Crops times 60 years equals value of Weidler Levee
By Jim Langham
Adams County USDA Farm Service director Jay Gould still remembers when the Weidler Levy was constructed just north of the Wabash River in the late 1940’s. Gould said that he used to take rides with relatives who were fascinated by the immense undertaking of the levee’s construction.
A Berne paper from August of 1946 said that the proposed levy would be 3,000 feet long and about nine feet high. It was expected that 20,000 cubic feet of ground would be required to build the levee. The levy would be three feet higher than the banister of what was known as the “small canope bridge” at the time.
The idea for the levee was initiated in the late summer of 1946 by O. N. Smith, who was then manager of Smith Brothers Furniture Company. Smith called a meeting in his office at the factory for interested farmers who continually lost crops in an area then known as the Canope lowlands, to discuss the idea of a levee.
“The farmers propose to build a levee to keep the flood water from spreading over their farms,” recorded the Berne paper of Aug. 30, 1946. “The logical place for the level, it was said, is along the dirt road running east and west north of the river. A resolution was adopted at the meeting last evening that the county commissioners be approached for permission to build this levee on or along the road.”
The farmers who would directly benefit from the levee at the time would be: O.N. Smith, Chris Balsiger, Fred Weidler, Alonzo Long, Rev. R. Paul Miller, Neuenschwander Sisters, Homer Miller, Ed Gerber, Leonard Sprunger, Russel Long, Rufus Hirschy, and Peter Neuenschwander.
“The farmers are very enthusiastic about the proposed levee. It was pointed out that such a dike should have been built 20 years ago. The river bottom land is very fertile, but the floodwater has carried away the crops year after year. It is believed that the extra crops raised in one year would pay for the project,” stated the paper.
It was estimated at the time that there were 432 acres involved that could be considered reclaimed and planted in full confidence of agricultural production.
Gould said that one of the positives of the timing of the project was the fact that Robert Long, who resided in the area, had spent several years with an engineers’ battalion in the army and was willing to spend a considerable amount of time in assisting with the project.
On June 30, 1947, the contract of constructing the levee was awarded to Yost Brothers Construction Company of Decatur. The job would consist of two parts; part one was known as the earth work and consisted of 23,000 yards of cut, haul and compacted fill.
According to several who were living in the area at the time, much of the dirt to build up the levee was taken from the “Bunker Hills” area, located just east of the mud road. Several residents living in the area at the time remember that one hill, located just east of the road, in particular, was considerably reduced in size.
Part two included the installation of a metal culvert, with flap gate, and construction of a pump house with a power unit to keep the water out of the Canope Ditch during flooding.
Gould chuckled when he described this portion of the project because he noted that environmental regulations of the present would pose some major obstacles and different type of planning than the original construction workers utilized at the time.
On April 2, 1948, the irrigation pump, capable of pumping 15,000 gallons of water a minute, was put into operation and performed successfully. It was optimistically hoped that immediate operation of the system would save thousands of dollars of crop loss yet that spring.
Three months later, the local paper already stated that, “the Wabash township levee built southeast of Berne has already saved a number of farmers in that vicinity hundreds of acres of crops valued at thousands of dollars.
“If the hundreds of acres of crops which are usually drowned out during the rainy seasons are saved this year, the value of these crops will pay a large portion of the cost of the dike, the farmers said.”
“It was a lot of work; I suppose that we kind of take it for granted, but just think of all of the crops that have been saved since then,” said Gould. “When I was younger, the old-timers of that day remembered that in 1913, the river had flooded past the Hirschy Schoolhouse and clear up to the south end of Hendricks Street on the south end of Berne.
“It’s still doing what it’s supposed to do to let water flow free when it needs to,” added Gould. “Hopefully those currently farming the land will be blessed with another good crop in that land this year.”