ON JUNE 15, 1903, a strange little article appeared in the Portland Morning Oregonian. “It is reported that a tremendous cloudburst occurred at Heppner late in the afternoon,” the article states. “All communication with that town has been cut off and nothing definite can be learned.” The silence must have struck the editors as ominous. Heppner was a modern 20th-century town, with a telegraph office and a telephone exchange. Also, by press time they would have at least heard rumors that a massive, unsanitary slug of muddy water clotted with farm animals, household goods, and other domestic debris had just gushed downhill through the towns of Lexington and Ione following the banks of the usually-tiny Willow Creek, doing considerable property damage. Lexington and Ione were just downstream from Heppner. It wouldn’t be until late Sunday night, well past the hour the Oregonian was on the presses, that the outside world would start to learn the full story: At 5:20 p.m. on that sultry Sunday afternoon, a wall of muddy, turbulent water 30 to 40 feet high had slammed into the town, scooping up roughly a third of its buildings and killing 247 of Heppner’s 1,290 residents. It was the worst flash-flood disaster in U.S. history with the sole exception of Pennsylvania’s Johnstown Flood, measured by loss of life. (The hurricane-driven flooding that struck North Carolina earlier this year, including the city of Asheville, killed 129, including 26 who are still missing). And it remains the deadliest disaster of any kind in the history of Oregon. (Heppner, Umatilla County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412c1004c.heppner-flood-worst-in-history-680.070.html)
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