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Because the canyon floor is only about 200 feet wide, the town has been subject to flash floods in its history.
April showers bring — flash floods to Mitchell?
The town of Mitchell, population 143, is little more than a cluster of old buildings in an eastern Oregon canyon. You might have bypassed Mitchell if you’ve driven the lonely, scenic stretch of Highway 26 between Prineville and John Day. Perhaps you blinked and missed Mitchell on your way to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.
I’m going to recommend you pull into the little town, spend the night in the quaint Oregon Hotel, and let me tell you a story about the flood of 1956.
Life in Mitchell has always been a struggle. Near the geographic center of Oregon, the town began in the 1860s as a stagecoach stop on the rugged military road between The Dalles and the Canyon City gold fields. Today Mitchell is a ranching center and a stop for travelers on Highway 26.
In summer, bicyclists intent on crossing the United States sometimes pitch tents in the city park along Bridge Creek, where camping is free. In fall, a few elk hunters from the nearby Ochoco Mountains stop to warm up at the cafe with a breakfast of pancakes and eggs.
Because the canyon floor along Bridge Creek is hardly 200 feet wide, Mitchell’s Main Street has little choice but to squeeze awkwardly near the stream. Flash floods in 1889, 1904 and 1956 wiped out most of the buildings on the lower side of the street. Fires in 1899 and 1936 destroyed buildings on the opposite side. The people of Mitchell don’t give up easily.
The flood of June 1889 swept a family of four to their deaths.
In 1904, another colossal thunder and lightning storm swept through Mitchell. A 25-foot wall of water rolled into town with a tremendous crash, tearing away 28 buildings on the north side of Main Street. Two livery barns collapsed in splinters. Forty horses drowned. Two of Mitchell’s elderly citizens died, having refused to evacuate in time.
A broken ankle was the most serious injury of Mitchell’s 1956 flash flood. Not much of a disaster, you might think. But there is a lot more to the story of that ankle than you might suspect.
The story begins when two boys from Beaverton, barely old enough to drive, got their hands on a decrepit old car and took off on a road trip to eastern Oregon. It was Friday, the 13th of July. Eldon Thom, age 16, had just acquired his driver’s license and a sputtering 1941 sedan. Brent Berg, age 15, broke his piggy bank for gas money. Then the two of them lit out to see the country and find adventure.
All went well until the morning they hit the road east from Bend. They had motored 83 miles through increasingly barren terrain when the car suddenly died at a bridge just outside of Mitchell. It was 11 a.m. What a dusty, nowheresville place to get stuck, Eldon thought.
The boys left their car beside the creek bridge and thumbed a short ride to the town’s garage. Clarence Jones, mechanic and owner of the garage, was not particularly pleased to see them. Even a brief description of the car’s ailments convinced Clarence that the boys could never afford the necessary repairs. Still, his heart was not made of stone. He let them use his telephone.
It must have been tough for Eldon, calling his mother to confess how far afield he had strayed. Relieved to hear from him, his mother agreed to drive to his rescue. Eldon, too, felt relieved.
The day was still sunny and hot as the boys marched back to their car to wait. But the longer they sat in the car that afternoon, the weirder the weather became. Giant black thunderheads boiled overhead. At 4 o’clock the sky opened up with a torrential rainfall. The boys had never seen it rain so hard.
When the rain didn’t let up for a full hour, the entire population of the town started running across the bridge toward a hillside.
Eldon looked up the canyon. “I think there’s some water coming. We should get out of here fast.” He opened the driver’s side door and joined the crowd heading for the hill.
Brent didn’t want to go outside in a pouring rainstorm, and besides, the windshield was so blurry he couldn’t see what Eldon was talking about. When Brent finally made out the churning wall of water in the canyon, he just had time to open his door. Suddenly he was neck deep in the flood. He let go of the door handle and was swept away.
After bobbing downstream for a while Brent managed to hang onto the top of a fenceline. By pulling himself up, hand over hand, he dragged himself to a house on the bank. Brent didn’t know it, but this was the six-room home of Clarence Jones, the owner of Mitchell’s garage. Brent tried in vain to open the door. Then the flood surged, broke open the door and swept him inside.
Brent climbed onto a bed that was floating around inside. A moment later the flood ripped the house off its foundation and sent it swirling downstream. The house caromed off boulders, disintegrating to wreckage. Brent sailed off a waterfall to shallower water. Finally he managed to crawl out onto the shore.
Brent sat on the bank of the raging stream a minute or two, disoriented and shivering. The town of Mitchell, he decided, was probably on the other side of the creek. The quickest way to reach help might be to swim across. Convinced of this logic, he waded back into the flood. Of course the current swept him away. Another mile downstream he managed once again to pull himself out, this time by grabbing onto some brush. Now his ankle was hurting and night was falling.
Fifteen year olds can make poor decisions, but they can also be amazingly resilient. Brent limped painfully up along the creekbank for 2 miles on his broken ankle. Finally he found a house that had survived the flood. This time it turned out to be the home of the local sheriff. No one was home.
Brent broke open the door. The power was out. The phone didn’t work. He changed into dry clothes from the sheriff’s bedroom closet. Brent was still cold, and the house was dark. So he went outside, hot-wired the sheriff’s car and turned up the heat.
When the sheriff returned home that night at 10 p.m., Brent had a lot of explaining to do. At first the sheriff had a hard time believing the tale. He knew the flood had swept away a boy five hours earlier. Everyone agreed the poor child could not possibly have survived. The sheriff had expected a search party to find the boy’s body the next day, miles downstream. What was the kid doing in his car, wearing his clothes?
Brent and Eldon spent the night in the Oregon Hotel, a historic Mitchell inn that had opened its doors to refugees. The next day, Eldon went looking for his 1941 sedan. He found the car wrapped around a concrete abutment a mile and a half below the bridge. The flood had torn off the doors and ripped the engine loose from the chassis. If he and Brent had stayed in the car, they would have been crushed.
Four bridges, 11 houses, three trailers, a garage, a service station and dozens of cars were destroyed in Mitchell’s 1956 flash flood. The town’s post office was gutted so severely that its heavy steel safe was found seven years later, 10 miles downstream near the John Day Fossil Beds’ Painted Hills.
The only personal injury, however, was a broken ankle.
Today the Oregon Hotel remains a haven of rustic charm in the wild, wide-open landscape of Wheeler County, the state’s least populous county. A two-bed room with a shared bath will set you back just $80, tax included. For $125 you can land in a king room with a private bath.
Just don’t plan to book online. The Internet isn’t all that good out here, and wise folks don’t trust it much anyway. Reckon you’ll have to call up Hugh and Skeeter on the landline at 541-462-3027 if you’re fixing to stay in the Oregon Hotel.
And remember to check the sky before you pull into Mitchell. If there’s a dark cloud over the Ochocos, drive on by.
