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Show Frisco Cloudburst Floods Milford's Business District Raging Torrents Deposit Mud and Silt in Streets and Homes After Protective Dike Breaks Saturday, August 4, Milford's Main Street and the lower section of town were covered with from one and a half to four feet of muddy water, silt and slimy mud a few hours : after a cloudburst in the Frisco Mountains sent raging- tor-' rents of water overflowing the 'Big- Wash and protective dikes erected around the town to divert flood waters. . It , was 22 years, almost to the hour, since. the last disastrous; flood turned the streets into a small replica of Venice and. filled business buildings and homes with oozy muck. The dike at the Union Pacific spur track south of town began j giving way about dark Saturday evening, and Milford News files reporting the August 4, 1929, flood, state that flood Waters hit Main Street at 7:30 p. m, ' A short time after the 1929 flood, the present system of ditches and dikes around, the town was erected, and had saved Milford from major inundation until last Saturday. Satur-day. A cloudburst in the Frisco Mountains Friday afternoon soaked the ground along the Big Wash and paved the way for the torrents which followed fol-lowed Saturday's cloudburst in the same section. Rip Thompson, Metal Producers Mill Superintendent, stated that Friday a wall of water 10 feet hiffh moved slowly down the wash, with the ground soaking up thousands of gallons of water as tVe tide rolled along. The Friday storm threatened the ore bins at the mill three miles west of Milford, but did no major damage. "It was different Saturday," Rip reported. "When that water wat-er started down the wash it really rolled. The ground was already well soaked and there was nothing to hold it back." The B'g Wash, bone dry at least 350 days of the year, was filled vith a half-mile-wide stream of water, rolling with such force that boulders, logs, stumps and other debris bounced along with the crest. - At the Big Wash bridge on Highway 21 seven miles from Milford, the highway was undermined un-dermined and eaten out more than half-way across the oil, and portions of the west approach ap-proach to the bridge proper and the fill under the bridge were washed away by the huge "waves" that spurted 15 feet into the air. The racing waters foamed and roared and churned along like breakers in an angry sea. As the waters built up along the dike northwest of town they overflowed across the highway and spread onto the west desert between Milford and the Harrington Har-rington mine, fanning out into a "is.ke" two m'les wide, mov- ' ever southward and ever es-itvaid, rolling stumps and oov.lders across the sagebrush villi a roar riminiscent of surf on a rocky coast. j Three cars trapped west of Milford on Highway 21 back- tracked to the section-line road near the mill and raced the flood southward to the Harrington Harring-ton mine road and into town, with two cars, driven by Nils Johnson and Chuck Atkin, barely rr.es ng in front of the ciert and the third, driven by-Steve by-Steve Williams, was caught by the first surge of water as it reached the road. The motor was flooded out. and Mrs. Williams Wil-liams steered the car while Steve and Jim Holme, a passen-(Continued passen-(Continued on Page Four) Here for Visit j Mary Jiminez of Salt Lake was here for a short visit. Mary plans to attend business college this winter. Here's More About ROOD : Continued from Page One ger in the Atkin car, pushed frantically to reach dry road. Wading at times in knee-deep mud and water, with the dry ground always just a few feet ahead, they pushed the car in front of the Atkin car, and Chuck matched bumpers and zoomed the Williams car to safety." " With the land sloping in two directions south and east, the water built up tremendous pressure pres-sure as it rolled along the dike, and although Gene Kirk " and Lamar Outzen shoveled desperately desper-ately to erect a dam at the Harrington Har-rington road culvert, the dike! beneficially used In 1937 or ! 1 938, and an extension of time to and including November 1, 1952, is requested to resume j use of water. I No. 45 P. V. Howarth, R R 2 Box 164, Marysville, Calif., requests re-quests an extension of time to and including September 1, 1952, in which to resume use of 1.448 sec. -ft. of water under a right evidenced by Underground-water Claim No. 10667. The water has been diverted from a 14-in. well 85 ft. deep located N. 219 ft. and W. 36 ft. from EV4 Cor. Sec. 22 T 29 S, R 11 W, and used from Apr. 1 to Sept. 30 to irrigate 48 acres of. land embraced 4n EV4NEV4 said Sec. 22, and for year-round stock-watering purposes. The water was last beneficially used about 1935. All protests resisting the granting of said requests, with reasons therefor, must be made in affidavit form with extra copy and filed with the State Engineer, 403 State Capitol, Salt Lake City 1, Utah, on or before September 8, 1951. JOSEPH M. TRACY, State Engineer. First Pub.: July 26, 1951. Last Pub.: Aug. 9, 1951. for careful travel to be resumed on U-21. After Mrs. Baxter and the children had been brought to town, Max and Jim Smithson, State Highway Department employees, em-ployees, began work of repairing repair-ing the road, setting out flares, and making travel as safe as possible in other ways. The road was open on a "dangerous but passable" basis Sunday morning, and Max and his road crews continued work on the road until it was safe to permit unrestricted traffic. ' gave way when the culvert could no longer handle the water, and the flood began creeping toward Milford from the west. Dozens of volunteers manned shovels at the spur railroad bridge south of town where the dike ended, and Gene Mayer had the city grader "smoking" trying to build up the dike wheie motorists had worn it down at an improvised road crossing, but when the culvert 1 which washed out from the Harrington road crossing struck I the railroad bridge, the water backed up faster than the volunteers volun-teers could build up the dike, and the flood waters moved into Milford from the south. Major damage was to home.) in . the "Railroad Row" section in the northeast part of the city along the main line Union Pacific Pa-cific right-of-way. Here most homes had three feet of water standing in them. Rugs and furniture were ruined, and clothing, linens, bedding, etc., w ere turned an ugly, dingy yellow by the mud. In the south part of town, many homes suffered, although the water was not as deep there as along Railroad Row. In the business district, most merchants heeded the warning and began barricading their doors as soon as the railroad dike gave way. The L & B Cafe, Why-Not Shell Station and Al Kirk's store were the worst hit, with other merchants having a few "oozes" into their buildings. Al Kirk had about three feet of mud and water in his store a repeat on the 1929 storm when the same building at that time occupied by Mrs. Palmer's Art Shop was the depository for several feet of mud and silt.. Volunteers were everywhere, offering assistance, but it was the 'teen age. boys -who earned the nicest bouquets. The youths vere busy as beavers, filling sandbags, boarding up store entrances, en-trances, shoveling sand, and always asking: "Who else needs lelp?" Much damage was done also a "lepeat" of,the 1929 storm by backwash from cars driving up and down Main street. Guards were posted at all entrances en-trances to keep cars off the flooded street until the water began to subside, but even after the situation no longer seemed serious, the backwash from cars did much damage. Jack Lowe was marooned at the Horn Silver Mine and was host to Mr. and Mrs. Max Baxter Bax-ter and family until midnight Saturday ni?ht, when the flood waters had subsided sufficiently |