Residents of Mount Hood share their homes with the dynamic forces of the Mountain, including occasions when area rivers forge paths outside their normal banks. But for Nancy Spencer and the others who witnessed the December, 1964 flood, a “100-year” flood
that destroyed property and turned communities into islands, there’s only one
Flood.

“If you’ve been here long enough, you call everything ‘high water’ except ‘The
Flood,’” Spencer said. “‘64 was The Flood.”

The torrent of water that came down the mountain was preceded by a long
stretch of cold weather which froze the ground, followed by large amounts of
snow and finally warming temperatures and a deluge of rain.

“There was no place for the snow to go, except down the rivers and the
roads,” Spencer said. “Everything it could go down, it went down.”

Rhododendron
At the time, Spencer and her husband owned the Log Lodge in Rhododendron
(across from the Still Creek Inn), when the rain started on the night of
Sunday, Dec. 20. Since they had difficulty getting back to their home on Road
29, the couple and their two daughters (one 3, and the other 18 months),
hunkered down in an upstairs bedroom at the restaurant.

The next morning, they got up and were crossing the street for breakfast
when they noticed a group of people looking back. Behind the Log Lodge, the
river had undermined the bank and the trees were falling quickly.

“I thought they were looking at us,” Spencer said. “They weren’t; they were
looking at the trees going down. These big Doug firs would just drop straight
through.”

The river washed out both approaches to the Rhododendron bridge,
separating it from the west half of the community, although Spencer
remembers a bit of luck for their side.

“We not only had the grocery store on our side of the bridge, but we had the
liquor store,” she said. “And that made all the difference.”

Spencer recalled that their electricity returned on Christmas and to celebrate
the holiday, her family invited everybody in town and served more than 30
Christmas dinners.

“We had a pretty good Christmas day out of it,” said Spencer, adding it was
two weeks after the flood before they could return to their home and three
months before they could live in a “civilized manner.”

Spencer also remembers waking up on New Year’s Day to hear the front door
of their restaurant slam shut (they weren’t locking it due to their isolation).
She ran downstairs and two skiers were outside wondering if they were open
for business.

“They had fixed the bridge and nobody told us,” Spencer said. “There was the
end of our seclusion. It was quite a traumatic time, but we survived it.”

Zigzag
Pic Erickson was a 28-year-old waitress at the Zigzag Inn who lived up Lolo
Pass with her children at the time of the flood.

She had a day off from work when the flood hit and her children had already
been sent home from school (other children remained at the school, while
many families would end up using the school building as a shelter in the
flood’s aftermath).

“I had seen rivers get high all my life, so it didn’t really make an impact,”
Erickson said. “I knew the rivers were high. But I didn’t think that the
devastation was going to happen.”

As she and her children baked Christmas cookies, her ex-husband sped up to
her house and told them to get in the car so they could leave immediately.
They did and a few minutes after crossing the Sandy River, the bridge went
out.

“I didn’t have to be helicoptered out,” Erickson said, referring to numerous
Mountain residents who required rescue in that manner.

Erickson was then called in for work, as Zigzag Inn was the only place that
was open for the crews from Portland General Electric to eat.

She remembers the crews working for 24 hours at a time, but the restaurant
kept up with the food demands of the workers thanks to a big supply of meat
they kept on hand.

With all of their belongings and Christmas presents stuck on the other side of
the river, Erickson took a ride across on a bosun line to collect some things.

Despite a fear of water, she looked down and described the river looking “like
chocolate,” with trees and remnants of houses floating down.

Her house survived the flood, although it took at least three weeks before she
could return. Others, she noted, didn’t fare as well, including friends who lived
on Barlow Road who lost their house and had to leave their dog behind as
they fled.

Luckily, they returned the next day to find the dog alive.

“Lots of friends lost houses,” Erickson said, holding back some tears. “Luckily
I was young and rolled with the punches.”

Erickson later bought a house near Marmot Bridge, and she remembers
another storm when the water started rising fast.

Despite not losing the house, it was the final straw for her.

“I decided right then, we sold,” she said.” I never want to live on a river
again. So we’re flatlanders now.”

Government Camp
Maryellen Englesby had a ski shop in Government Camp in the winter of 1964.
When the flood hit, she remembers “roaring down the mountain” to pick up
her children from school to get them across the bridge.

She also noted that a number of people who were up on the mountain wanted
to get back to their homes in Sandy.

“It was kind of a mad scramble,” Englesby said. “The only way was the back
way through (Highway) 35, I think it went out, too. It was kind of a matter of
being stranded.”

Englesby recalled that while power was out to the community, most of the ski
areas had backup power at the time.

“Things could run,” she said. “People just couldn’t get here.”

Englesby gave credit to Joie Smith, who helped rig a bosun line between
Rhododendron and Welches, for “getting things moving.”

She added that she doesn’t remember any trouble getting food during the
aftermath of the flood, and everybody had a wood stove to provide heat and
to cook on.