Flooding in Marietta is nothing new, Marietta has been going under water from time to time as long as people have lived here.

When those from the Ohio Company first selected the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers as the place to build a new city it would have seemed they would have had to be aware that from time-to-time the whole town would be covered by several feet of churning brown muck that would certainly make everyone wish they had located on higher ground. They had gotten advice from Thomas Hutchins, geographer of the United States, that the river banks in the area were high enough to hold the rivers in check. He was wrong.

Major floods here are normally caused by two things. Major snow falls followed by unusually warm weather and heavy rains, This double whammy has been the cause of the largest floods in town.

A letter from Marietta in an 1805 newspaper said “we have lately experienced, at this place, the greatest flood in the rivers, which has been witnessed since the settlement of this country. Immense damage has been sustained. Mills, bridges, houses, fences, etc. have been swept away … The greatest part of the town of Marietta has been inundated; the water in the streets has been from two to ten feet deep; some houses have been entirely deserted; in others, people have lived in their chambers. The hardships and dangers people have endured are inconceivable. The damage in Marieta is estimated at $10,000.”

By 1813 Marietta had turned into a vibrant little town, a town that was covered by eight feet of water when the Ohio River crested and left ice 18 inches thick crashing into houses and fences. Ephraim Cutler wrote in a journal that “the rise was rapid beyond any known before – so sudden as to prevent us from getting our stock off to a place of safety.” On Jan. 27 he wrote “the family moved upstairs. The water still continued rising, but not so rapidly. About 6 o’clock on the morning of the 28th the river came to a stand, which was five and a quarter inch on our lower floor, and about four feet higher than ever before known since the settlement of Marietta.”

In February of 1832, according to the city’s website, a flood put nine feet of water on Front Street, destroying 20 structures including a firehouse that was finally snagged down river in Louisville, Ky.

Steamboats, it was reported, traveled up the streets in a 1884 flood to deliver passengers to the third-floor windows of downtown businesses. The crest of 52.9 feet remains the third highest in history, topped only by the massive March of 1913 flood of 58.7 feet and the 1937 flood that reached 55 feet in Marietta.

That is a scary amount of water.

The Times of Jan. 19,1937 predicted that the river would reach 39 feet and that Marietta would escape the “Big Flood.” They were wrong on both counts.

The Times reported on Jan. 23 that a 50-foot crest was expected and that 300 homes in Marietta had been inundated by waters. The Times reported heavy rains upstream from Marietta and indicated that dropping temperatures would help slow the water, they would add a level of human suffering, however. “The cold was disagreeable and brought added suffering to flood victims, but it promised the first relief from rain in the last five days.” The river would end up five feet higher than predicted.

The flood, the Times reported, had driven 40,000 people from their homes around Wheeling, including half of the 10,000 residents of Wheeling Island, who “were now refugees.”

Four days later a plane flew over Marietta and took several high-resolution photos of the city.

The photos taken on Jan. 27, 1937, show a frightening amount of water over the city. The entire business district, including Putnam Street as far as Fourth Street is under water. All of Harmar was underwater, with only the roofs of some houses showing up in the photos. The Williamstown Bridge, which was the same height as the current one, was touching the river at the Williamstown end. The area where Frontier Shopping Center is located was flooded, as was Glendale Road as far up as the football field.

The large flat area between Pike and Greene streets appears in the photo looking more like a lake with houses in it, than the residential district that it was. Future generations would use a huge amount of fill dirt to raise new construction above potential flood.

Photography was well developed by 1937 and it is from that flood that we have a good record of what things looked like. The photos that you have likely seen over the years of people rowing boats down the streets are mainly from that flood.

Floods can do massive damage and take years to recover from. After dozens of floods and more than 200 years of high water, those in Marietta have adapted to life at the water’s edge.

Winter weather just adds a misery layer to floods that makes a bad situation even worse.

Hopefully the current snow will melt slowly and we will get through this month and the rest of winter with weather conditions that allow a smooth transition to spring.

Art Smith in online manager of The Times, He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com