Iowa
Old Press
COUNCIL BLUFFS DAILY NONPAREIL
June 15, 1879
A DEATH DELUGE.
A Party of Emigrants from Mills County, Iowa, to the Black Hills
Drowned by a Water Spout, at Buffalo Gap, D. T.
Deadwood, D.T. June 14
At Buffalo Gap on Thursday night, by the sudden rise and overflow
of Beaver Creek, caused by a water spout, eleven persons drowned.
Their names were Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Rhodes, Oliver Rhodes, Frank
Reed, Clyde Rhodes, Cliff Rhodes, Maud Rhodes (the latter three
children) all emigrants on their way to the Black Hills from
Mills county, Iowa, and four men going from the Hills to the
railroad, names unknown. Two were team owners, one a passenger,
and a night herder. Five minutes from the first alarm the whole
country was flooded; and the water subsided almost as suddenly as
it rose.
Further particulars of the cloud burst near Buffalo Gap on
Thursday evening, obtained from passengers on this evening's
coach, show that the water commenced raising about 8 o'clock in
Beaver Creek, one mile this side of Buffalo Gap station, on the
Sidney stage road and about 92 miles from Deadwood. Near the
banks of the creek were camped a party of nine persons from Mills
county, Iowa, four from the Black Hills, and the Montgomery
Brothers and Clark's freight outfits loaded with forty thousand
pounds, principally homestead machinery, which was nearly all
destroyed and scattered for miles around. All the wagons, with
one exception, were destroyed and only a few mules were saved. No
estimate of the loss can be made at this writing. Nine persons
were drowned whose names were given in a previous dispatch. Four
bodies so far have been recovered. The water covered a space
forty miles wide, and within two hours after the rise fragments
of wagons, etc., were seen three to five miles from the scene of
the disaster. All the creeks in and around the hills are
unusually high.
[submitted by W.F., December 2003]