A light bulb filled with 100-year-old water.

A 1913 diary.

Chunks of flood mud found in the Dayton Arcade.

An NCR accounting ledger documenting relief expenses.

An 1883 fire pumper.

These are among the fascinating relics that will tell the story of Ohio’s most devastating natural disaster when Dayton History opens the region’s largest permanent exhibit devoted to the Great 1913 Flood.

The new exhibit is part of a $4 million expansion project that will include four major additions to Carillon Historical Park. In addition to the flood exhibit, it will include a $2 million historic brewery that will produce and sell beer and wine using historic tools and techniques, the acquisition of the personal collection of William Mayfield (Dayton’s most famous photographer) and the restoration of the building that once housed the Dayton Triangles locker room.

Groundbreaking for the Carillon Brewing Company has just been announced and will take place at 2 p.m. Monday, March 18.

The flood exhibit will open to the public on Saturday, March 23 — exactly 100 years after the rains began.

About the exhibit

The flood exhibit is housed in the renovated building that has showcased the 1909 Rubicon engine (one of the fireless locomotives formerly used by NCR and one of the first steam storage engines in America) for the past 50 years. This exhibition takes visitors back in time by giving them access to view original artifacts interspersed with multi-media presentations that bring the story of the flood to life. Visitors will squeeze into a small attic space like those seeking higher ground when flood waters began to rise and climb into a boat that replicates those built by NCR employees to rescue citizens and work to avoid the large debris pile that replicates what was left behind by the flood waters.

The building now will be called “The Great Flood Building.”

“A flood and river exhibit has been in our master plan here at Carillon Historical Park for 25 years, but it really took the 100th anniversary to get donors excited about telling this story,” said Brady Kress, president of Dayton History.

The exhibit, arranged both chronologically and thematically, begins with a history of the flooding that occurred before 1913.

“The floods hadn’t been so terrible, so people weren’t really expecting the devastation that came in 1913,” explained Mary Oliver, director of collections. “In previous flooding, there had been 4 to 6 feet of water, but in 1913 the average was 10-12 feet, with up to 20 feet in the lowest-lying parts of the city.”

Visitors will learn how the weather in our region at that fateful time was part of a national weather phenomenon that began on Easter Sunday with an Omaha, Neb., tornado. The storm then raced to the East and parked over Dayton.

Large-scale photo murals, text panels, artifacts and sound and special effects will tell the story of the five days of constant rain, the breaking of the levees, the terrible waters and of people and animals being trapped and killed. Oral histories recorded in the 1980s by flood survivors can be heard; visitors can choose from among five personal stories.

“We’ll tell the story of Charles Adams; we have a set of his baby clothes,” Oliver said. “He was 11 months old and he and his twin sister and mother were lost twice to the flood waters in trying to escape.”

The whole family survived, though it was a few days before Charles Adams Sr. knew that the rest of his family was safe.

When gas lines in some buildings began to leak and were ignited, fires also became a problem.

Rescue and Recovery

The amount of devastation resulting from the flood was unimaginable, Oliver said.

According to the Miami Conservancy District, property damage exceeded $100 million (nearly $2 billion in today’s economy) and more than 360 people lost their lives.

Oliver said she believes the story of the flood itself is not what’s most important, but rather the story of what happened next.

“What people should focus on is when the waters went away and the community went right to work — everybody cleaning up as quickly as possible, with neighbors helping neighbors. Today, we wait for the government after these kinds of natural disasters. But they didn’t wait; they just started doing.”

One concrete example? The large metal lard tin on display that had been placed on the steps of the Old Court House after the flood and used to collect donations of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. The coins ultimately contributed to the $2 million flood prevention fund that created the Miami Conservancy District. The big steam-powered water pumper on display represents the type of equipment sent to Dayton from around the region to help with the cleanup. Pumpers also came from Springfield and Cincinnati.

At the time of the flood, citizens opened their homes and their hearts to take in displaced people, Oliver said.

