Teton Dam Disaster, 1976, by Neal Shirley

Saturday, June 5, 1976, started out a beautiful day. We were planning to bless Amber the next day. Cathie was preparing lots of food for the special event. Brian was out in the yard playing with his trucks and our dog, Molly. That morning I was called in to repair a water main at what was then Ricks College. The water line was out in the median south of the heat plant. Davawn Beattie saw me working and stopped to tell me that the Teton Dam had burst. I jumped into my 1970 Chevy pickup and headed north. The sheriff deputies were stopping all traffic going to Sugar City, so I avoided them and went out through Salem to get to Mom and Dad’s place since they were in Salt Lake. I called Cathie to see if she was aware of the dam breaking. She had heard about it on KRXK. When she asked if I thought our place might get flooded, I suggested that she climb up on the roof. She saw no humor in that idea since she was still recovering from a C-section delivery of Amber.

I called Dad (who was in Salt Lake for Chris' blessing) to let him know. His first request was to get his Colt Python, a custom built target revolver. I could not find it, so I went out and parked the Bronco and the red pickup in the shop. I loaded their chest freezer into the back of my pickup, and decided to head north and see if the Teton River was showing signs of flooding. When I crossed the bridge everything looked normal. I unloaded the freezer at our place, and prepared to return to put stuff upstairs at Mom and Dad’s. Our neighbors, the Bodilys, stopped to see if we were leaving. I said that the river looked normal, and I felt like the flood would not get us. Paul pointed to the southeast, and we could see dust rising above the trees from the impact of the leading edge of the water about 1 mile away.

We decided to head to Cathie’s parents home in Plano, so Cath and I put Brian and 6 week old Amber in the pickup and we headed west. That route required that we also cut back to the south to get to the intersection at Lusk’s. We arrived at that intersection just before the leading edge of the flood. We saw the water about 100 yards from the intersection coming at us from the south and from the east. There were poles and debris rolling in the leading waves which appeared to be about 3 feet deep at the leading edge and tapering up from that depth. The water appeared to be coming at about 15 miles per hour. We saw horses in Lusk’s pasture running along the fence ahead of the wave, looking for a way out.

When we got to Plano, we listened to the CB radio that Vance had in his pickup. The report was grim. Word was that the water had taken out half of the Wilford Church, and had taken some shingles off of the church house roof. We headed back through Egin and Parker to get to Saint Anthony. There we saw the Bodily’s, who informed us that the railroad tracks had been washed up and over the highway, creating a giant picket fence. The dam created by the debris caught in this railroad track had turned the 10 foot tide to the south. Our road, 300 North, from the highway west, was dry. We took some pictures of houses floating away just a half mile to the south of our house. We had resigned ourselves to the probability that our house and car and dog and everything would be gone. What a blessed surprise to find all well at our place.

We now had a headquarters to work from when Dad and Mom and family got here. We had access to Mom and Dad’s house by driving as far as Hirschi’s, and then walking about a mile south from there. The bridge was still in place, but we had to climb up and through a lot of debris stacked up where the water had washed out the approaches to the bridge. We packed in chain saw, gas, shovels, and other stuff needed for cleanup. The mud and crud and destruction and quiet created such an unforgettable, surreal setting. We were surrounded on all sides by destruction. Yet is was a miracle that so few people died. If the flood had hit during the winter or during the night, hundreds would have perished. If it had hit our place, we would not have had our headquarters for everyone. We were happy to find Scott’s message in the mud indicating that he was OK. Mud etching was one of the few means of communication.

I retrieved the Kawasaki 100 dirt bike from where it laid mostly buried in the mud, and cleaned out the water and crud. It started, do Dad and I took a jaunt west and south to see what shape Salem was in. Uncle Fred’s big house had floated away, but his barn was still there. A couple of times we had to cross deep washouts in the road by crossing on a plank. I walked the Kawasaki across, which was tricky.

When the east wall of Dad’s shop caved in, water tried to exit through the west door. The door cables and buckled door kept most of the stuff in the shop from being washed away. The garden area probably resembled a kind of whirl pool as the water rushed around the house, trees, and shop. That’s why mud and mail boxes and such ended up there. The foot deep, sticky mud which settled in the garden area remained under about a foot of water for about a week.

As the water level began to subside, Stretch and I noticed something sticking out of the water about 30 feet west of the driveway. I didn’t want to trudge out in that sticky mud, so Stretch decided to check it out. When he got close, he got a sick look on his face. He could discern that we had been seeing the boot of a flood victim. It was a man by the name of McCrea who had been helping the Daw family in Wilford. We heard that they had been watching for the flood to come from the Teton River to the south of the Daw home. They were trapped when part of the flood went north up Hog Hollow and came upon them from behind. It took about six of us to carry Mr. McCrea out to the road since his clothing was so full of heavy, dense mud. About a week later another body was found in the canal a half mile to the west near Vernon Mortensen’s place.

East of Dad’s place the canal banks had been washed out, so we continued to have water running through the yard for a week or more. This provided some rinse water to help clean up some of Mom and Dad’s stuff. Dad had a cub cadet riding lawn mower which had a blade for the front. I got the tractor cleaned up well enough to run, and we used it to push the foot deep mud out of his shop. Dad and mom stayed at our home for a month or two, then found an apartment in Rexburg near campus.

When they got a HUD hut (Housing and Urban Development trailer), they stayed in it at their place for about a year until the Feds and the State could decide who owed Dad what. Dad and Mom built a new home in Wilford, a quarter mile east of our home. We had some framing/wall raising family building days. Everyone pitched in to construct the home, put down the well, pour concrete, etc. A year later Dad did the brick work, and I was his hod carrier. Dad hired a mover who loaded the 40X60 shop onto axels in one piece. They hauled it up highway 20 and delivered it at about 6:00 a.m. one morning. It completely filled both lanes of the highway. This whole area was a dust bowl the summer following the flood. Stinky silt covered every farm and field. The summer was dry and windy, and the sky was brown most of the time, especially in Wilford.

The Teton River bridges north of Teton were washed out. The Wilford church house had a huge hole in the east wall where the stage was. The flood waters went right through the recreation hall. The relief society had a tied quilt on the top shelf in the highest closet in the building. Water got up to it, but didn’t get it wet. Kind of like the parrot at Mom and Dad’s. They now refer to the quilt as the “miracle quilt.”