TETON ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM - Brigham Young ......Project engineer, Robbie Robertson, put in the Rexburg paper about five days before the dam busted that people downstream would be

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TETON ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Ricks College Idaho State Historical Society

History Department, Utah State University

TETON DAM DISASTER

Theo Charles Fullmer

Interviewed by

Alyn B. Andrus

September 18, 1977

Project made -possible by funds from the

W.K. Kellogg Foundation Idaho State Legislature through the Idaho State Historical Society and

National Endowment for the Humanities

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UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY & RICKS COLLECE

HISTORY DEPARTMENTS

COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT THROUGH LOCAL HISTORY

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

INTERVIEWER AGREEMENT

this

(name, please print) ante viewer, print) knowingly and voluntarily permit tha Milton R. Merrill Library at Utah State University, the David 0. Mcgay Library at Ricks College, and the Idaho State Histor-ical Society at Boise, Idaho, the full rights and use of this information.

In view of the historical and scholarly value of 'nformaf:- on contained in the i erview with

/ ‘411,41114„// , I, -

nterviewer's Signature

Date

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY & RICKS COLLEGE

HISTORY DEPARTMENTS

COMUNITY IMPROVEMENT THROUGH LOCAL HISTORY

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

INTERVIEWEE AGREEMENT

You have been interviewed in connection with a joint oral history program of the History Department, Utah State University, Ricks College, and the Idaho State Historical Society. The pur-pose of this oral history program is to gather and preserve information for historical and scholarly use.

A tape recording of your interview has seen made by the in-terviewer. A verbatim typescript of the tape will be made and a final typed and edited transcripts, together with the tape will be made and a final will then be filed in the Milton R. Merrill Library Special Collections, David 0. McKay Library at Ricks •College, and the Idaho State Historical Society in Boise. This material will be made available according to each of the depositories' policies for research be scholars and by others for scholarly purposes. When the final transcript is completed, a personal copy will_be sent to you.

* * * *

In view ofIthe histori al and scholarly value of this infor- mation, I, ;,_:aA111,-- , do hereby assign full

Interviewee's Signature

Wfli- /Y /971 Date

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(please print full name) and all rights of this material to the Merrill Library at Utah State University, to the Library at Ricks College, and to the Idaho State Historical Society at Boise, Idaho, for scholarly purposes according to each of the institutions governing policies.

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ORAL HISTORY

INTERVIEWEE: Theo Charles Fullmer

INTERVIEWER: Alyn B. Andrus

DATE: September 18, 1977

TETON DAM DISASTER

A: Theo, will you please spell your full name?

F: Theo Charles Fullmer.

A: What is your birthdate?

F: September 19, 1912.

A: Where were you born?

F: Salem, Idaho.

A: Do you have a family?

F: Yes.

A: Do you have any children living with you?

F: No.

A: I suppose they're married and have families of their own?

F: Two have families, and two don't.

A: What is your current address?

F: 113 South Center, Rexburg, Idaho.

A: Was that your address when the flood came?

F: No. we lived at 222 North 2nd East, Rexburg.

A: The house where you live now, when did you')buy that?

F: The 1st of April, 1976. ----

A: That would be two months before the flood came.

F: Yes.

A: But you hadn't lived in this house before the flood came even though you

had bought it before.

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MI FULLMER

-2-

F: I stayed two nights and my wife had stayed three nights in this house. We

belong to a club and we had two or three club parties in the house before

we rented it to some other people. We had the upstairs rented. They

had been in the house four days before the flood came.

A: What do you do for a living?

F: I grew up on a farm four miles north of Sugar City, an irrigated farm,

dairy and pigs. Twelve years ago we sold the dairy herd and bought a

motel at 222 North 2nd East, Rexburg. We were in the motel business

until the flood wiped us out.

A: You lived in the motel before the flood came?

F: Yes.

A: Since the flood you have spent your time cleaning up?

F: Most of it, and working on the farm.

A: You still have your farm?

F: Yes. We ran the farm for maybe seven or eight years after we started the

motel business. I drove back and forth and milked cows and ran the

farm.

A: How long have you lived in the Rexburg area?

F: I've been here all my life and I'm sixty-five.

A: You were born and raised here?

F: Between Salem and Sugar and Rexburg.

A: Would you explain your feelings about the construction of the Teton Dam?

Did you support it or oppose it?