“Some had 11 people staying at their homes, and many of those were strangers,” Oliver said.

She says the 1913 flood is also the story of how one individual can make a difference. In this case, she’s talking about NCR president John Patterson, who organized and led the rescue efforts. A bronze sculpture by Disney animator and Dayton native Mark Henn shows a scene of Patterson rescuing flood victims in one of the 200 flat-bottomed boats his employees constructed at NCR on the factory grounds.

The Rubicon fireless locomotive that’s now part of the flood exhibit played an important role in NCR’s clean-up operations.

“It operates on steam and has no soot and smoke or sparks so it was no fire hazard,” Oliver explained. “In the early 1900s, Patterson purchased three of them to work on the factory grounds. They moved large quantities of materials such as cash registers.”

It was all part of Patterson’s fresh-air concept.

“He was ahead of the times and brilliant in so many ways,” Oliver said. “His fresh air factories were a light, airy environment where buildings were 85 percent glass in order to allow natural light and fresh air. The locomotives were used to haul debris during the flood cleanup, operating on the trolley tracks that ran through downtown.

Conservancy District

The exhibit also tells the story of the amazing efforts to create the Conservancy District and to ensure that similar tragedies would never happen again.

“Within months, the community raised $2 million to start planning for flood control,” Oliver said. “The lessons for today range from the way everyone worked together to the engineering and innovative system of dry dams that still work today!”

A life-size figure of Arthur Morgan, chief engineer of the Miami Conservancy District, will respond to questions from visitors, and flood animations will illustrate the rivers’ flow before and after the Conservancy was established. WDTN’s meteorologists, in period clothing, will provide video weather forecasts, giving a contemporary twist to the 100-year-old event.

The Rain Baby

An antique doll temporarily on display in the Heritage Education Center has a fascinating story — she’s the subject of a children’s book titled “The Rain Baby” written by local doctor Noel Watson of Germantown.

The picture book tells the story of the flood from a 6-year-old child’s perspective. The tale is based on the real-life adventures shared by one of Dr. Watson’s patients — Elizabeth Ankeney Howard. After being asked by her husband to make house calls to their home, Mrs. Howard showed him a prized doll that had been purchased for her at Rike-Kumler department store to celebrate the family’s survival and “the end of this awful flood.”

“My wife and I are interested in local history; the Germantown Dam is less than a mile from our home,” says Watson, who eventually purchased the doll from the estate sale following Elizabeth’s death.

Watson’s wife, Margaret, learned about the flood from her grandparents. Her grandfather worked at NCR building boats with John Patterson, and her grandmother fled their home with her then 2-year-old uncle and her 5-month-old mother.

The Watsons decided the story of the doll and the flood deserved to be published. Another of Watson’s patients, Earl House, did the illustrations for the book. The book is available at the Carillon Historical Park museum shop and at area libraries.

“I think history is incredibly important to not only adults but to children as well,” says Dr. Watson, who says the local Dupps Foundation is providing a copy of the book to all third-graders at Valley View Schools to use in their community unit.

Flood memorabilia

Carillon’s Museum Store will be selling items related to the flood, including reproductions of historic images in both black and white and color. You’ll also find bookmarks, magnets and postcards.

“The store is selling two older books about the flood and the Miami Conservancy District that have been out of print, and we were able to obtain copies of them,” said Lynda Vanover, who manages the store and serves as guest services manager.

The books are Arthur Morgan’s “The Miami Conservancy District” and Becker and Nolan’s “Keeping the Promise.”

Other new titles, in addition to “The Rain Baby,” include: “Through Flood, Through Fire,” by Curt Dalton and “The Great Dayton Flood of 1913” by Frank Miller.

Photos online

As part of the new Carillon exhibit, more than 2,000 historic photographs of the flood — from the time the rains began to the cleanup — can now be seen online. They can be found at www.daytonhistory.org, and copies can be purchased from Dayton History.