Posted: 6/13/06
Remembering the Freeburg Flood
It happened 60 years ago, and led to formation of Crooked Creek Watershed
By David Heiller
Argus News Editor
Most people wonít notice it, but a grim anniversary will take place on June 16.
On that date 60 years ago, a devastating rainstorm and flood hit the Caledonia area.
It sent water raging through the Houston-Hokah bottomland, the Crooked Creek valley, and south Wilmington and Winnebago regions.
Freeburg was hit the hardest. Many people still call the event the ìFreeburg Flood.î
An estimated 8-10 inches of rain fell in the Caledonia area and rushed down the South and North Forks of Crooked Creek. It was more than a gully washer ñ it tore up roads, gouged huge holes in fields, and wiped out the train tracks that went from Caledonia, down Wiebke Hill, then south along County Road 32 to Crooked Creek valley and on to Freeburg and Reno.
The storm broke at about 7:30 p.m. that Sunday evening after a hot and humid day. Thunder clouds appeared suddenly, and the sky turned black. Then came severe lightning, thunder, wind, and torrential rain. Electricity went out.
It actually didnít rain much in Freeburg, Wilfred and Lucille Pohlman recalled. ìWe didnít get hardly enough rain to run off a tin roof that night,î Wilfred said on June 2.
Most of it fell in Mayville Township, Lucille added. Pails that were outside were running over, she said.
They owned the farm near where the south and north forks of the creek converged. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad tracks ran through their property. The Pohlmans were allowed to pasture their cattle there at night, since the train didnít run then.
The Pohlmans went to bed about 10 that night. They could hear wire squeaking, and at first thought it was cattle. Then they looked out the windows. ìWith every flash of lightning you could see water from hill to hill,î Lucille said.
Another Freeburg resident, Margaret Goetzinger, awoke at about 2:30 a.m. during the storm to tend to her sick daughter, Elaine. Margaret, who lived where her son, Dan now farms, saw the same ocean of water across the broad valley.
She and her husband, Arnold, tried to go out to rescue some sows that were housed in the field. But they ran into mud and silt a short way from the house and knew that everything was gone.
ìAs soon as dawn came we put on boots and went out to see what had happened,î Margaret later wrote of the account. ìThe sight was unbelievable, the fields of grain and corn in the path of the flood were gone, big holes gouged in places and deep silt and mud and trash and trees in other places. Silt was so deep you couldnít wade through it. The hog houses, fences, brush and even trees gone and flattened, like a big roller had gone over it all. . . The hogs also were all gone, we had nine sows with baby pigs in individual houses and as the water came and took them away, each mother somehow protected her own brood in the water. We lost one sow, and her babies also died in the flood. The next day toward evening we saw the sows coming home each with their own babies, as they reached home they laid down in exhaustion.î
Train tracks ruined
The railroad tracks were twisted and washed away in many spots. Wilfred Pohlman said more than 30 bridges between Caledonia and Freeburg were wiped out. Tracks were carried across the road and left in a cornfield on the Ted and Mary Schwartzhoff farm, where Ronnie Colsch now lives. Rails were wrapped around the big white pine trees in front of the house. The trees likely saved it from destruction, said Florence Bissen, Ted and Maryís daughter.
Florenceís brother, Bob, and his parents had gone to Waukon that hot afternoon to visit relatives. When they got home, they milked their cows and put the cattle on higher land. ìOtherwise we probably would have lost a bunch of them,î Bob said on June 5.
There was eight feet of water between house and barn and County Road 249, Bob estimated. He figures when the tracks went, the water rushed into their house. It completely filled the basement and stood 10 inches deep on their kitchen floor.
By 2 a.m. the water had receded so that they could go out, Bob said. Their 1941 Ford was gone ñ they found it behind a power pole and combine. They could hear a kitten meowing, so they looked and looked for it. Finally someone lifted the hood on the car: the kitten was was sitting on the battery.
