Wharton, John (Jack) Rutledge Cassette Tape Content Outline Cassette Tape No. 90/15
Knox Historical Museum Oral History Project Special Collection: Floods
JOHN (JACK) RUTLEDGE WHARTON (December 22, 1903 - January 5,1981)
Superintendent of Barbourville Water & Electric Company
Cassette Tape dated January 18, 1974 on file at Knox Historical
Musuem, Barbourville, Ky. Notes by Charles Reed Mitchell.
The Jack Wharton interview is part of the William Sherman Oxendine Oral History Audiotape Collection, now housed in the Knox Historical Museum. The collection consists of interviews conducted by students of Mr, Oxendine under his supervision as work submitted for a history course at Union College with the full understanding that all property rights to the tapes belong to the supervisor, William Sherman Oxendine. Mr. Oxendine has released all literary property rights, including copyright, to the Knox Historical Museum.
Jack Wharton was interviewed by Rick Jones on January 18, 1974
in Barbourville, Ky. for project on local flooding. One 60-minute tape. Total Playing Time: 31 minutes. Open. Releases signed by class sponsor William Sherman Oxendine and by Mrs. Jack Wharton, his widow and heir. Tape duplication date: October 25,1990.
Disc 13A 0H2.
SIDE 1
1 minute in. Introduction.
START 2 1/2 minute. When asked which was the worst flood in Barbourville to date (January 1974), Jack Wharton answers the 1946 but adds that a recent flood of November 28,1973, measured at the same level of 42 feet, 8 inches, the highest on record. "The flood we had November 28,1973, is right along with the same level as the flood of 1946...but there was not a floodwall ((then)). I've seen several floods that ran up within near that height."
When the floodwall was half completed, the water entered the town on the incomplete side downstream and ran back into town. A flood which took place on the the weekend previous to this interview in 1974 was 38' 5". There is no such thing as an average flood depth. Barbourville usually suffers a big one (like the '46 and '73) every ten years.
Jack Wharton will have up to this time lived in Barbourville forty years since February 5,1934 and had worked for the City Water and Electric Company since March of 1940. Before that he worked for a private utility company. Slow his water and electricity duties are added to sewage and flood control.
JW is not an engineer but learned 'much of that field on the job.
Rick Jones asks about the flood of 1926, which JW did not see. JW had heard talk of a big one in 1929. The watermarks at the waterplant show that the 1929 was not as high as other floods.
7 min. The first third of the floodwall was built in 1956 on the south side along the Cumberland River on Black Street and turned up the creek. In 1958 the wall was constructed along the creek and around to the railroad to Heidrick across Manchester St., tying it into railroad beds on both ends.
The city approved a tax bond of $160,000, with 50 to 75 thousand coming from the Water & Electric Company to buy the property rights to build the wall. The Federal government paid for building the wall and the pumping stations after the city bought the right of way. The engineers cleared off the ground and dug a six foot ditch along the path of the wall looking for pipes. The base of the wall is the same material as the rest of it: heavy clay. There are thirteen underdrains or underbranches under the walls.
The flood gauge on the wall starts at 16 feet by the river bridge. The government's wire-weight gauge on the river bridge itself is used to figure water depths until the water becomes too high. When water is rising or falling in flood stage, JW calls the weather bureau three times a day or more for rainfall predictions and measurements upstream and computer estimates.
12 min. JW can get fairly close by his own estimates: "We can take the rate of raise after it gets up on the banks above the trees and then we figure that and we know how many hours from the time it quit raining the river will raise and we can take the rate of raise then and we know it stops at ought ((zero)). And we know the hours it will raise and we can take half of this lower measurement and multiply it by your hours. You'd be surprised at how close it comes." Knowledge of the rainfall in the watershed above town is also a guide to an estimate.
The floods come from the Cumberland River watersheds on our side of the mountains in Harlan and Bell counties. Little Richland Creek divides at a certain point where the bulk of the water heads either to Barbourville or Manchester.
Asked what would he do if he knew that the floods would surely go over the wall, JW says that he would open the four underdrains (four foot square concrete tunnels under the walls) and let the water in gradually. The Flatgates cannot be opened with water against them and require two men to lift them under ordinary circumstances. The Core of Engineers never gave JW a straight answer to that problem. If the waters were allowed to top the floodwall, they would wash away the top of the structure.
16 min. JW has a hard time keeping people off the floodwall and from damaging the sod. Motor cyclists and horse riders injure the wall seriously. JW had to shovel gravel on a favorite sliding place of children to keep the sod firm. JW received his authority over the wall in this manner: the federal government built the floodwall and turned it over to the city. The city passed an ordinance placing it under the control of the city Water & Electric company. As head of that company, JW has the responsibility of keeping up with its condition, maintaining it, mowing it, and operating the floodgates.
19 min. JW says that he has seen several rainfall records of up to 10 1/2 inches go up another watershed in the area but that the record tie of the '46 and '73 were caused by a 5 1/2 inch rain within two days. "So I feel like if it ever went up to say ten inches of rainfall within a day or two that it would have to be watched awful close and might go over the top of it."
