Sunday, December 16, 2007

The town of Weott after the '64 flood.

Weott before the 1955 flood.

Weott after the 1955 flood.














Weott after the 1964 flood.
The water was high enough to leave this sawhorse in the phone lines of what was the town of Weott. The water was still very deep when this photo was taken, if you click your cuser on the photo it will enlarge and you can see what lookes like a large tank still submerged. What's left of the town is washed up against the trees in the background. The town of Weott was no more.


A few posts ago I showed the town of Weott, before and after the '55 flood, this is a photo of down town Weott that they took after the sixty-four flood, as the waters were still receding and they realized that the town was totally destroyed. They rebuilt the town up the hill about a quarter of a mile, beside the new freeway that was just being built at the time.

The Railroad at Dyerville, where The South Fork meets the main Eel, was under twenty-one feet of water. One of the three rail bridges was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Over one hundred miles of rail in the Eel River canyon had to be replaced.

Travel on the 101 highway was restored in only Forty-one days, but it was years before traffic was back to normal.

Twenty-eight people lost their lives to the flood in Humbodlt and Del Norte. Over five thousand head of cattle were lost.

Please click on the following link For a graffic view of the city of weott today!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will be posting my own memories over on the 299 Opine. Thanks for kicking me in the butt to get me going.

Ernie Branscomb said...

EkoVox,You're welcome. I've been holding my breath. I have just about all of the old newspaper clippings if you need info on anything.

Anonymous said...

In the antique store in Ferndale...on the east end of Main street on the left....they had a stack of newspapers all based on the 1964 flood. They wanted $20 for the whole shooting match. Entire editions from the Humboldt Times and Humboldt Beacon.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Ekovox, I assume that you bought them.

Anonymous said...

Not yet. I've seen them before. You can see them in the Humboldt Room at the Humboldt County Library in Eureka.

Carol said...

That was a lot of water!

Anonymous said...

hey is anybody there

Anonymous said...

i need somebody to answer some q`s

Anonymous said...

please

Suziq said...

Wow! that is the first time that I have seen pictures of Weott during the 1964 flood. I remember the flood very clearly, as I lived in Larabee at the time. We lived up on the hill, quite a distance from the Eel river. Our grammar school (Georgeson Elementary) went down in the flood, as did other houses, Larabee Ranch, the Ward's house, also Bill Belmonts house. My father Fritz Porter and my Uncle (Bill Johnson were in charge of running the county boat during the winter months, but we werent even able to get across the river during the month of December.