The powerful water surge sliced off some of the steel rails as if they were cut off with a torch, Bob recalled. ìJust a clean break.î
All eight of the Schwartzhoffís hog houses were gone. The Schwartzhoffs later walked from Freeburg to Reno and found five of them.
A boxcar was left standing on the tracks across the Road. The train company eventually retrieved the boxcar by temporarily repairing the tracks from Reno aand driving a steam locomotive to get it.
It was the same story downstream. The train depot, which was located about 150 feet north of Little Miami, was swept off its foundation and carried a half mile downstream. Houses and businesses were filled with mud and water. William Schaller had seven inches of mud in his house. The water was up to the car door handles in his garage.
Eldor Wunnecka still lives on the same farm that he did back then on the north side of Crooked Creek, east of Freeburg. He remembers looking at the damage the next day.
ìIt was all mud and water,î he said. ìTwisted railroad tracks, bridges out, fields filled up with fill and mud. Fences all gone. Pretty much down through the whole valley.î
Arnold Goetzingerís brother, Omar, was going to Caledonia for a date, and barely made it up Wiebke Hill with the massive water rushing toward him. ìThank God he was OK,î Margaret said.
Bob Fisch lived with his family in downtown Freeburg, between the Hanke store and the Lichtenberg house.
Fisch heard a roar of water go through Freeburg during the storm. ìWhen the flood came it was like a six foot wall all at once,î he said.
Cars started floating away at Little Miami, which was just a bar and swimming hole back then. Clarence Lichtenberg tied a rope around himself and waded to one vehicle to rescue a man, Fisch recalled.
ìYou didnít dare go out toward the creek. Get away from there,î Fisch said. He also remembered how there was a baby in a buggy of the Alvin Goetzinger family in the Hanke store next door. ìAll at once that was floating,î Fisch said. ì[But there was] No danger. Everybody got out safe.î
Fisch was one day shy of his 18th birthday when the flood hit, and planned to take the train to Caledonia the next day to register for the draft. He had to find another way to town.
Freeburg was a thriving town at one time, Fisch added, with a bank, stores, two to three bars, and a blacksmith shop. ìPeople used to ship cattle and hogs out of there too,î he said.
A depressing time,
but good things followed
The after-effects of the flood brought some backbreaking work, both cleaning up homes and fixing up farms.
ìWe didnít have any fences left,î Wilfred said. They rigged up electric fences as a temporary fix.
ìThe men pulled trees and brush and trash off the fields and pastures, and replaced broken fences and wires,î Lucille Pohlman wrote about the event. ìEverything was muddy and dangerous to handle. They took small hand sickles and scythes and pulled the corn leaves loose from the mud, where there were corn plants still standing or leaning, so that they could straighten up.î
ìThousands of people drove by and they waved while we worked,î Wilfred said with a laugh.
ìThere was kind of a hopelessness about it the next day,î Margaret Goetzinger said ìAs time went on we had more of these floods.î
The railroad company never fixed the tracks, opting instead to abandon the right-of-way on the east end of the Preston-Reno branch. That meant no more 18-cent train rides for people like Florence Bissen, who attended high school in Caledonia.
So the train service between Reno and Caledonia that first started on September 25, 1879, ended with the Freeburg flood of June 16, 1946. It was end end of freight and passenger service. It meant no more train rides from Caledonia to the famous swimming pool that gave Little Miami its name. The swimming pool became a thing of the past too: the pond had filled with mud from the flood and was never reopened.
The loss of topsoil was tough for just about everyone to see too. The water scooped a hole 3-4 feet deep on the Jesse Burroughs farm upstream from the Pohlmans. Wilfred filled in holes as best he could, but that land didnít produce like it had before.
Ted and Mary Schwartzhoff left their farm, which they were renting from Ed Theobold, because of the flood, Bob Schwartzhoff said. Bob and his brother, Andy, bought a farm on the ridge after that.
