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| Bull Slough Bridge |
Research into the Flood of 1929 showed that it was arguably worse than the 1913 flood. Records kept at the time by Evergreen weather reporter J.R. Kelley showed that 19.31 inches of rail fell on Evergreen between March 13 and March 15, 1929. On Wed., March 13, Kelley recorded 2.85 inches of rain in Evergreen, and 8.70 inches of rain was recorded on Thurs., March 14. On March 15, Kelley recorded 7.76 inches of rain. Newspapers of the time called it “Conecuh County’s greatest flood.”
“It was by far the greatest rainfall the county has had for such a short period during the last five years and probably for all the time,” Kelley said. “March rainfall to date has been 23.26 inches and brings the total for 1929 to 35.11.”
Raging floodwaters damaged a number of bridges in Conecuh County and completely washed away the Bull Slough Bridge over the Sepulga River near Paul. Also washed away was about 20 feet of Travis Bridge over the Sepulga River between Evergreen and McKenzie. In Castleberry, the approach to the south end of the Panther Creek Bridge washed away, rendering the route from Castleberry to Evergreen impassible.
Flooding also washed away portions of the L&N Railroad at Garland, in the Wilcox community and at Sparta. The flood also washed out about 200 feet of the L&N Railroad near Castleberry and washed away the trestle over Panther Creek. This forced two northbound passenger trains – the Crescent Limited from New Orleans to New York and the Pan American from New Orleans to Chicago – to stop in Evergreen for four days. Those trains contained passengers from all walks of life, including an airplane pilot and a honeymooning couple trying to get to Chicago.
While they spent Thursday morning through Sunday morning in Evergreen due to the weather, the local Red Cross chapter and local civic clubs, like the Lions Club and the American Legion, sprang into action to help the marooned passengers. Money was raised for some of them, and the passengers seemed to have been well fed while in Evergreen.
The Courant reported that all perishable foods aboard both trains were confiscated and served to the passengers, including a barrel of frog legs. However, they avoided 15 barrels of spoiled fish that were later carried north and dumped by railroad officials on the orders of county health officer, Dr. E.L. Kelly. Railroad agent C. Hawkins had the fish taken to a point near the Murder Creek trestle and burned, The Courant reported.
In the March 23 edition of The Montgomery Advertiser, the train passengers praised Evergreen’s residents for their hospitality. Conductor W.L. Hughes told The Advertiser that within minutes of the train arriving in Evergreen, a committee of the local Red Cross came to the train to see if anyone needed any help. The hotels and cafes in Evergreen also didn’t take advantage of the situation or increase their prices, the conductor noted.
While the train passengers faired reasonably well during the ordeal, railroad employee Will Howard did not. When the flood receded, Howard, a porter at the L&N depot in Evergreen, found the main portion of his house sitting on the tracks with the rest of it having floated off into the nearby woods.
If those passenger trains had continued north they would have likely have met with the same fate as northbound freight train No. 72, which overturned in a washout near Wilcox on March 14 around 5 a.m. That train was operated by engineer Bostwick Hamm, who may have been the luckiest victim of the flood in Conecuh County. When his train overturned, Hamm became pinned beneath the train engine and a coal car.
Rescuers “worked feverishly” to save him from drowning as the waters rose swiftly around him. Rescuers worried that the waters would either rise over his head or that they would cause the heavy engine to settle and come down on top of him. Before it was all over, he had to be held up and out of the water by ropes while rescuers cut him out of the wreckage with an acetylene torch. Dr. E.L. Stallworth of Evergreen, who had to make his way to the train wreck in a small boat, treated Hamm at the scene. Hamm was eventually freed and taken to Owassa, where it was determined that his only injury was a broken foot.
Hamm may have been freed sooner, but a five-man train crew on their way to rescue him got marooned between two washouts three miles north of Castleberry. They were forced to subsist for 36 hours on a loaf of bread and a small quantity of cheese.
Hamm’s rescue wasn’t the only dramatic tale of rescue to come out of Conecuh County during the flood. The Covington News reported that John Tollison, a young Conecuh County farmer, rescued a 71-year-old woman identified as “Mrs. Saunders” from her home in Conecuh County near the forks of the Sepulga and Conecuh rivers. The day before Tollison had gone to Saunders to tell her that the rivers would likely flood, and Saunders told him that he was wrong. She’d lived in the community her entire life and she “had never seen the rivers rise to an alarming extent.”
