The Rain - June 1869

RAILROADS

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 2/27/2016 at 11:36:07

Dubuque Daily Times Journal, June 27, 1869

THE RAIN
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Serious Damage to the Railroads
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Track and Bridges Washed
Away
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We have a chronic antipathy to “weather” items. Their appearance in the local columns of a paper is generally presumed to indicate that the editor is reduced to desperate straits for something to “fill up” with, but for a month or so past, the weather has persisted in being so infernally mean as to literally demand a notice. If anything we could say might be the means of inducing it to reform its ways and cease its everlasting drizzle we should feel amply repaid, without the usual twenty-five cents a line for local notices. The longer it lasts the more it won’t quite. Early in the spring, we remember, we did not and then have a decent day, and even the drizzly days were lightened upon an occasional sunny hour. But who has seen anything of that sort recently? Echo answers. Nobody! Such a season as this is a complete refutation of the famous “development theory.” Were there any truth in it, men would have become web-footed, and children would be born with open umbrellas surmounting their craniums. Water is everywhere. Wells are full. Cisterns are running over. Basements are inhabitable. Gardens are guttered and gutted. Roads are rendered impassable. Railroad-yes, that’s what we intended to write about, but launched off in another direction on account of the high water.

On the D. & S.C.R.R., between Winthrop and Masonville, the track and much of the embankment is washed away, for a distance of 1,400 feet-800 in one place, and 600 in another; and in the same vicinity four bridges are washed away. Three bridges have been carried away between Manchester and Earlville; one short distance this side of Earlville; and one near Independence. No train arrived from the west via, which read on Saturday, and the one that started westward was obliged to return. Gangs of railroad hands are at work day and night repairing the injuries, and it is hoped the track will be made passable by Monday. At any rate, the train will start out on time Monday morning, with the exception of getting through; if not. Will transfer to another train on arriving at the break.