F: I opposed it all the time. I never was in favor of it because the government

turned it down two or three times and said it wasn't economical, that

there wasn't enough good that would come out of it for the expense that

it would take and it was a poor location. They didn't think it was a good

location. People who were in favor of it kept going back and going back,

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MI FULLMER -3-

trying to persuade them to build the dam because we needed it mostly for

flood control. That was the big thing that started them to get the dam

built here. One man that put the most effort into getting the dam built

in the first place was Willis Walker. He wasn't satisfied with the way

that the river ran through his place so he straightened the river out

and tried to make straighter land and a better farm. He took all the

willows off and the brush and things that ordinarily was there to keep

the water from washing. He removed all that brush and all the curves

in the river. When he did that, the river kept washing his farm. It

woudn't run straight because it was running too fast. That was the way

it slowed itself was to make the turns. It kept washing into his corrals

and into his outbuildings and into his farm in several different places.

You could see that he wasn't going to be able to hold it and it was

doing actually more damage to his farm than it ever did before. He was

the biggest instigator in trying to get the dam built for that reason.

Nearly every spring it flooded and it did bring damage through here,

especially where they had straightened the rivers out and took the brush

away.

A: Is there anything more you would like to say about your opposition to the

dam?

F: They told us they would turn it down two or three times because it was

too expensive. There was no water to be stored in the reservoir because

it had all been allocated to other uses and other farms, other reservoirs

and things. I'm sure th&-only reason that it was ever build was because

the Reclamation came up with the idea of replacing the water that they

had stored in the reservoir, replacing it with the water that they

pumped out of the aquifer. It seems to me that they were going to drill

twenty-seven deep wells to pump water from the aquifer back into the river

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MI FULLMER -4-

to take the place of the water that they stored in the reservoir above

the Teton Dam. I was a home teacher at Willis Walker's and he told me one

night. "Now we can't stand this pumping back into the river. That's out

of the question. That's too expensive. We have to oppose that." That's

the only way they would build the dam is if they could replace the water

from the aquifier.

A: Did you or any member of your family have a premonition of the Teton Dam

disaster? Any unusual feelings that something was going to happen?

F: I'm sure I did. I had a lot of respect for the reclamation and really

thought that they were doing us a real good job up there. I really didn't

expect that the dam would actually bust. There were a few things before

it did burst that I was really worried about. Project engineer, Robbie

Robertson, put in the Rexburg paper about five days before the dam

busted that people downstream would be flooded as they had been other

years. That the water had come down from the Teton Range so fast that

they weren't going to be able to contain it all in the reservoir and the

river and when it got up to the overflow it would overflow and flood the

lowlands as it had done in the past. After I read that piece in the

paper I started to worry. I knew some farmers that had broken up the

ground that had flooded other years, they had put crops in it. They didn't

think they would ever be flooded again. I couldn't understand why they

hadn't been letting more water out of the reservoir, keeping it down.

I thought that was the reason for the reservoir, to hold the surplus.

They should be letting some out so they could hold it up there and wouldn't

be flooding the low lands like it had before. But I watched the river and

the natural flow was all that they had let out. They had not let out any

flood water at all. All it was was a small stream and it hadn't increased

even after they put that piece in the paper. I was worried about it then.

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MI FULLMER -5-

I told my wife, "What on earth are they thinking about? Why don't they

let some of that water out and keep the river from flooding." I didn't

have any idea that they didn't have any way to let it out. I couldn't

imagine that they would be trying to fill the reservoir that way without

having any way to release the water. They just filled it too fast. It

should have taken three years of study to observe what it was going to

do, but it actually filled in 30 days.

A: Until it got to the crest of the dam?

F: I talked to Keith Walker and he said, "There is no way that they are going

to hold that dam. It will run right over the top. There isn't enough

room in the spillway to get rid of the amount of floodwater that was

coming down the river." But he thought that it might eventually run

right over the top of the dam.

A: Would you tell about where you were when the Teton Dam broke that day

and tell what happened to you on that particular day, to you and Mrs.

Fullmer.

F: That morning when we got up it was such a nice day, we were looking

forward to a good tourist trade in the summer. We had put so much effort

in cleaning up the motel and getting the lawn and everything growing good

and looking good. I had been trimming the shrubbery. We had a lot of

trees and shrubbery around and I had been cutting all the dead stuff out

of the shrubbery and pulling the grass around the trees, just more or

less tidying things up a bit. I had water running on the lawn, sprinkling

with the hose. I just drug the hose down to the south end of the motel

and started the water running on the grass. A neighbor lady, Francis

Ritzhaupt came out and she said, "You'd better turn that water off, because

you are going to get watered. The Teton Dam has broken." She was a lady

that always kind of joked all the time and you didn't hardly believe her.

