The 1929 Alabama Flood

My Daddy had told us many interesting stories about his logging days in the Florida Panhandle. He worked with a logging crew from the time he turned 15 years old till he and my Mother got married in 1936. 

He had not seen or heard any weather reports and he didn’t give us any dates of when it happened. I did some research and found the dates, and this has to be the flood he told us about; it was the only flood during this time. I wrote the first story “Log Jams and Dams” from my memory of Daddies stories.

There had been a long period of drought in the south through the previous summer and fall and up until it began to rain heavily in the state of Alabama on February 27, and 28, 1929. More intense rain came March 4, and 5, all across South East Alabama.

More than 30 inches of rain fell in Elba and 15 to 25 inches from Brewton to Troy and Ozark during this time. The Pea River and the Conecuh became swollen, and began to rise along with all the tributaries, and they empty into the Choctawhatchee River.

Flood warnings went out, and many along the rivers were evacuated. The most intense rainfall came on March 12 -15, 1929.  This last period of rain greatly affected the Choctawhatchee River along with all the flood waters from the other rivers that flow into her.

Daddy and the logging crew were working at the time south of Geneva, Alabama, and across the Florida line. I am not exactly sure where they were logging at this time, but I do know it was somewhere between Caryville, Florida and the Alabama State line.



This is how the town of Elba looked at the height of the flood

This caused the worse flood in the history of the State of Alabama at that period of time. The river crested at 43.5 in the early afternoon on March 15, 1929. The city of Elba had 16 to 20 feet of water in the city streets. Buildings collapsed and thousands of people were stranded on rooftops for up to three days before being rescued.

Ozark just south of Elba had 16 feet of water in its streets, and Geneva south of Ozark had 20 feet of water. There were numerous stories written about the folks that went through this flood. Too many for me to list here, one in particular that stands out in my mind was about a six year old boy.



His name was Paul Rowe Brunson; he was carrying the mail across the Pea River on a foot bridge at Ozark. The main bridge had already been washed out. As he was crossing the footbridge collapsed; and he fell into the river.

He said God took him by the hand and pulled him onto a portion of the floating bridge. Still holding onto the mail bag as he floated down the river and as the train was crossing at the trestle the engineer Mr. Byrd Mitchell lowered a rescue line for him. At the same time a rescue boat carrying his older brother Sollie over took and rescued the child.

There is one more that stands out in my mind of a baby boy that was born during the flood. His father and mother were Ed and Elinor Talbot Tucker. They were in the Elba Hotel. The mother had to be moved from room to room during the birthing because room after room crumbled and fell into the swift currents of the flood waters.

The baby boy was named Noah after the biblical Noah since he lived through the worse flood of the history of the state of Alabama up until this time.  

As amazing as it seems there was only one death reported by this destructive and devastating flood, it was a blind African – American man named Phoe Larkins. The estimated cost of this flood in 1929 was $ 9 million dollars!