved from Sacramento to San Franciscobecause of high water.