FULLMER -6-

She usually pulled your leg. I just laughed at her. Pretty quick, her

dad came out to the door of his trailer and he said, "That's the truth.

You might as well turn it off. The dam just broke and you are going to

get more water than you ever did before." About that time my wife,

Bettie, came down looking for me and she told me that she had just heard

it on the radio and she was about in hysterics. She said, "We don't have

time to get anything out of the house. Don't stay home, don't try to

save anything, just save yourself." She grabbed a few things and I had

a thousand dollars worth of silver coins down in the cellar and I thought

what on earth am I going to do with them. I might cover them up and I

won't be able to find them. So I went down and got them and put them

higher on a metal table in the garage. I though the water won't ever

get up three or four feet. The table was about three feet tall. I set

the can of silver coins on that table. It was in the garage with a lot

of antique furniture, a lot of furniture out of thEmotle that I planned

on restoring someday, my dad's branding iron and a lot of things that

really meant something to us that was stored in the garage. We didn't

hardly have room for the car in there, along with all this. Anyhow, the

flood took the garage. (When we came back, the garage, the table, the

money and everything was gone.)

Then we got in the car and drove up on the hill where there were

thousands of people by the time we got up there. The next two hours we

sat up there and wited for the floodwater to come. There was one fellow

that had some binocularsT—All we could see was a roll of dust and fog.

We didn't have any idea what was coming down. When I saw that big wall

of water ocming and the trailer houses and homes and cattle, you couldn't

imagine what a person would feel like looking up there and seeing ten to

twelve feet of water coming directly at everything you owned, you knew

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MI FULLMER -7-

everything was going. I started to get panicky and started down towards

the motel. For a minute I thought I was going to faint, but I didn't.

I got down to the hospital grounds and that is as far as I got. The water

cut me off there. I watched some diary cows and things floundering

around in the water there. I stood and watched Mrs. Newton's house raise

up, the water just kept raising on it a little at a time and all at once

it just popped up like an egg in water or ball or something that is

floating and floated down against the trees in Smith Park. It whirled

around those and went on down through the park. I followed the water

down to the northwest corner of the college property and there was three

fellows there that waded out into the water, up to their armpits, to try

to rescue two or three cows that were out there. We all thought that they

would be drowned. When they got out to the cows, they were stupefied or

gave out or something and they couldn't do anything with them. They

had to leave them and come back. They couldn't drive them out, they

wouldn't move, they had their feet on solid footing and they were resting

and that was as far as they could go.

A: How did you feel when you saw those animals struggling to save themselves.

F: It was unbelievable. You couldn't imagine anything worse, the feeling of

those cattle being hit with that kind of a force of water.

A: You said that you were a dairy farmer, you mush have had some special

feelings for those animals that perhaps people who hadn't been around

cattle would not have had. Do you think that you did?

F: I don't know. I'm quite sure I did, but I didn't think the cattle was

worth wading out and taking a risk of loosing your life. You could see

that they were on their feet and if it didn't get any higher then they

would be all right.

A: You said you started toward your motel when you saw the flood coming, but

a4A161.4.14124,gAr ■Iii.44deliten,,,,, • ,Platemieremart:,m1111eiref

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MI FULLMER -8-

that you were cut off when you got to Smith Park, where were you going?

Where were you headed?

F: I though I'd go back and try to protect my property. I tried to be there

and see what I could do. Before that I hadn't realized. They said two

feet of water. I hadn't realized what the magnitude of the thing was.

I didn't think it was the right thing to do, to be away from my property.

I had worked for it and lived for it all our lives.

A: Where did you and your family stay during that day and that night. By that

I mean where did you and Mrs. Fullmer stay. You didn't have any children

with you at the time did you?

F: No. I don't know exactly where or when we got the room in the college.

We stayed up there for about a week after the flood. We ate at the

Manwaring Center. We wasup until 3:00 that morning because we had our

son-in-law and daughter and his family on the farm. We didn't know

how far the water had gone north, we dind't know but what they had been

in the water. Our farm home and farm buildings is on a hill and I thought

well maybe they had decided to stay there and ride out the flood because

they were on a hill and it wouldn't be flooded there. I knew that if that

much water started over the hill where our farm home was that it would

be undermined and there would be no way that they could ride out the

flood there, if the water had got that far north. We stayed up until

3:00 that morning trying to get word from them. The telephones were out

and we couldn't get them on the phone. We didn't know where they were and

we tried to get through by radio but we didn't get any word about them

that night. The next morning I was bound to go back by foot out there

and see what had happened to them. That was impossible. I got to where

the motel was and the bridges and all was out and there was no way I

could get out there to them. I don't remember how long it was before

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MI FULLMER -9-

we got word that they were all right, probably some time that afternoon

or the next day.