Most of the hills were pastured at the time, said Eldor Wunnecka. ìThat made a lot more run-off coming out of the woods and off the hills.î
The 1946 flood was the most famous flood to hit Freeburg, but as Margaret Goetzinger said, it was by no means the only one. Those floods eventually led to the formation of the Crooked Creek Watershed District in 1959. Ten floodwater retarding structures were built, including the South Fork Dam, which holds 40 acres of water. Another 34 grade stabilization structures, 42 ponds, and 152 acres of waterways were constructed to prevent future catastrophic flooding.
Wilfred Pohlman said his father, William, and John Goetzinger had tried to form such a watershed before the big flood. ìThe dry years, nobody thinks nothing of it then,î Wilfred said. He is happy to see the flood control measures, waterways, and contour strips now in place.
Margaret Goetzinger recalled how the grave at Ben Lichtenbergís funeral caved in after one flood. ìAll these things kept adding up,î she said. ìI was really very, very happy with the notion of the watershed. I donít think Freeeburg would be there if we hadnít had it. Unless something was done, things were getting worse.î
Things still arenít perfect, Margaret added. She feels bad when she hears that the water in Crooked Creek is dirty after a bad rain. ìIt always scares me when I hear that again.î She worries that some people are ignoring conservation practices and plowing through everything.
ìBecause this is a beautiful country and itís very vulnerable with the hills and everything,î Margaret said.
Ray Ryan, editor of The Caledonia Argus, addressed that subject in his ìBits of This and Thatî column on June 28, 1946:
ìWords could little describe the havoc that resulted from the flood that raged through the Crooked Creek valley Sunday evening, June 16. The very apparent damage that was done to bridges, roads and homes could be seen and estimated but the cost of replacing the good old Mother Earth that was carried away and washed from the fertile fields must be left only to the imagination. It is only in one or more lifetimes that such a flood occurs but the effects of it will remain forever.î
ëIt went as high as the piano keysí
Editorís note: Mary Schwartzhoff wrote the following letter to her son, Ray, about the Freeburg flood of June 16, 1946. Mary and her husband, Ted, lived in the current Ronnie Colsch house, which was hit hard by the flood.
Well we sure had an awful night last nite it rained and must have been a cloud burst up at Cal or around there the water raised the linoleum on the floors we had to take them all out scrub them off on both sides scrub the floors every thing is mud cellar is full of water part of the south wall of it caved in we got out of bed and stepped in mud on the floor it started about 8:30 about 2:30 it he went down then about 3 oíclock we went out the hog houses all gone the car shed chicken gone the cement in the separator all in a heap the wagons elevator chickens chicken coop almost all the chickens not a fence left on the whole farm one may say where the garden is its all holes the field north of the house has 2 big long ditches washed in it the car I was in the shed and they had the wrecker pull it up & clean it it has only 1 little dent in it they had to rip one side off to get the car out, all the rail road tracks are torn out-from here to the black bridge and the bridge above that is gone the track is laying out here in the calf yard the filling on both ends of the rail bridge is out on both ends the top full of trees all the corn gone a few pigs in Freeburg. In Freeburg they put a rope on a ladder threw it up to John & Mrs. Goetzinger to come out Alton G, the baby & buggy was swimming and Mrs. F was helping John G, and finally she thought of her kids she got in the their house & missed the baby she almost went nuts then Francis said he took her up stairs it went as high as piano keys over the gas stove at John Graf the counters were floating cocoa coffee & what not P.O. Dept tipped over the floor raised up and we sure donít know what to do not a fence and who is going to pull the wires out of such timbers railroad tracks, Depot is gone Reinharts bridge at Heneselius ice house pond house is gone every bodys basement is full of water in Caledonia, Iíll bet there were 150 people here looking today.
We moved the refrigerator in the summer kitchen as some of the posts went out.
Well it is too late to write much more so will close.
Caledonia Argus
314 West Lincoln St.
P.O. Box 227
Caledonia, MN 55921-0227
507/724-3475
E-Mail: editor.argus@ecm-inc.com