FLOOD CONTROL PROPOSALS. Raising the wall or building dams have been discussed. At the time of the wall's construction a higher wall was proposed but the Core of Engineers reported that if the wall were to go much higher that it would be cheaper to buy the town and put it back into river bottom.
22 min. ''When you talk of building dams above us, ((in)) mountain country the first roads were that people followed the creek out and eventually the roads got built along the creeks. When the roads got built along the creeks, the homes got built along the creeks. Now where you put in a dam, you've got to bring everybody out of it, of course. You've got to pay out your residents and population of down in there. And then when you turn around and try to put roads on top of those mountains and such, it is a tremendous and expensive undertaking. So it looks like to me that we'll have to take our chances with the weather and the Lord."
On damming the Cumberland River: "I was talking to two gentlemen from the Core of Engineers out of Nashville last week and they told me, said 'Jack, we've got dams all the way from here to the Mississippi and you can pretty well say the water's running over every daggone one of them; cause we've had a tremendous lot of rainfall in the last two months."
Several times flood forecasts are inaccurate because air currents may send a big rain on the other side of the mountains when the forecasters had expected it to hit here.
JW recalls riding a motorboat from the Depot to the Manchester Street underpass in floods and seeing houses floating down the river.
27 min. 1946 FLOOD STORY. RJ: "I guess everybody really had to be ready to help their neighbors in those kinds of situations."
JW: ''They did. They did. I went one time, I got overly sympathetic I guess you'd say. The water was filling in on the north end of Allison Avenue and another fellow and I, Charley Swafford...He's dead now. We went down there to get this lady and a baby about ten days old. The water was coming in the house. And we put in the water down there at the old Brick Store, we called it, ((at)) Knox and Allison Avenue. We rode down in there with the current fine. We went up to the house and got this lady and it poring the rain. We had on rainsuits, hipboots, parade hats, and we got that lady and wrapped the baby up in a comforter to absorb the water to try to keep that child dry. We got back to town and we started to row back and we could not row It. The water was too swift and we didn't have a motor and the water was about three and a half feet deep and it was the tenth of January.
"So I told this other fellow, I said, 'Charley, we're not going to go with this water. We've got to go back the way we come, so get in that water.'
"And he went over the back end of the boat and held the boat against, the fence. And I was in the middle rowing and I just told this lady, 'We're not going to turn this boat over, but it's going to rock some.'
"She was sitting in the floor right in front of my seat where the oars were. And I just stood up and jumped in the water and it came up above my belt. And we started wading out of there and pulling the boat, walking.... This was in the '46 Flood.
"And I had a pocket watch in my watch pocket and I put it in my shirt pocket. I had a chain on it which I ran a little link on the end of it through a button hole in my shirt. And when we came around the Brick Store, down here at Knox and Allison, we had to go round back of it to keep from going in above our heads. And I put my watch in my shirt collar, just hung it right over in my shirt collar. That was the highest place I could leave out of the water without swimming or going back.
"And so we came around the Brick Store. The water was under our armpits and we brought this boat and then got on Knox Street up there and there was just the least bit of water. And we drug the boat with that lady and child in it—it was a light wood boat—and when we got to where Allison ( (''Knox Street" is what he means)) runs into the end of College Street, we thought that the river was going to take the boat away from us in spite of all there. It was really swift. It took up the blacktop on the street, which was about two or three inches thick and washed it away. Water got under it.
"And we got back above Universal Garage, we got this lady out and she and the baby and turned it over to somebody else.
'' I knew where there was an outboard motor and I saw I had to have one and so I went and rented this motor off of Harold Tye Evans, a small outboard motor but it did the job for us in getting around. And we didn't take anymore passengers around in that boat. ''
33 min. END OF INTERVIEW
INDEX
Interview Index Card
Wharton, John (Jack) Rutledge (Dec. 22, 1903-Jan. 5, 1981)
Supervisor of Barbourville Water and Electric Co.
KHM Cassette Tape No. 90/15 Special Collection: Floods
William Sherman Oxendine Collection
Interviewed by Rick Jones in Barbourville, Ky. on January 18, 1974
for a history course at Union College under William Sherman Oxendine. One 60-minute cassette tape. Total Playing Time: 31 minutes. Open. Releases signed by Collection owner William Sherman Oxendine and by Mr. Wharton's widow, Mrs. Elizabeth H. Wharton.
CONTENT: Barbourville Floods. Floods of 1929, 1946, 1973, 1974.
Building of the floodwall, 1956-58. Barbourville Water & Electric Company. Estimating coming flood depths. Maintaining the floodwalls Other proposed remedies: raising the wall and damming the Cumberland River. Army Core of Engineers. Flood rescue story.
Cross-referencing Index
Floods Cumberland River
Barbourville, Ky. Barbourville Water & Electric Co.
Floodwall Building of Flood Control Projects