Wyoming History: The Wall Of Water That Devastated Wheatland Ranches In 1969

Fish flopping, dying and causing a stink. Bales of hay floating downstream, and homes and acres of farm and ranchland covered with three-to-four feet of water.

The scene is hard to imagine on a drive southwest of Wheatland this week as farmers complete their harvest. A cornfield is bare except for stalks in the ground, and a harvester is hoisting sugar beets into the back of a truck.

Green fields and stacks of recently harvested hay bales contrast with the brown sagebrush foothills to the west with Laramie Peak in the background.

The crops and green grasses are made possible by the Wheatland Irrigation District. An important part of that system is its 50-foot-high earthen dam that contains Reservoir No. 1 and the canal system that heads north from it linking to area fields.

Wheatland Irrigation District Manager Nathan Graves said there are about 100 users for the system, and this year the water supply was not what they had hoped for in Reservoir No. 1, which has a capacity of 9,369-acre feet of water.

“Fifteen-hundred fifty-five (1,555-acre feet) is what we have in there now,” he said.

An acre-foot is enough water to cover 1 acre of land with 1 foot of water.

When Graves stands on top of the dam, he points north to show where in 1969 a wall of water pushed out of the reservoir containing more than 8,000-acre feet of H2O that brought more than $1 million of destruction to the region.

The cause of the disaster was never confirmed. An expert believed it was dynamite, but the politicians settled on a natural cause that allowed the system to quickly put the irrigation system back in place with the help of federal funds.

Dead Fish

Sisters Debbie Collier of Arizona and Christi Grange were living in Wheatland at the time. Their dad worked full-time for the National Guard. Their great-grandma, Viola Whipple, then 82, lived directly in the path of the wall of water unleashed early in the morning on July 8, 1969.

“The water was 3-or 4-feet deep in my great-grandma’s house. She was one of the first houses from where the dam broke,” Collier said. “I remember the dead fish, the smell, the sand everywhere.”

Whipple’s experience and a photo of her became the lead for the Denver Post’s Empire Magazine story on the disaster on Nov. 30, 1969.

In July 1969, ranches and the farmers were in the middle of irrigation season.

But on July 8 sometime in the early morning, what had been the source of a blessing to the region turned into a destructive force headed north towards homes and ranches ready to deposit a load of silt and dirt to pile on top of the growing crops and pastures.

People like Whipple and those in surrounding ranch and farm homes getting ready to get out of bed or already starting their day suddenly found themselves in homes and properties that looked like a muddy wading pool.

Graves said the flooding impacted dozens of homes downstream, some who used the irrigation canal and others who did not.

“Little Reservoir Break Floods Area,” the Platte County Record-Times headline read on Friday, July 11, 1969. “10,355 Acres of Land Flooded Last Tuesday Morning.”

The flood became the biggest natural disaster story of the year in Wyoming.

‘Still Disputed’

Graves, who has worked in the state engineer’s officer doing dam safety, pulls out a file that he keeps on the disaster. His own study of the event brings him to the same place of many others in concluding the cause.

“It’s still disputed,” he said.

The evidence for the dynamite version of the cause, grabbed headlines during the immediate disaster cleanup as a Colorado School of Mines expert Samuel Shaw was called in by the Wheatland Irrigation District Board and months later when a Denver Post magazine published the results of his investigation. The article stirred local authorities to have another look at the case.

The FBI was also called to look into the disaster.

Wheatland Irrigation District Board President LeGrande Page, who called Shaw to investigate, wrote in a history of the irrigation district that he was among many who headed to the dam in those early morning hours.

“I rushed to the scene along with several other people and with tears in my eyes I helplessly watched over 8,000-acre feet of water rush through the break in the dam,” Page wrote. “This murky water flooded the countryside for many miles downstream and eventually wound up in the Laramie River.”

Just the night before, the manager of the Platte County U.S. Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation office Manager Howard Wham had been out in the area and visited the reservoir.

“I was there the evening before it broke and the water was clear,” he told the Empire Magazine for a Dec. 7, 1969, story. “There was no muddy water at all to indicate any break in the tunnel or erosion of the fill.”

Graves confirmed muddy water is a warning sign that the earthen dam has a breach somewhere.

As the waters meant to nourish the crops rolled out as a flood to cause their destruction, people in the community acted to warn and rescue others.

A reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune wrote on July 9, 1969, that a local pilot named Bob Shepard saw flood waters and landed his plane in a corn field to alert a farm family about the water.

“They moved to a hill for safety, and the pilot took off before water rolled across the field,” the newspaper reported.

Hay Bales Floating

Empire Magazine wrote in a look back at the disaster for its Nov. 3, 1969, edition that Viola Whipple woke up to water on the floor of her bedroom and hay bales floating past her house about 5:30 a.m.

Grange, 7 years old at the time, said she remembers hearing that her great-grandmother Whipple put her rocking chair on the kitchen table to get out of the water and that was where Whipple was when the firefighters arrived to rescue her with their boat.

“I remember walking out there to help my great-grandma and my dad, and I sunk up to my thighs in mud, literally mud,” she said.

Collier added that her great-grandmother had called her grandmother, Whipple’s daughter, and told her that there was water in the house and that she was hungry. Her grandmother told her mom to go get something out of the refrigerator. But Whipple told her she didn’t want to let water into the fridge.

“From what I remember if she would have touched that refrigerator or anything electric it would have shocked her. Because when the fireman came out to get her on the boat, the fireman touched the door and he got knocked on his butt and he was an electrician,” she said.

Collier also said the bottom half of her father’s parent’s farm was totally wiped out. AT&T had recently installed a buried cable through their property, and the ground was not packed. The waters created a big gully through their property and left the cable hanging in the air.

