State

Recollections Of The 1916 Flood " - Pieces off Mountain Island Mill were floating down tin* stream, and finally flio entire building disap¬ peared henealli the current. . . By It О It DIM I,. WILLIAMS Mrs. Pearl Alwran went lo work al the Woodlawn Mill near Mount Holly, eighteen miles west of Charlotte, in 1914. Two years later she stood at the window of the mill and watched the rain coming down in sheets. It was. by far. the hardest and most rain she had ever seen, she says. And she was totally correct in her estimate; in fact, the weather bureau issued a statement in 1916 saying that it was about the hardest rain anybody in North Carolina had ever seen. All ex¬ isting records in the state for a 24-hour rain fall were shattered horribly. It all started when a tropical storm lashed into the Alabama part of the Gulf Coast, tore Alabama’s coast apart, and then headed north. By the time it reached the Carolines the storm had reached a majestic fury and dumped eight to ten inches of rain on at least five weather stations in the west¬ ern North Carolina mountains. The dates were July 5 and 6. One week later a second tropical storm smashed into the North Carolina mountains and this time the earth was so saturated already that, according to Alfred Henry of the United States Weather Bureau, eighty to ninety per cent of the precipitation, instead of soaking into the grounu. was forced to run off into the mountain streams. At Altapass. in the corner of Mitch¬ ell County, an astounding 19.32 inches of rain fell in a single twenty-four hour period. As stream after stream fed into the Catawba, the river rose alarmingly, flooded its banks, and continued to grow, sweeping barns and other out¬ buildings before its incredible power. By the time the flood stage reached Mount Holly, the river was rising one inch every hour, as Mrs. Alwran re¬ calls the experience. "An Awful Sight” On Saturday at noon she and some friends walked down to the Seaboard Railroad trestle to watch the waters continue their assault on the commu¬ nity. and at six o'clock that evening the bridge surrendered to the force of the water and collapsed. "It was an awful sight.” Mrs. Alwran admits. "There was a terrible crash and then the whole sky lit up with a green sort of light. Then the bridge was gone." Back at Woodlawn Mill, on nearby Dutchman's Creek, the water was al¬ ready two to three feet deep in the factory, and still rising rapidly. Bob Craig, superintendent of the mill, de¬ cided to go back on Sunday to help clean up the aftermath of the flood, but when he arrived, says Mrs. Alwran. the water was so deep that everything that would float was washing out through the windows. Mountain Island Mill, further up the river, was in dire straits, since it was in direct line with the swift currents, and. the way the 9 1 -year old Pearl Alwran remembers it. soon pieces of the mill were floating down the stream. Then came trees, bales of cotton, even houses, and finally, the five-story structure disappeared beneath the cur¬ rent. Before the flood waters receded, the entire Mountain Island Mill, all of its products, and thirteen houses plus the community general store had disap¬ peared also. The great loss was. of course, the mill, because of its historic and economic importance to the area. Actually. Mountain Island Mill was the old Greensboro-located Mount Hecla mill built in 1820 and moved, in search of less expensive fuel than the coal then used, to Gaston County in 1846. Consisting of 3.000 spindles and one hundred fifty looms, the mill, which was in operation by 1848, be¬ came the first cotton mill in the history of Gaston County, and the county was to go on to become the leading textile county in the entire world. Woodlawn Mill, where Mrs. Alwran worked, was only the second mill to operate in Gaston County. Tragedy At The Trestle As the waters continued to rise, the streets of some towns, like McAden- ville and Hardin, looked more like Venice than small Carolina commu¬ nities as water filled some of the streets Lole Sundoy evening, July 16. 1916, the Southern Roil »oy bridge neor Belmont coll opted. This photo, which -os mode shortly offer the collopse. shows the deck ond trock, still ofloot, below the point where the bridge stood Photo from ‘The Floods of 1916," Published in 1917 by Southern Roilwoy. 1B THE STATE. AUOUST I9B1