The Hurricane of 1938
It had been a dark and stormy week in Rowe. The rain started heavily on Sunday and continued for four days, sometimes in sudden cloudbursts of two inches in a single hour. By the end of the storm, nine inches had been recorded on the Deerfield.
Late in the afternoon on Wednesday September 21, extreme flood conditions prevailed on all streams. The wind picked up and blew with great fury through the mountains sustaining a speed of seventy-three miles per hour with gusts well over one hundred. Huge trees, top-heavy with wet leaves and whose roots were loosened by the pounding and saturation of continued rain, toppled easily before the wind. Others bent to the ground or lost their largest limbs.
The storm itself, moving at 50–60 miles per hour was already well north into Vermont before nightfall. Townspeople ventured out to see the damage beyond their own front yards, but most could not go far. Destruction was everywhere and darkness soon descended.
After the 1938 hurricane at the intersection of Hazelton and Zoar Roads in front of the Town Hall.
Communications to Rowe were meager at that time and radios and phones were gone when the power lines went down. It was a night of fear and worry about what had happened and where people were who had not made it home. Those in the village were concerned about the dam at Pelham Lake and the need to warn those downstream if there was any evidence of its giving way. Men went out in the night walking up Pond Road to check on things and fortunately, the dam held.
Memories of the Storm
“Mr. Jackman and Mr. Upton were on the Zoar Road bringing the night mail to Rowe when they came upon the flood waters of Pelham Brook pouring over the railing of the Steel Brook bridge carrying with it rocks, sticks and tree limbs. Sensing the danger of going forward, Mr. Jackman backed out and dashed up the Veber Rd. (now Steele Brook Road) just to the left of them, only to be cut off by a branch of Steele Brook. Here they were marooned for the night huddled under a blanket, not able to see a thing, but could hear roaring water, tumbling boulders and falling trees all around them. They walked several miles home the next morning leaving their car on the mountain to wait for a road to be built one way or the other.”
North Adams Transcript, September 29, 1938
Some of the most spectacular damage was down on the river where three landslides came down 900 feet from Negus Mountain onto the railroad carrying 20 and 30 ton boulders, along with trees and soil. One of the the slides pushed eight cars of a passing freight train along with the tracks into the river. The Boston and Maine Railroad Employee Magazine reported that at least two railroad cars were carried downriver and buried in debris. Up river, a slide under Pulpit Rock fell onto the HT&W tracks. According to Hoot, Toot & Whistle by Bernard Carmen, “In the 11 miles between Readsboro and the Hoosac Tunnel, the tracks were disrupted in 103 places by washouts and avalanches.” Eight miles of this road was in Rowe.
Landslides on the side of Negus Mountain.
Freight cars were carried into the river by the slide. The track was buried six feet deep with 20-ton boulders topping earth and trees piled on the main line tracks.
Cameras were not a household item in Rowe at that time and photos are scarce. But memories linger in the minds of those who were here when the storm came through.
Memories of the Storm
Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Truesdell were living on Brittingham Hill Road. He had been up to the old Truesdell farm with his two children, Mary and Richard. The storm and wind worsened as he drove down the hill home, and the road literally became a brook. Realizing he could not make it home in the car, he tied it to a tree. He took a child under each arm and waded home with difficulty. The next day the car was still tied to the tree, but it was not needed. So much damage had been done to all the Rowe roads that everyone in town was on foot for some time.
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Martin Woodward remembers his family got their milk from Mrs. Avery and it was his chore to fetch it each afternoon. It had been storming hard, but Martin started out. On the bridge on the Zoar Road at the Baptist Church, he stopped to watch the raging torrent of Ward Brook as it surged down toward Pelham Brook, roaring and choked with debris. Young Charles Dean Avery and Kenneth Soule joined him, all young boys badly frightened by what they saw. Knowing Martin’s mother wanted the milk the three boys went on. Once in the Avery yard, they turned back to look at the bridge just in time to see Pete Thibideau hurry off the it. Just as he stepped of it, the bridge went down with a crash and the water crested over the road, literally chasing Pete down the road. Martin never got home that night with the milk.
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Mrs. Lucy Avery stood on her front porch and watched the bridge by the church go out just as Martin described. There was a sugar house and an ice house directly across the road from her home. She saw them as they were picked up by the swirling water, whirled around and completely disappeared.
The Mohawk Trail east of the Cold River bridge in Charlemont.
The clean-up in town took many weeks and every man who was able reported to Charlie Newell’s store to be assigned to a crew on a particular road. All the bridges on the Zoar Rd were gone and the lower end of Joe King Hill was completely washed away, cutting the route to the main road out of town. All other roads were cut off, though not quite as hopelessly. Townspeople built a way out through Cyrus Stage Rd. to North Heath to Heath Center and to East Charlemont.
