The cover story in this week's OC Weekly is an article by Gustavo Arellano on Orange County's Great Flood of 1938. The flood covered killed 38 people, covered 182,000 acres, and caused (in 2005 dollars) about $182 million worth of damage. It kicked off the frenzy of civil engineering that built Prado Dam and turned the Santa Ana River into its current concrete-lined self.
The Anaheim Public Library has pictures of the 1938 flood on the Web as part of their "Digital Anaheim" collection of historic photos. Looking at the pictures, it's clear that our house spent some time in the water, since practically everything else in Anaheim did. This picture, at the corner of Philadelphia and Broadway, was taken less than a block from our house's original location near the corner of Rose and Broadway. Here's a somewhat blurry photo of the floodwaters around Anaheim's Carnegie library (one of Anaheim's few remaining historic public buildings, and today home to the Anaheim Museum), also just a few streets away.
Obviously our house fared better than some, otherwise it we wouldn't be living in it today! Here are some aerial views of the flooded city: One, Two, and Three.
(Looking further through the "natural disasters" category of the Digital Anaheim catalog, it seems that our house had to contend with [at least!] the flood of 1916 and the flood of 1941 as well.)
Posted by Kevin at September 18, 2005 04:30 PM
