Riptide Under Water

More flood images: our friend Dan Brandenburg just emailed these photos of the Riptide On The River restaurant and bar, half-submerged by this past weekend's floods. Here's hoping they get back up and running soon, because I wanna linger in their Tiki Bar this summer!

Beargrass Creek Flood

Severe flooding hit the Old Cannons/Seneca Park area along Louisville's Beargrass Creek this past weekend, leaving many sections of road impassable.

Scuffletown

Another of Kentucky's Ghost Towns is Henderson County's Scuffletown, which is on the Kentucky-Indiana border along the Ohio River, just above the mouth of Green River.

According to the 1976 book The Annals and Scandals of Henderson County by Maralea Arnett, Scuffletown was built up around a tavern/trading post run by one Jonathan Thomas Stott. "Since he kept a good supply of liquor, it became a rendezvous for flatboatmen and others on the river. Often a general fight developed after several hours of drinking and the place received the name of Scuffletown."

A tobacco-processing operation in Scuffletown was quite successful, exporting 400 to 450 hogsheads of tobacco per year to Europe, for pipe tobacco and nasal snuff.

According to them there Wikipedia folks:

The site witnessed numerous Civil War-era activities. It may have been the intended target of a raid by a handful of Confederate cavalrymen from Tennessee led by Captain Jake Bennett. It was Colonel's Johnson set up his cannon a few miles below Scuffletown to take Newburgh. The Silver Lake No. 2, a sternwheel packet (steamboat) weighing some 129 tons and outfitted with six cannons capable of firing 24 pound shot, stopped at Scuffletown during its patrols of the Ohio. In 1863, eight Union companies of infantry and one company of artillery were stationed at Scuffletown to protect the area of Confederate raiders. Scuffletown is mentioned in the Civil War account Operations of the Mississippi Squadron during Morgan's Raid.

In 1893 the Southern Cherokee Nation were welcomed to Kentucky in Scuffletown and recognized as an Indian tribe by Governor John Y. Brown. The Southern Cherokee is still living on the Green River today.

The 1913 flood greatly devastated the city, causing a mass exodus that they never recovered from. Its post office closed permanently the following year. An even larger flood in 1937 decimated what was left, and a vast chunk of real estate has sat inexplicably deserted ever since. There's been talk for a decade about having it declared a protected wetland and setting up a national wildlife refuge there, but so far not much has happened.

Lost in the Flood

Après nous, le Déluge. Tuesday morning I was dashing out in the torrential thunderstorm, on the way to a meeting at Starbucks on Blankenbaker. I witnessed lightning striking a tree across the street, sending branches flying. That should have been a warning sign to forget the meeting and go back inside, but I stubbornly pressed on.

Unfortunately, my car has developed an aversion to rain - something's getting wet under the hood (starter? battery? distributor cap?) and makes it reluctant to run under moist conditions. It died right around a sharp curve on Watterson Trail, and wouldn't start again. A couple of cars came speeding around the corner and very nearly slamming into me since visibility in the downpour was very low. Finally I had to put it in neutral and push it out of the road. About half an hour later, I was able to get it started again.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, a lot of other people in Louisville were having far worse troubles. From WAVE-TV:

In Louisville, there's flooding at Second and Broadway, and First and Main. East Breckenridge Street also has water as high as car windows.

Police had to pull a driver from a vehicle at Grinstead and Cherokee Road, and there was another rescue at 15th and Hill Street.

In New Albany, cars were floating in high water at Scribner Place and Thomas.

There were reports of three feet of water at Arthur Street and Eastern Parkway. And someone reported seeing a person floating in a motorized wheelchair at 901 south 15th Street.

There are also unconfirmed reports that manhole covers are blowing off because of the heavy rain.

Norton Hospital on disaster due to flood damage.

And from bizjournals.com:

One of the hardest hit public buildings was the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, 301 York St.

Craig Buthod, executive director of the library system, said that the lower level of the library building took on several feet of water. He estimated that “tens of thousands” of books were lost.

Buthod said that the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning system was under water, as was his personal car, library vehicles and Bookmobile units.

The library is expected to be closed through at least Wednesday.

And most tragic of all, from WHAS-TV:

Witnesses say it took only minutes for floodwaters to rise nearly waist deep inside Louisville’s animal shelter.

But with only a dozen people around and nearly 600 animals, they couldn't get them all to safety in time.

One dog and nearly a dozen cats drowned Tuesday afternoon.

(Photos by Kari Donahue.)

Underwater Cemeteries

Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake are enormous twin lakes side by side, with the territory between them known as “Land Between the Lakes.” I’m not even sure why they’re given separate names when they’re really one huge lake connected by a canal, but there it is.

The lakes are man-made, created in 1966 as part of a controversial TVA plan to evacuate entire towns and flood the area. Kentucky citizens were forced out of their homes and their property seized under “eminent domain.” To this day you can still don scuba gear and go down and see the remains of buildings, railroad tracks, streets, etc. underwater. They’re also visible from low flying planes, and possibly Google Maps.

The Army Corps of Engineers was instructed to dig up all the graves in all the cemeteries - a stagerring number of corpses and coffins - and transplant them elsewhere. There’s been quite a bit of speculation about whether or not things were done by the book. Cemeteries were not always transferred intact, and families that had originally been buried together in one cemetery were often needlessly split up across four others when moved. Some headstones didn’t even make it to their new location, and some have said that the likelihood is high that headstones were often mismatched with their proper owners out of carelessness or just trying to get a very unpleasant job done in a hurry.

Many graves in those old cemeteries had no stone at all, especially those of babies, slaves, and paupers. We know from old cemetery records that the people were interred there, but we don’t know exactly where they were - and neither did the Army Corps of Engineers. There’s no telling how many graves were left behind to be submerged forever under hundreds of feet of water.

Given this, it’s not much of a stretch to theorize the existence of ghosts in the vicinity who are extremely displeased about what happened to their homes, their relatives, their headstones, their graves.