Creek Flooding in Worth County 1854

Worth county, Iowa

A good story kept alive in Worth County is about Amos Hall, an Irish-born cook accompanying early surveyors of the county.  In June of 1854 the party encountered a swollen Beaver Creek in the northern part of the county. Although a century later the water table would be lower because of tiling and cultivation and Beaver Creek reduced to a drainage ditch, in 1854 and several decades following, the creek was believed wide enough to stop a prairie fire.  And on a particular June day in 1854 it was wide and deep enough to stop a surveying party. Apparently, a sudden cloudburst had turned the navigable creek into a dangerous flash flood.

Though as cook Hall might have stayed well out of the dilemma of fording the creek, with confidence in his swimming ability, he volunteered to swim the surveyors’ instruments across it.  With the instruments strapped on his back he plunged into the swollen waters. And yet after just a half dozen stokes, to the surprise of onlookers, he was sucked under by the current and did not resurface.  

In 1929 some Worth County residents, wanting to honor Hall’s efforts and to verify the story about him, proposed to find his grave that, stories claimed, was near to the site of his drowning. They in fact found the grave near the stream, dug down some four feet but dug too short for the tall Irishman who had been buried with his chin on his chest.  The body was moved to a museum and later, when the museum was displaced, to a cemetery.

When the story is repeated, listeners speculate why Amos Hall volunteered and why he, a strong swimmer, drowned.  Maybe he underestimated the weight of the equipment that would be tied to his back, but most certainly he underestimated the force of the current.

Source: SHSI: Worth County Heritage 1853-1976.