A: Did the flood wash out your farm?

F: No, it got within a half mile of the farm.

A: You saw your motel the next morning, Sunday morning, June 6 didn't you,

as you were on your way out to the highway to go to your farm?

F: I'm quite sure that was about the time. Could it have been late afternoon

of the 6th or was it the 7th that Willis Walker came along and Ray

Walker in a pickup and I rode with them out to the motel and that's as

far as we could get in the pickup and then came back?

A: When you saw themotel, describe the damage that you saw.

F: Well, when I first saw the motel it really didn't look like it was hurt

too much. The water was still up in it, the mud and the window curtains

and stuff like that had washed out of the windows and was all hanging out.

There was a car that had washed from the trailer court around between the

house that we lived in and the motel and was sitting on some rocks about

half-way down the motel. There was another car sitting out in the yard

where it had bumped against a tree that was right by the motel and stayed

there. You didn't determine then that there was that much damage. The

trailer court we had six trailers in the trailer court and there was only

one trailer left. It had lodged against a tree that it was originally

sitting by. The light pole behind it and the water was not strong enough

to break the tree and the light pole down so the trailer still stayed

there. There were two trailers that had come directly into the garage on

the north end of our home and I'm sure that's the reason why the garage

was washed away because the trailers bumped into the garage and knocked

it down. About that time, as everybody thinks, both of those trailers

caught on fire and burned up as they floated with the water. There was

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MI FULLMER

-10-

nothing left of the garage. There was a lot of fruit and things down in

the basement, that was still in the basement in the cellar part.

A: You mentioned thatyou left your thousand dollars worth of coins in the

garage, what happened to those?

F: They had slid off of the iron table and had landed sitting up right and

had washed directly west of the cement driveway from the garage to the

street. They had hit where the grass was growing outside of the sidewalk

and tipped over right there and that's where I found most of the coins,

but I found some coins clear across the highway on the other side of the

highway that had gone that far.

A: Did you recover your full thousand dollars worth?

F: No, we lack about $100 worth. But I'm sure that if I had one of those

metal detectors there would still be some coin over there. I borrowed

one once and tried to dig up a few, but the man got in a hurry and I was

too busy to use it. I borrowed it but never got back to looking for

more coins. A scoop came and took a load of mud. I'm sure it had a lot

of silver in it.

A: Would you describe what Rexburg looked like to you after the flood?

F: It was a mess. When I got in that pickup we could see from where we

were standing the debris and stuff that was on the highway between where

I got in the pickup and the motel. It had trees and trailers, cars,

animals, everything you could think of had lodged in by the OK Tire

Store, in their parking lot. It had added to it and was almost clear

across the highway. Everywhere you looked there was a pile of mess.

We had to turn around when we got as far as the motel. In our trailer

court where this one trailer had stayed, the debris had piled up against

that trailer till there was tons and tons of it. In about two weeks we

fond a big cow that had stayed in there until she started to smell and

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MI FULLMER -11-

the flies, that was the only way we found her, we knew she was there but

we didn't know exactly where. We told the people about it and they had

been down there a time or two and looked for it and everytime they couldn't

find it. All of our windbreak on the north was either gone or mashed

down with debris. Nearly every bush around the motel had a Christmas

tree set of lights hanging to it. I don't think there were any of the

kids balls from Wilford or Sugar City that passed our place. It flooded

there and seemed to fill that area, there were all kinds of kids' baseballs

and things like that.

A: How did you go about cleaning up your property?

