The recent disasters of the Titanic sinking on April 15, 1912, the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire on April 18, 1906, as well as the previous year’s  Mississippi River flood which swept through the river valley killing two hundred people and causing $45 million in damages, all paled in comparison to this disaster that took place in the spring of 1913.

The aforementioned disasters were devastating in their own right, but the one that came to be known as “The Great Flood of 1913″ was the most widespread disaster in United States history.  Thousands upon thousands of people were affected.   The death toll was second only to the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889 which killed 2,209 people.  In 1913 this super-storm affected communities in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, New York, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana, and beyond.

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