In 1930, a drought impacting 30 states from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachia Mountains severely impacted the Morgantown area. Temperatures in August of that year reached 101.5 degrees in Morgantown while the Associated Press reported that temperatures in Illinois reached 106 degrees, “burning up the farm lands”. In mid-August, temperatures in Baltimore soared to 104-degrees while Washington, D.C. sat at 102-degrees.

In addition to high temperatures, an early August article in The Dominion-News titled, “Freakish Heat Recorded Here” described unusual temperature variability. In one day, the temperature moved from a low of 49-degrees in the morning to 87.5 by midday. Also, during this time, wildfires swept through the area. Residents across the state were dealing with “about 100 field and woods fires” daily. A fire in Clarksburg burned “over a 25-mile front” and an appeal was made “to the federal government for authorization to employ 500 additional firefighters.”

By early August, the lack of adequate rainfall coupled with extreme heat left places like Charleston (WV) facing serious threats to its water service when the Elk and Kanawha rivers ran abnormally low. In September, West Virginia University Professor L.V. Carpenter reported to the Morgantown City Council that the city was fortunate. Upon visiting 29 municipal water works across the state, he described how, “one town is limiting its supply to a three-hour morning period,” while “six others do not have 24-hour service.” He also reported that small streams were “literally saturated with sewage” and “[O]ne of the cities visited is using 20 times as much chlorine to purify its water as is necessary”.

Carpenter then proclaimed that Morgantown, whose “water supply was the best in the state”, had a water “supply sufficient to last until December without rain.” Although Morgantown was certainly blessed in these regards, the city’s water supply was pushed to its usable limits.

On September 18th, it was reported that the Monongahela River was dropping at a “rapid rate” of “one-tenth of a foot every 24-hours”. Even despite some rain falling, the river was reported at 1.8 feet, the lowest on record. In fact, this measurement was “approximately three feet lower than the previous record, established at 4.4 feet 22 years ago”.

The river was becoming so dry that by mid-September, residents could nearly walk across the entire width of the river. A September 22nd The Dominion-News headline proclaimed, “Many Sunday spectators visit extensive mud flats near Morgantown bridge.”

Four days later, on September 26th, The Dominion-News led with a photograph of the river showing how amazingly dry it had become. The caption for the photo read…

THE MUD FLATS OF MORGANTOWN

For the first time in the memory of the majority of its citizens Morgantown can now see the bottom of the Monongahela River. Conditions resulting from the prolonged drought which have attracted much attention within the past few weeks are shown in the photograph above. The only water flowing is in the regular boat channel near the west bank shown in the background. With the exception of small standing pools the greater part of the river bottom is exposed.

A copy of the front page of that newspaper is available here via PDF format via Dropbox while a much better-quality digitized copy of the photo from the newspaper can be found here. It should be noted that this wasn't the first time the Mon River went dry. Here is a 1930 account from an old timer discussing droughts in the 1800s.

An Interesting Find

A rather amazing story surrounding the mud flats appeared in the September 22nd article mentioned earlier. As the water receded, a number of “steel nosed shells” bearing the date 1916 began to appear in the mud. Local World War I veterans identified these as “very deadly…one pounders” used to fire across the trenches during the Great War.

Adding to the peculiarity of the story is that it was reported that “six of the missiles were brought to The Dominion-News office last night” by a WVU freshman. This person had “bought them for a small sum from boys playing with them.” It was further explained that this WVU student “examined one of the shells minutely by taking the nose off and found the powder, a highly-explosive substance, was dry.” Although no one was certain as to the source of the shells, a lock master “said a truck had dumped them off the river bridge several years ago.”

The shells were eventually handed over to authorities. It was determined that if the projectiles were found to be “live”, it would prove necessary that “the flats” be “searched over carefully to prevent the possibility of a fatal accident to boys and others who in recent days have been frequenting the river bottom in increasing numbers.” Whether or not the shells were “live” or “duds” remains a mystery.

Draining Cheat Lake

Another unique event that occurred during September 1930 involved the release of water from Lake Lynn (Cheat Lake). Given that by 1930 the Monongahela River carried “the second largest amount of tonnage of any river in the world, being second only to the Mississippi in this respect” [Monessen Daily Independent, August -26, 1930-p-1] (and that plants along the river were dependent upon water for continued operation), the Army Corp of Engineers ordered the release of a significant amount of water from the lake.

While this proved a sound solution for obtaining sufficient flows in the Mon, when the lake dropped two feet in 24 hours residents and politicians raised concerns. West Virginia Governor William Conley had become involved in the issue as did United States Senators. By September 27th, the lake stood at “75 feet, fifteen feet below normal stage” and was “falling at an approximate rate of 3 feet weekly.” The Dominion-News reported that this enraged “protestants”, who were making “a unified effort to correct what they believe to be a wrong against West Virginia’s wildlife and recreational interests.”

Adding to the frustrations of Morgantown area residents was the fact that the releases from Lake Lynn didn’t benefit Morgantown. Because the Mon flows north, the water released from Lake Lynn aided towns north of Point Marion not south. So, while the area south of Point Marion’s lock and dam and down to Morgantown’s lock and dam was going dry, the federal government was taking water from Lake Lynn- another West Virginia water resource- for the sole benefit of Pennsylvania industry.