F: We worried about it for several days, the house that we just bought, it

was the most important to us. We concentrated on that to clean it up as

soon as the water went down. The people that we had rented the house to

was real nice and they had relatives that came up from Idaho Falls and

helped us tear up the rugs and get it cleaned up. They didn't help us

any with the basement. All they helped us with was the top floor where

they had rented. We shoveled the mud out and opened the windows and

whatever was the closest we threw the mud out of the house; front door,

back door. After we got the mud out and took the carpets up and pulled

them out then we started on the basement. When I first went down in

the basement, water had drained out to a little bit above my knees,

about 2 1/2 feet. It gradually went down. We finally had to pump it out

so we could get around down there and get things out. We had some newly

married kids down there that had the bottom rented before we bought the

house. They had lived there a year or two and they had had a wedding

reception and they had all those things in pasteboard boxes and the

pasteboard had gotten rotten and everything looked to me like the water

had swirled around and all the rugs and the furniture were piled in the

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MI

FULLMER -12-

center of the room. All the gifts in the pasteboard boxes were everywhere

in the mud. You couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on it. They

didn't come back and help us clean up the basement. We worked as a family

for a day or two, my daughter from Grant came up and then we had my

sons-in-law from Pocatello came up and helped us clean out, carry out

all of our stuff from the basement. We had to cut up the rugs and drag

them out of the windows with ropes, they were too heavy to handle without

the rope. I got so stiff and sore I could hardly walk up the stairs. The

back of my legs were tied up in knots.

A: What did you finally have to do in order to restore your house after the

flood? Did you replace the walls?

F: Yes. We replaced the walls and the doors. The doors must have been all

shut and the water came in the basement windows and they filled up one

room at a time. It busted the wallboard on the walls and went through

the walls and kicked the doors and door jams all off the doors the force

of it breaking into the next room. It had the wall tile, ceiling tile

had dropped off the ceiling and went down in the mud and water. It was

the biggest mess you could ever imagine.

A: What about your motel? What finally happened to that?

F: We had some of the good LDS people that came in and helped us. After we got

our home kind of cleaned out a little bit so we thought it might dry out

and not be damaged anymore than it had to be, we went over and there was

fourteen or fifteen people came there and we shoveled all the mud out of

the motel rooms, out the-windows, out the doors and drug the rugs out and

moved some furniture out and the same with the house. All our storage

wheat was scattered around and it sprouted and started to grow and stunk

like a pig-pen. The floors of the motel, some of them had collapsed and

fell down, and the others had buckled and raised up. In time the plaster

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MI -13-

FULLMER

all cracked in little fine cracks as high up as the water had been and the

water had been up about ten feet, in both the house and the motel. The

doors and the windows were all busted and hanging. It had washed through

one partition in the house and knocked all the plaster and plasterboard

off that. Our bed in the bedroom had floated and the bedspread and the

cover that my wife had rolled up and put on the end of the bed was just

as clean as the day we left it. There hadn't been anything touched on the

top of the bed, the mattress and that had floated. The refrigerator had

floated--in order to have them in a small kitchen that we had in that

motel house, they had cut the wall out and put the refrigerator right in

the wall. The water had washed the refrigerator out of that hole and

lodged it in the door between the kitchen and the front room. All the

fruit and wheat, storage things that we had in that room washed out all

through the house and outside.

A: Did you finally tear your motel down?

F: Yes. There was no question that they didn't hesitate a bit to condemn

it. It needed to be torn down, the house too. They were old buildings to

begin with. It was the first motel in Rexburg, oldest.

A: Did you rebuild the motel?

F: No, we didn't. My wife and I, we didn't agree too much on how to build

or rebuild the motel. We had thought sometimes that maybe it would be a

good thing to rebuild it and then other times we didn't know. I kind of

thought that if we did rebuild the motel that it should be better and

would add to the looks of theRexburg area. It would be a really good

thing. If we did it that way, we would have to put at least twice back

into it that the government gave us to replace it. They gave us $80,000

for the motel. We could have replaced the motel for just what we got out

of the government. But as an economical unit and to improve ourselves we

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MI FULLMER -14-

would have had to borrowed a lot of money to replace it. We wasn't too

enthused about it. We had quite a bit of experience with people in

motel work and we were kind of glad to get a break.

A: Did you sell the property on which the motel had stood?

F: Yes.

A: Theo, would you comment on the effectiveness of county and state authorities

and law enforcement officers during the emergency. Surely you must have

known a little bit about what these people were doing. Did they impress

you with the fact that they were effective in doing their work?

F: Yes. I'm sure they did everything they could for the comfort of the

people and to keep them out of trouble and to find any missing people.

I'm sure that everything was done just as fast as it could be done. I

have no fault with any person that had anything to do with any of the

rebuilding and cleaning up. They did everything to help people out at the

time of the flood. They were real nice and real quick, as fast as they

could get to it.

A: Did you suffer any vandalism or other forms of lawlessness during cleanup

operations?

