The following is an article Copyright © 1991 by David Maurer, published in The Daily Progress newspaper (Charlottesville, Virginia) on December 1, 1991. River View Farm borders the Rivanna and the former location of Hydraulic Mills.

Torrential Rains are Measured by The Flood of 1870

by David Maurer

A light rain began to fall in Albemarle County on Wednesday morning, September 28, 1870. By early afternoon the gentle rain had become a downpour, creating deep puddles and sending rivulets of water coursing down the muddy streets of Charlottesville.

By evening, the unharvested corn in the fields outside town was ruined by the unrelenting battering. No one had ever seen it rain so hard for such a long period of time.

It didn’t let up.

What had been dry ravines and trickling creeks the day before in the Blue Ridge Mountains suddenly was transformed into powerful streams. By Thursday morning the Rivanna and James rivers were above their banks, and still the heavy rains continued.

By afternoon uprooted trees, hogsheads of flour and flotsam of every description were swept along on the thrashing currents of once placid rivers. By evening the Rivanna was rising at a rate of 10 feet every 20 minutes. The James was coming up at the rate of two feet an hour.

When night came, the darkness added to the confusion and horror along the rampaging rivers. The sound of collapsing houses and breaking timbers merged with the roar of rivers and rain as homes were washed away and every mill in the county was either heavily damaged or destroyed.

The Hydraulic and Rio mills were both swept away as were the North Milton Mills, Magruder Mills and Union Mills. On the North Fork of the Rivanna, Carr’s Mill, containing hundreds of barrels of flour, was swept away. Many of the barrels of flour were later salvaged because they got snagged at a bend in the river below Milton.

But nothing was salvaged from the Pace Mill on Mechum’s River. It, along with a great part of the wheat crop from neighboring farms, was carried away.

Like the mills, bridges were no match for the power of the flooded rivers. Almost every one in the county vanished into the swirling waters.

Human lives were lost along with the mills, bridges and homes. One man who lived with his family in a house along the Rivanna near Rio Mill waited too long before starting to evacuate his family.

He managed to get his wife and a few of his children to high ground and was returning for the others when the house was torn from its foundation and toppled into the turbulent current. The man leapt into the river in an attempt to rescue the children, but they all perished.

Another man, Ned Wood, tried to save a woman who was swept into the current. His effort failed and he spent the night clutching debris before he was rescued the following morning.

By Friday, Charlottesville and the surrounding areas were isolated from the rest of the world. The telegraph was out and the trains were marooned between missing bridges.

Still it rained.

Even in Lexington, an area where two inches of rain was considered a heavy rainfall, collected 10.5 inches in 18 hours.

In Scottsville, the James River was a mile wide by Friday afternoon. By the time the flood was over, the tiny river town would be much smaller. More than 30 houses were carried away in the speeding current.

The rain was so heavy and the rivers came up so quickly that in some areas it was as if a tidal wave swept through. One elderly woman who lived on the upper Shenandoah River remained on her log cabin after it was launched into the river.

She rode the bobbing cabin downriver for 100 miles before she was rescued. She was smiling and none the worse for wear. The Chronicle newspaper in Charlottesville recorded what she had to say: “Bless your soul, honey,” she said. “I never did see such times. I’ve been further away from home than I ever was before, and I seen a heap o’ places, where I didn’t know the name on.”

By Saturday the rains finally had stopped and the rivers quickly began to recede. For the first time the extent of the damage became apparent. In Albemarle County alone the losses would run into the millions of dollars.

Relief aid started to pour in from Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. But, because of the destroyed bridges and washed out roads, it wasn’t until October 13 that the first wagons of food and mail made it to Charlottesville.

Although a huge amount of damage had been done to businesses and property, irreparable harm had been done to the land itself. The editor of The Chronicle said that much of the best land in the county was either washed away or covered by sand.

The flood had been so powerful it had actually altered the rivers by carving out new paths for them to follow. But what would come to be known as the great “Flood of ’70,” would change more than the course of rivers.

The flood proved to be the death blow for the navigation trade along the Rivanna. Although the General Assembly agreed to give funds to unclog portions of the river, the task was too formidable and the plan was abandoned.

The day of the boatmen poling their unrestricted crafts down the Rivanna to the James were over. Only nature and decay would eventually wash the river clean of uprooted trees and barricades of debris.

Most of the mills were never replaced, and during the ensuing few decades, steam power almost completely replaced water power.

The oldest citizens in 1870 remembered their parents talking about a terrible flood that had hit Albemarle County in 1771. Until the flood of 1870, they said that one had always been used as the “measuring stick” for the floods that followed.

After three days of unprecedented torrential rains and flooding, the olders all agreed that the new “measuring stick” would be the great flood of 1870.