Tornados and Vanishing Towns: The Floods of 1894
A voluntary weather observer describes an unprecedented summer of destruction in Okanogan County, where tornados flattened 'shacks' and the Columbia River rose to record heights.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Director Alciatore of the weather bureau has received a report from Charles Johnson, the observer at Lakeside, near Lake Chelan. He reports extraordinary weather, noting that on the night of the 21st, a tornado passed through the section. A similar, less violent storm on the 2nd demolished a dozen 'shacks' in the old town of Chelan and knocked down stately old pine trees. The Columbia river has risen sixty feet, reported higher than ever known. Indians came down the river and report not a house left in Virginia City, a small town thirty miles above here. The business part of Chelan Falls is under water and in danger of being swept away. Johnson suggests that the settlement and cultivation of the Big Bend plateau may be changing the climate, noting that these storms were from the southeast—a direction he had never seen a storm come from in six years.
“The Columbia river has risen sixty feet, and is reported higher than ever known.”
The 1894 floods were catastrophic for early Washington settlements, many of which were built in floodplains without understanding the Columbia's power. Today, this account provides a vivid, firsthand look at the climate and geography of the Okanogan before the era of massive hydroelectric damming.
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