The Steamer Roosevelt

An example of how dry the river was becoming in Morgantown is found in a September 29th The Dominion-News article on the steamer Roosevelt. Upon making its way to Morgantown for a final moonlight cruise of the season, the Roosevelt’s crew found the river at Morgantown precariously low. After maneuvering “for nearly four hours in attempting to find a channel sufficiently deep to reach the city wharf to take on hundreds of passengers,” the effort was abandoned. The water in the wharf was simply too low to navigate around the mud flats, so the vessel returned to Pittsburgh without completing the moonlight voyage.

The [Future] President Roosevelt

Of course, as with most public matters, there was a huge political controversy involved in the use of Lake Lynn. The dispute surrounded the fact that the release of water aided more than Pennsylvania commerce. It proved a huge financial benefit to the privately owned West Penn Power, who constructed the dam and used it to produce hydropower that was almost exclusively transmitted to Pennsylvania and Maryland.

This issue was significant given that a nationwide push for public ownership of electric utilities was well underway. The movement was headed by the governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt (the 32nd president of the United States who served four terms from 1933 to 1945). An article on his views appeared in a September 9, 1930, The Dominion-News “[I]nterview obtained exclusively for Central Press and The Dominion-News”.

The primary issue was the ability of municipalities to “own and operate their own power plants” in opposition to the “natural monopoly” of utility companies. The Dominion-News was certainly behind this cause. On July 5, 1930, the newspaper [available here] announced that it had raised nearly $1,000 “for the appeal of the Public Service Commission’s decision granting the Cheat River water power monopoly to the West Penn interests”.

While the fight over the right of municipalities to generate and transmit electricity would continue- even through Roosevelt’s presidency as part of New Deal policies- by December of 1930 the drought had abated. On December 12th, a The Dominion-News headline reported “Water Flowing Over Dam Here”. This was the first time since “water ceased to flow over the dam here on July 6.” The December 27th edition of the newspaper declared that Morgantown experienced “the heaviest fall of rain which has visited Morgantown in more than six months melted Christmas ice and snow from Morgantown streets and slopes.”

Given this change in weather, it was determined that water from Lake Lynn was no longer required. According to the December 31, 1930, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, by the time the flows of Lake Lynn were halted, “Twenty billion gallons were taken from the lake during the three months, in addition to the normal flow of the Cheat River.” To put that into perspective, the Flegal Dam and Reservoir that MUB is now constructing will hold 370,000,000 million gallons. The water released from Lake Lynn is more than 54 times that amount on top of the “normal flows” of the Cheat.

A Stinky Affair

Although temporal constraints precluded a thorough search of the matter, it can be said with near certainty that the low stream and river flows produced a stench beyond description. This is because in 1930 Morgantown lacked a sewer system. In fact, Morgantown’s sewer system wasn’t constructed until 1965. Up until that time sanitary flows were merely dumped into the Deckers Creek and the Mon River.

As early as 1922 an engineering firm from Pittsburgh had called for the construction of a comprehensive sewer system. The report describes that within the city itself there were open sanitary sewers, there were sanitary flows that simply drained down hillsides, and in many cases flows that were simply conveyed to various streets.

By 1940, complaints to City Council about sewer issues was a regular occurrence. This was especially true related to Deckers Creek, of which an opinion piece in The Dominion-News referred to as a “filth pot”. By 1940 half of Morgantown’s waste was conveyed to the creek. In the summertime, and during dry periods, the odor was horrific. The same can be said for the flies and mosquitoes that bred in the foul, stagnant waste and flew about the area. Deckers was little more than a blight that flowed through the heart of the city itself.

The response from city officials to complaints by residents was always the same. City Council would listen, appoint a committee to investigate, and bide their time until it rained. Then the waste would be swept away and residents would go about their business. Problem solved. [Morgantown Dominion-News P.1 and P.2]

Jumping back to 1930, it’s not hard to imagine the stench when both Deckers Creek and the river were turned to nothing but a series of puddles. The odors, flies and misquotes must have been atrocious. An indicator of how horrible Deckers Creek had become can be found in a cheeky edition of the 1930 Monticola, WVU’s student yearbook founded in 1896. In the journal the student publishers decided to have a little fun. In ridiculing the drought issues along the river and the impact on water quality, they did a section called “MuddyCola”. An obvious play off Monticola.

Within the “MuddyCola Beauty Section” was a blithe editorial on the state of Deckers Creek in which they created a “Queen of Deckers Creek”. At the bottom of the page next to the “Queen” was exclaimed, “What the h---!”

So, yes, during the drought of 1930, the stench would have been atrocious.

Today

Today, we are mostly protected from such an event by forward thinking. Foremost, the Morgantown Lock and Dam (along with nine similar structures throughout the Monongahela) maintain a relatively constant river depth (9 feet in Morgantown). In fact, the Morgantown Lock and Dam (constructed between 1948 and 1950) replaced the original stone and timber Locks 10 and 11 which had been built by the government between 1897 and 1903.

A second structure of critical importance is the Tygart Dam, which was constructed between 1935 and 1938 as part of the New Deal program. According to the Army Corp of Engineers, the dam was built for flood control, “navigation and water supply purposes. During the summer and fall low-water season, Tygart releases additional water downstream to meet navigation water supply requirements on the Monongahela and upper Ohio River for commercial navigation.”

A third level of protection against drought is the new Flegal Dam and Reservoir being constructed along Cobun Creek. This reservoir will provide 30-plus days of water to our area if used exclusively. Not only that, but because flows from the reservoir are entirely gravity fed to the water treatment plant, flows can continue even if power is disrupted. This a terrific benefit to our community in terms preparedness and environmental protection.

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Additional photos of the river dry can be found here.

Learn more about the locks and dams along the river here.