Bud Thompson
Highlands is centrally located in a rain belt, second only to the Pacific Northwest in highest annual percentage, averaging 87.9 inches of rain per year according to Ran Shaffner’s book, Heart of the Blue Ridge.
Some years Highlands has experienced record breaking downpours and August 1940 was such a moment, when over nine inches fell on August 13, and additional 11.65 more inches fell from the morning of August 29 to the morning of the 30.
Bridges, culverts and roadways throughout town were destroyed and the pressure build-up was too much for the earthen dam at Ravenel Lake at the Highlands Biological Station which eventually broke sending a wall of water down Mill Creek, washing out the bridge over Mill Creek and portions of the highway.
Mike Thompson’s dad, Meriweather Magnus Stribling “Bud” Thompson, was in the seventh grade at the time and later wrote an article recollecting the event through the eyes of a 13 year old.
Residents weren’t caught completely off guard according to Bud, as there was a lot of conversation about rainfall totals and the fear the dam might become overburdened and break. This was a particular concern for them as they lived below the dam in a house along Highway 64 where the Art Gallery Highlands is today.
Mike Thompson
Bud wrote he was more concerned with finding ways to entertain himself in spite of the rain, so he took his roller skates to his Aunt Helen Wilson’s Helen’s Barn to skate indoors. He could tell his Mom was very worried when he got home so he told her not to worry because Henry Baty who worked for the Forest Service said “those dams have been there for a long time. Besides whoever heard of a flood in the highest incorporated town east of the Rockies?”
His Mom informed him watching for floods wasn’t Henry Baty’s job.
Bud had a dime that his Aunt Helen had given him for sweeping the barn’s floor so he soon left to go to a movie and on the way home noticed that Mill Creek was high, not over the banks yet, but high. His Mom was still very worried and he knew she’d be keeping watch all night but he went peacefully to sleep knowing that John Wayne had taken care of all the bad guys and Henry was right about dam.
He awakened to his Mom screaming up the stairs that the dam had broken and the water was overtaking their back porch. His back yard looked like a lake.
He and his brothers and sisters headed to highway where the pavement was on the verge of washing out. His brother Wendell called him back and when he stepped back the pavement caved in and Bud said that was the night “I was saved.”
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