The Heppner Flood is the deadliest natural disaster in Northwest history (the deadliest in Oregon). Even so, few people know about the flash flood that raged through the Eastern Oregon farming community of Heppner, Oregon on a hot Sunday afternoon on June 14, 1903.
Without a second’s warning, a leaping, foaming wall of water (caused by a severe spring storm), 40 feet in height, struck Heppner at about 5 o’clock Sunday afternoon, sweeping everything before it and leaving only death and destruction in its wake.
Some 238 people lost their lives that day (about one Heppner person in five). Another seven died that autumn because the floodwaters had poisoned the drinking water in two communities downstream.
It’s not surprising many of us have never heard of the flood. Heppner is a rural community, known for its St. Patrick's Day celebration and its August rodeo; however, it is not on the way to many other places. Within a few years after the disaster, residents of Morrow County had pretty much stopped talking about it.
On June 14, 2013, the flood’s date appears on a three-panel stone monument that was dedicated to mark the hundredth anniversary of the catastrophe. The monument, which includes a panoramic image of the destruction wrought by the flood and a list of the names of almost 250 people who died as a result, serves as a quiet reminder of Heppner’s day of tragedy.
Though the Heppner Flood isn't well known today, it was, thankfully, well known and deeply felt throughout the Northwest in the days and weeks after it happened. The generosity of the people of the Northwest is truly the antidote to the disaster.
Many walked the 17+ miles to Heppner to help with the dreadful cleanup where the workers' main task was to find and extricate bodies from the drifts of debris for 9+ miles. They hauled away wagon loads of the foul mud and slime that covered the landscape. Under a hot sun, workers toiled dawn to dusk in temperatures around 94 degrees. They slept in outhouses, haystacks, lean-tos, and under trees. They were paid $2 a day, and many returned their wages to the Heppner relief committee.
Two universal themes emerged from this story:
The first: Even the smallest acts have consequences.
In the decades and months before the Heppner Flood, independent people made a multitude of changes to the environment around the creeks flowing into the town. Most of those apparently harmless acts were (such as overgrazing or tilling the fields) and no one thought twice of them. But the unintended consequences of these changes added up, enabling this storm to kill 245 people. Most of the victims were caught inside the homes they had built on the banks of those streams.
The second lesson is about fortitude. Everyone in Heppner lost someone. Some lost everyone. Ed Ashbaugh returned from a business trip to Portland to learn that the flood had taken his wife, all seven of their children, his sister and her husband and three children, another nephew, an aunt, and two cousins. The water also destroyed his house and everything in it.
Still, people got up the morning after the Heppner Flood and went to work, even if they did not know if their families were dead or alive. They kept on working and living their lives despite their grief.
While June 14, 1903, was a day of sorrow for the town of Heppner, it is much to the credit of that day’s survivors that Heppner remains a pleasant and prosperous community. Shortly after the floodwaters receded, Leslie Scott, a reporter for the Oregonian, commented: “The beauty of Heppner is gone, but not its pride. No community could rise more bravely under adversity.”
As always, thank you for spending some of your precious Summer time here with us! Enjoy the rest of your week!
Article published on June 14th, 2023 by Laurel Governal
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