The Lake Toxaway Dam Burst
In the early 1900s, no single item associated with the Sapphire resort build-outs caused more consternation than the large dam needed to create what would become Lake Toxaway—not surprising, given that the disastrous Johnstown flood had occurred just fifteen years earlier.
To their credit, the Toxaway Company employed the latest knowledge in dam engineering and did not appear to cut any corners. As well, the company invited anyone interested to inspect the dam, so confident were they of its solid construction.
Sylvan Valley News, July 3, 1903
News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, July 19, 1903
Asheville Citizen Times, August 1916
Even so, from the project’s inception, the dam caused misinformation (top left) and fear-mongering (mid left) from some sources, while others (right) championed its cause.
With the dam having held just fine despite all this dissension, it’s perhaps especially ironic that it — at first — seemed capable of holding yet again, even after two bouts of intense rain in July 1916.
The broad flooding that caused such extensive damage across parts of Western North Carolina that summer was triggered by back-to-back hurricanes. On July 5-6, a category 3 hurricane hit the Gulf Coast of Alabama and Florida, then, as a weakened storm, dropped heavy rainfall over the area’s foothills and mountains. A week later, a category 2 hurricane made landfall along South Carolina’s coast, passing over Charleston before reaching WNC as a tropical storm and unleashing yet more rain.[1]
After ten days of consecutive rains, almost every waterway in Western North Carolina was swollen to capacity or beyond.
Newspapers all over reported ‘rumors’ of the dam’s demise, but with bridge and telegraph washouts everywhere, it was not easy to suss out the truth vs the speculation.
In actuality, it wasn’t until a third hurricane dumped a reported 20+ inches of rain within one day that the constant onslaught proved too much.
Lake Toxaway after the 1916 damburst. Photo courtesy of UNC-Asheville, Ramsey Library.
A persistent leak at the base of the dam, reinforced six years earlier, seems to also have been at least partly to blame for the disaster to come.
Around noon on August 13, 1916, it was reported that “an alarming volume of water was noticed to be sweeping through the masonry.”[2] By late afternoon, it was clear the dam was in danger of collapse, and warnings were sent downriver.
Engineers working the electric power plant below the falls evacuated shortly before the dam failed at around 7 pm. Five billion gallons of water rushed over the falls and into the gorge below, with a force that uprooted trees and tumbled boulders as large as 60 feet long end over end (the resulting scour to bedrock is still in evidence at the falls today). The power plant was swept away, and in a matter of hours, the big lake was no more.
Fortunately, the main force of the torrent was spent through a largely uninhabited area immediately downriver. By the time the less intense floodwaters reached populated areas in South Carolina such as Walhalla, Pickens, Seneca and Anderson, residents had been notified with time to prepare. In what many considered a miracle, only one fatality from the dam break was ever confirmed: a blind mule, now the namesake of a popular local eatery (originally located near Lake Toxaway and now in downtown Brevard).
According to one report[3], “Hundreds of people – guests at the hotel, occupants of the cottages, and country people living nearby – watched the waters break through the great wall of the dam. It fell with a roar and a crash into the narrow ravine below…”
Above images courtesy of Transylvania County Library, Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room.
George Armstrong of Savannah (who with his wife Lucy were the original occupants of what is now the Greystone Inn) was in his new $3,000-dollar launch when the dam burst. Fortunately, he was able to motor it back to the hotel dock, where the boat eventually settled in the mud.
There were also reports of many who “rushed into the lake bottom after the water had gone out and caught fish by the hundreds… left stranded on muddy land, with thousands of others left in puddles of water here and there, and the people had great sport catching them. Baskets, buckets and even shirts were used to collect the fish.”
A news account two days after the incident said that the usual trains to Toxaway were running, bringing large crowds to view the remains of the lake.[4]
The Toxaway Inn closed early that season, on August 16, with some guests moving to the Fairfield Inn and others heading for Asheville,[5] leaving behind “only a stump field, covered with mud and slime”[6] where the lake once was.
It was clear that an era had ended, but no one could have known then that the Toxaway Inn would never re-open.
The Greensboro Daily News may have had the best last word in their August 16, 1916 issue:
“For a dozen years and more, every time the spring branch would get up to the footing, one might hear ‘they say Toxaway dam has given way.’ No freshet, great or small, was complete until the rumor that the Lake of the Redbird had gone out and down into South Carolina, had been chased down and found to be false. Was this recurrent tale based on the knowledge, possessed by a few people, that the great dam was not all it ought to be?
Another habit was that of saying, “but if she ever does go – goodnight. Look out for another Johnstown.” Somebody first said it and then three others repeated it, and of the thousands who have visited Toxaway a large part has this phrase on the end of their tongue. Everybody was prepared for an exciting tale of horror, a dramatic recital of devastation, to be released with the release of this beautiful body of spring water.
Now Toxaway, lake and dam, are gone. Some chroniclers say the waters went out with a roar. Some say the dam just crumbled and crumpled, and the lake slid down the narrow gorge without any especial demonstration. Accounts agree, however, that South Carolina was little impressed with the result. There was no tragedy, no Johnstown, and little devastation. So much for a popular notion, steadfastly maintained by thousands of people.
Toxaway without the big lake will not be Toxaway, although having a wealth of beauty and attractiveness left…
The Daily News hopes that the dam will be rebuilt, under competent official supervision. The tourist paradise of Toxaway was just coming in sight of its own – the dreams and visions of [General Manager J.F.] Hayes were premature and imperfect. He could not sense the perfection of the automobile. He never properly rated the inaccessible character of the Over Hills Country in its relation to a commercial scheme. Inevitably, as things have been going, splendid automobile roads would have been brought in, and Toxaway would have been on the itinerary of every automobile tourist in eastern America.”
SOURCES:
[1] Flash Flood News, North Carolina Association of Floodplain Managers, Fall 2016
[2] The Daily Free-Press, Kinston, NC, August 14, 1916
[3] The High Point Enterprise, High Point, NC, August 15, 1916
[4] News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, August 15, 1916
[5] Greensboro Daily News, August 16, 1916
[6] French Broad Hustler, Hendersonville, NC, August 17, 1916
