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Montana's Worst Natural Disaster

Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Summer 2004 by Parrett, Aaron

The 1964 Flood on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation

IN THE SECOND WEEK OF JUNE 1964, the worst natural disaster in Montana's recorded history descended on the state in the form of heavy rains that quickly turned once picturesque creeks into raging, mile-wide rivers. Dams, roads, and railroads washed out, homes and ranches were swept away, and thirty people died. The area affected by the flooding amounted to nearly thirty thousand square miles, or roughly 20 percent of the state. By Thursday, June 11, President Lyndon Johnson had declared nine counties in northwest and north-central Montana a federal disaster area. When mopping-up operations ended, damages stood at an estimated at $62 million.1

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In its official report, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) offered a comprehensive analysis of the meteorological and hydrological conditions that created the flooding. The first and most important factor was the inordinately heavy precipitation that preceded the storm. While precipitation levels were normal from January through March, and mountain snow pack was actually less than normal through March, heavy snowfall in April brought mountain snow cover to well above average by the end of the month. In early May an unusually heavy snowstorm deposited record snowfall. Also contributing to the flooding were below-normal temperatures from March to May that delayed significant snowmelt. By the end of May the nearly saturated soil in the mountains could absorb little additional moisture.2

These conditions combined with an unprecedented weather system that swept into the state in early June. According to the United States Weather Bureau's official report, when June began, "moist air from the Gulf of Mexico was spreading north and north-northwest over the western plains and central Rocky Mountains." Through a phenomenon known as "orographic lifting," this moist air mass moved against the mountains in northwestern Montana, where cooler temperatures caused heavy rain. Ordinarily, moist air masses originating from the Gulf drop their precipitation on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. But this was no ordinary rainstorm: the air mass spilled over the Continental Divide and generated what the Weather Bureau referred to as a "lee-side storm" of nearly unfathomable magnitude. A 1995 USGS report suggested that such a storm occurs only once every five thousand years.3

In practical terms, the storm's arrival meant that places ordinarily reporting modest rainfall logged seemingly apocalyptic amounts for the twenty-four-hour period between June 7 and 8: 8-plus inches in Browning, 10 inches at Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, 13 inches southwest of Augusta, and 11 inches at Heart Butte. It also meant major flooding occurred, especially on the Flathead River on the west side of the mountains and the Sun and Marias Rivers and their tributaries on the east. As the flooding developed, the media focused its attention on the cities of Great Falls and Kalispell, where damage was dramatic and easily documented from air and land.4

Without question, however, the worst of the damage occurred roughly one hundred miles northwest of Great Falls on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where "raging rivers destroyed 265 homes, 20,000 acres of hayland along the creeks, two large dams, . . . irrigation facilities on which 37,000 acres of cropland depended, barns corrals, sheds, and livestock, all bridges and much of the Reservation road system, and, most tragic of all, claimed all the casualties of the entire flood area, thirty lives." As Bob Norris, an announcer for Shelby radio station KSEN, put it: "Tragedy was to be found everywhere, but if any single segment of the population was hit and hit hardest, it was the Blackfeet Indians on the Reservation."5

The way the flooding affected the Blackfeet Reservation versus the way the public perceived the event exposes an interesting disparity. A two-page photo spread in Life offers a good example of how media coverage failed to make clear that the brunt of the disaster hit the reservation. Though the article noted "at least 30 were drowned, 100 were missing and over 1,200 were left homeless," the brief text made no mention of the reservation and the accompanying photos of Great Falls seemed to suggest that the victims were from the Great Falls area.. A Newsweek article that appeared a few days later focused on the damage to the reservation, but the accompanying photograph, which had no caption, showed a bridge washed out by the Teton River south of Choteau, forty miles away.6

On the west side of the divide, the Hungry Horse News concentrated its coverage on the extensive damage to areas around Kalispell and Columbia Falls. Local newspaper-man Mel Ruder even won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the flooding. But aside from its normal reprinting of John Tatsey's column from the reservation's paper, the Browning Glacier Reporter, the Hungry Horse News made no mention of the reservation damage in the weeks following the flood. The Browning Glacier Reporter provided the best coverage of the events on the reservation, but its usefulness as a primary news source was limited by its small circulation and weekly publication schedule. The issue for the week of the flood came out three days after the worst had passed.7

Montana's Worst Natural Disaster

Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Summer 2004 by Parrett, Aaron

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