Mohave County miner., 1916-09-02
FLOOD TEARS UP
 STREETS AND MANY
 PLACES ARE FLOODED


 streets of the towns of Oatman, Ma
 zona and Old Trails yesterday 8
 visitor would think he had been
 wrongly informed if told that this
 was a quartz camp. It resembled a very active hydraulic proposition. The cloudburst of Friday evening tore up the main streets of the three towns from end to end and washed out places as much as four feet deep, filling others with huge boulders sev- eral feet in height.
 The flood concentrated itself into the street below the United Eastern dump and seemed to defy all efforts to turn it aside into it's former nat ural channel. It was a raging tor rent at the upper end, no less than 2 feet deep in the center and widen | ing across the street. It gathered volume as it went down and a few feet down in the steep grade below the Bank of Oatman, near the home of Dan Haskins, it cut a ditch measur- ing four feet in depth, but narrow.
 From there on down it commenced to move boulders from a few pounds in weight to several hundred pounds and at Old Trails one boulder that would weigh easily a ton was moved diagonally across the street. Hun dreds of them that would weigh from 800 to 1000 pounds were rolled along by the water as fast as could have been done by a dozen hydraulic giants.
 A couple of light buildings near the rear of the Walsh building were moved few feet from their founda- tions. The water washed all around the tent-house formerly occupied by the Oatman News, the first printing office in Oatman, and tore up the road from the ditch mentioned above to the Tom Reed tailing dump, which was cut up by large and small ditches in a thousand ways. It could not break into the thoroughfare again un- til it came to the upper end of Ma zona and there only on account of a torrent from some side gulches at first. A couple of hundred yards fur ther down however, the whole river from Oatma and several such gulches from the southeast surged in with rocks, timbers, boxes, cans and fine debris from the tailing dump. At the rear and side of the Mazona garage three partly dismantled autos were standing. They are now buried to the axles, with boulders and tail ings. On the east side of the street for the rest of the distance down buildings were flooded and everything not movable was covered or partly covered by the same unwelcome ma terial. A lot of damage was done to the Higman lumber company yards and the blacksmith shop near it. Just below there the whole torrent took to the street and washed it out full width for three feet in depth, down to the original wash, and vehicles have to climb a sand bank to get out of it.
 The old rough and rocky patch of road leading into the town of Carter was improved by the debris filling the depressions. The Ryan avenue bridge turning out of the highway to the east was damaged by ditch being cut through the east approach. The highway was covered with debris for about 100 yards beyond and then for 300 yards made smoother and better than before.
 Here begins the town of Old Trails. The road now is a low gravel bed for about 150 yards curving out to | the west. Before it was a high and straight grade, almost a boulevard. | There is a difficult climb to get onto what is left of the grade below there and for 200 yards this grade is un- harmed and like it was before. From that on down for about one-third of a mile what once was a well graded and smooth highway is nothing but masses of boulders and gullies, with many deep ditches. There is a deep cut around the postofice, another above the Old Trails plunge, and a deeper one still in front of the townsite office, perhaps three feet in depth. In front of the Lexington Arizona office and for quite a dis tance the torrent took out about third of the street and left a smooth for cars to easily pass each other.
 V. S. Rowley, manager of the town site, and scores of other men, several in his employ and others working in front of their own property, were at work yesterday smoothing the street, removing boulders and making the road as nassab1a as tbav could under