The River Got Mean

This July marks the 50^th anniversary of the worst natural disaster in metropolitan Kansas City’s history. Beginning on Friday the 13^th, 1951, the rain-swollen Kansas City River poured over its dikes into the industrial center of Kansas City with as much as 25 feet of muddy water. So powerful was the raging Kaw (as it is often called) that it backed the Missouri River upstream where the two converge as debris, automobiles, homes, livestock, and barges were swept along in the mighty torrent.

But the Kaw’s wrath was indiscriminate that summer, laying waste to many cities, small towns, and farms. Rainfall totals that nearly tripled monthly averages in the spring of 1951 caused massive flooding all over eastern Kansas. And although Johnson County fared better than some, the areas in the north central portion of the county around De Soto, Wilder, and Holliday were hit hard. “Practically the entire valley was submerged,: reported a farmer, prompting nearly all residents close to the river to evacuate their homes. Those who remember the floods in 1903, 1935, and 1943 were the first to go. But as many as 80 families soon moved into barns, outbuildings, garages, and relatives’ homes — anything on higher ground. A family of seven from Holliday even stayed at the grade school. As the stinking waters rose, Highways 10 and 7 were completely shut off, as were nearly four miles of Santa Fe railroad tracks with water over the tops of the telegraph poles in some places. The flooding submerged more than 6,000 acres of Johnson County farmland, eventually making most of 1951’s crops a total loss. One farmer watched all his chickens wash away from the loft of his barn just before his neighbor’s house from a block away crashed into his.

When the water finally receded, some hesitated to say that the ’51 flood topped the one in 1903. But when shown that flood marks from 1903 were more than two feet lower than 1951, one “old timer” begrudgingly admitted, “I didn’t thing I’d ever live to see as big a flood as the one in 1903.”

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