Tollison awoke the next morning “to see a raging flood of water.” He left his home around 6 a.m. in a “fragile rowboat and after a nerve wrecking, harrowing trip of six miles through treacherous floodwaters,” he reached her home. Saunders opened the door for Tollison, and he rowed his boat into her house, placed her in the boat and carried her to safety. Tollison picked up another neighbor on his way back home, which he reached about dark.
Tollison was raised along the river and said he was afraid that he would never reach Saunders. At times, he had to hold on to telephone wires to keep from sinking. “He had been in close places before, or thought they were close, but that his ride of six miles in a rowboat to effect the rescue of Mrs. Saunders almost finished him,” he said.
Others weren’t so lucky. Two Pollard residents drowned when their boat overturned in a swift current, and two men died at Geneva. Two others died in Flomaton and two more died at River Falls. The death toll stood at 10 in Elba at the end of March.
The rainfall was so heavy in Southwest Alabama that Army scout pilots out of Maxwell Field in Montgomery reported that the Alabama River five miles north of Miller’s Ferry was 10 miles wide. Flooding of the Alabama River was also reported in Clarke, Dallas, Lowndes, Monroe and Wilcox counties. Those heavy rains left both Castleberry and Brewton preparing for “their worst floods in history,” The Courant reported.
In Castleberry, Panther and Murder creeks rose four feet higher than ever before and destroyed five homes. The home of J.P. Matthews was moved a quarter of a mile from its foundations by floodwaters, and his gasoline filling station was also washed away. The home of Will Matthews was also destroyed by floodwaters, The Courant reported.
Businesses in Castleberry faired even worse, including Skinner Hardware Co., which was destroyed by fire during the flood when water ignited two barrels of unslacked lime inside the store. That fire raged on even as a heavy rain fell and four feet of water stood inside the store. All stock above the water line was destroyed as well as the store’s books and records.
A warehouse in Castleberry owned by The Peoples Bank of Evergreen that contained between 200 and 300 tons of merchandise, including several thousand dollars in fertilizer, was also damaged. At the height of the flood, there was 26 inches of water inside Carter’s Drug Store, and fertilizer and crate material in a warehouse of R.E. Lee’s Store was also damaged.
The water was so swift in Castleberry that when A.S.J. Nettles and R.T. Holland overturned in a canoe in front of Nettles Store, the canoe broke in half a moment later when it struck a telephone pole a few feet away. A large portion of Nettles’s stock was badly damaged by the flood.
Later, physicians with the state board of health and county health board administered the typhoid vaccine to 385 Castleberry residents as a precaution. They also buried the bodies of 40 animals and birds that drowned in the flood.
Brewton was also struck hard by the flood and afterwards, Evergreen was the only place officials in Brewton could reach by telephone. Evergreen’s National Guard Unit – Troop C. of the 55th Machine Gun Squadron - were among the first to answer Brewton’s calls for help. The unit was eventually sent to Brewton and Flomaton for 10 days.
Under the command of Capt. W.D. Lewis, they also aided the residents of East Brewton, Alco and Pollard. They were tasked with feeding 3,334 people, conducting patrols to prevent looting and to reestablish communications with the outside world. One of the first things the soldiers did was to confiscate all boats to “guard against any possible pilfering.” They also supervised 300 workers who reopened the road between Flomaton and Brewton. The troops remained in Brewton until March 25.
Also in Brewton, a group of traveling performers called the Milt Tolbert Show had their big tent, staging, general admission seats, poles and other equipment destroyed in the flood. The big tent was torn to pieces and the staging and tent poles were never found. Mrs. Ernest Ve Vea, a “prominent member of the troupe, the blond woman who played the character parts,” died during the ordeal from kidney failure. Her husband was one of the show’s comedians, and she was later transported to Jacksonville, Fla. for burial.
Castleberry and Brewton were among a number of low-lying places to suffer in the storm. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Brewton is only 84 feet above sea level, and Castleberry is only 174 feet above sea level as opposed to Evergreen and Repton, which are 258 and 379 feet above sea level, respectively.
The weather also prevented mail from reaching Evergreen for five days and only ended when a state highway department truck brought a small batch of mail to Evergreen from Georgiana. The next day, citizens raised money to send Morton Jones and Loftin Cardwell, two post office clerks, in a truck to Georgiana. They brought back 25 sacks of mail, which was a little more than half of the mail for Evergreen that had accumulated at Georgiana during the flood.
In the end, if you know any additional details about the Flood of 1929’s impact on Conecuh County, please let me know. You can contact The Courant at 251-578-1492 or by e-mail at courantsports@earthlink.net.
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