“There was dead fish all over, we had to repair fences, all the topsoil was gone. My grandfather was down under the hill and noticed all the water was coming,” she said. “Right where it washed out was where he was baling hay.”

Her father, who served in the National Guard, was among the state’s soldiers later assigned to road repair.

Airplanes, Turmoil

Longtime Wheatland businessman Chuck Brown, nearly 90, said he remembers the incident “vividly.”

“I remember there were airplanes in the air, whether that was military or state or local pilots,” he said. “A lot of turmoil in the community downtown, ‘Oh my goodness, what has happened and what about the families that have been affected?’”

Brown said in numerous cases the ranchers and farmers lost their income for the year. And their future was severely impacted by the “severe washing” of the topsoil by the floodwaters.

Irrigation ditches were left filled with silt and sand. A photo of the flood aftermath shows a farmer standing by a fence post that is nearly topped by silt. One of the landowners reported his corn and oats crops were a total loss and that up to 40 tons of rock and boulders were on his fields.

Damage to homes was initially estimated at more than $50,000 and Wham reported 10,335 acres of crop land affected. Properties were impacted up to 20 miles away — including a farmer who lost 20 hogs to drowning. There was no immediate loss of life.

However, Neil Williams, 31, a Wheatland resident who was operating a bulldozer helping restore land, died when his machine slipped off a bank and flipped over on top of him.

Mine expert Shaw’s initial investigation of the cause found the sidewalls and the cover of the discharge tunnel for the dam and estimated 40 feet from the control tower failed because of the application of a large force inside the tunnel itself, the Casper Star-Tribune reported on July 19, 1969.

“In consideration of the strength of this reinforced concrete structure (the control tower and headworks), the only conceivable force sufficient to cause such a failure would be that from an explosive,” Shaw said.

The theory was that the perpetrators dropped dynamite down the control tower and as it was pushed along the discharge tunnel, it exploded.

The newspaper reported there were rumors among farmers on the Wheatland flats that illegal fisherman may have used dynamite in the reservoir.

Stolen TNT

The Empire Magazine in a Dec. 7, 1969, article shared that unknown to Shaw was the fact that 39 pounds of TNT had been stolen from the Wheatland armory on May 2. Shaw also was unaware that downstream from the dam a “slide-rule” type demolitions calculator was found.

Page, the leader of the irrigation district board, in his history of the district wrote that board members immediately contacted the state congressional delegation to ask for help.

Wyoming Gov. Stan Hathaway promised to send men and equipment and released $5,000 from an emergency fund.

“Senator (Cliff) Hansen flew out from Washington, D.C. and made an inspection tour of the flooded area with board members,” Page wrote. The meeting led by the governor and Hansen emphasized that repair and cleanup would be accomplished as soon as possible.

“Thanks to the efforts of all concerned, temporary repairs were made, and water was back in the ditches within eight-days’ time,” Page wrote.

By July 30, 1969, Sen. Hansen was reporting that an FBI investigation into the dam breach concluded that it was not caused by an explosion and that $350,000 in federal aid would be made available.

“Under federal law, the U.S. aid would not have been forthcoming had the investigation shown that the dam break resulted from a man-made cause,” The Rocky Mountain News reported on July 30, 1969. “Natural disaster is a requirement for federal assistance in such cases.”

The newspaper reported that the Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation Service would be allowed to share up to 80 percent of the cost of repairs.

The Empire Magazine article that published Shaw’s report showed photographs of exposed twisted reinforcing bars without any concrete clinging to them — a sign of an explosion.

Two Pounds Of TNT

Shaw estimated that the breach could have been caused by as little as two pounds of TNT. He believed the FBI made a “gross mistake in concluding that no explosive was used, basing this deduction on a lack of contaminants on the concrete service,” Empire Magazine reported.

“The possibility of finding such evidence present when considering the conditions existing at the point of explosion, 45 feet into a water-filled tunnel, would be in my estimation practically negligible,” Shaw told Empire Magazine.

Restoration efforts on the dam and water delivery from the reservoir were completed by the 1970 irrigation season thanks to state and federal dollars as well as a loan from the State Farm Loan Board. A Casper construction firm received $119,018 to do rebuilding work and new head gates were purchased for $7,542.

“Ruptured Wheatland Reservoir Restored,” read the Casper Star-Tribune headline on May 29, 1970. “ On Thursday morning, May 21, 81 cubic second feet of water were released from the Little Reservoir southwest of Wheatland, just slightly over 10 months from the July 8, 1969, flood disaster.”

The disaster did result in lawsuits against the irrigation district from two ranch families, one asking for $350,000, and the other family seeking $300,000 in damages. A Carbon County jury in 1975 awarded the families $135,000 and $85,000.

The irrigation district appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Page wrote that after months of discussions, the district decided to attempt a compromise.

They settled with both families for $110,000 each.

“The cause of the dam breakage has never been satisfactorily determined,” Page wrote in his history of the irrigation district. “An inspection of the dam and outlet works was made by a demolition expert, Dr. Samuel Shaw, a consulting engineer, and professor at the Colorado School of the Mines. It was his expert opinion that the dam was breached by the use of high explosives. It could have happened accidentally or otherwise.”

Looking back on the incident, Brown, who has strong connections to the agriculture community, said he has no recollection of any evidence or sense that there was local or political manipulation surrounding the cause of the incident.

“Could some town kids have tossed some dynamite in there? Of course,” he said. “Was there anybody that would be wanting to cause damage to the ranches that were flooded. I think that is really a stretch. I don’t have any evidence of that, I don’t think anybody does. Was it a natural occurrence? Pretty unlikely, too.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.