F: No, I'm sure we didn't. The only thing the federal land bank, Lee Boyle,

was at his place of business one day and he looked over toward the motel

and there were three fellows out there digging and pickin up silver, my

silver coins that were laying on the sidewalk and in the vicinity of the

garage. He went over and said, "What are you doing?" They said, "We are

picking up some of these silver coins that are laying around." He said,

"But they don't belong to you. You'll have to quit. I know who they

belong to and you can't pick up those coins." They said, "That doesn't

make any difference to us. We're going to pick up the coins anyway

because they are on the street and don't belong to anybody but us if we

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MI FULLMER -15-

pick them up." He called the police and they came up and handcuffed them

to our sign and took all the money away from them. That was about all

the trouble we had.

A: Did you deal with any government agencies like the Small Business

Administration or HUD?

F: Yes. We had quite a bit. I'll have to admit that my wife did most of the

business with HUD and with putting in our claim with the Bureau of

Reclamation.

A: Do you feel that they treated you fairly?

F: Yes. The only thing they should have realized that we couldn't have built

back a new motel for what they gave us for the old motel. But as far as

giving us, actually we came out farther ahead with monetary things than

we would have done without the flood, if we hadn't gone out of business.

As far as giving us what the motel was worth the day of the flood, they

did that.

A: Do you feel that any who assisted in the recovery operations took advantage

of you and the government? Especially in getting a lot of money for work

that they didn't do or for work that they didn't do well?

F: No, I don't, as far as I know I don't know of any who took advantage of it.

You have your own idea about things. Maybe somebody would put in a bigger

claims than they should have done, but that is just natural. You don't

have any way to know. As long as you are taken care of, you don't worry

about somebody else. Let them put in their claim the way they want to put

it in.

A: Before we quit, would you like to say something about the people who helped

clean up the mud and debris?

F: They were some of the finest people we ever met. They didn't complain,

they put on dirty clothes and they would go down and they would work just

as hard as they could. They would do everything they could to help you

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MI

FULLMER -16-

out. They would suggest things. They wouldn't take any money for what

they did: stake presidents, bishops, doctors, lawyers. They made the

statement that what money they would get was the farthest thing from

their mind, being the work that they did was to help they wouldn't do it

for money. But they didn't complain. They came back day after day after

day until it was all done. They were really nice. We don't know what

we would have ever done without them. It would have been an impossibility

to clean up as fast and as quick as we did.

A: Were you impressed then at the rate with which the people of Rexburg have

cleaned up and restored their buildings and their homes?

F: Yes, T surely am. I don't know, they might have gone through things and

picked out some things that they really wouldn't have needed to throw away.

It was too big a job to sort through everything, piece by piece, and that

was the only way to do it the way they did.

A: Were you bothered by the fact that a lot of articles were thrown away

that you thought perhaps could have been saved?

F: Yes, I was. In fact, since the flood I went out on the Teton River, I

don't remember how I ever got out there. I just walked around through

the bushes and through the trees and it was just surprising, the things

that were still laying around there in the mud I'm sure there is lots of

stuff out threr yet: tires, new tires, stockwaters, boats, oars, and all

kinds of clothing from the army store; shoes, refrigerators. A lot of

stuff from the army sroe, army surplus, stuff; radios, TV, anything.

A: Would you like to see the Teton Dam rebuilt?

F: I would oppose it just like I did before as a flood control, yes but any

further than than, no. Most of the people up there on the hill has deep

wells. Nearly all of Rexburg bench is irrigated, raise potatoes and

whatever on it. As far as flood control we need it. It's been a big

disappointment to me to have them make so many investigations, spend so

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MI

much money up there when we knew from the start what broke the dam. They

just didn't control it right, they should have filled it slow and studied

it and filled it slowly. I was glad it was there before it broke. I had

made up my mind that it was possibly a good thing. I could see the

recreation and electricity and the flood control, it was all there. But

they didn't have the right to take the chance that they took on it.

It should have been handled better. It was the most disappointing thing

in my life. So much money, so much effort went into that thing and they

let it all go down the drain, still they are up there putting more money

into it. I tried to get a lot of people interested in building a flood

control this year up there. There was no flood water htis spring we

culd have started early and by now we could have had a flood control dam

up there. Those things don't work that fast with the government I guess.

I tried to get the county commissioners from all three counties: Madison,

Jefferson, Fremont interested in putting some pressure on the government

to build a flood control dam up there. I thought it was a lot more

important than a new park or new roads. That can come after, but that

flood control, next year it might take a lot of reads again and flood

Sugar City.

A: We've come to the end of the tape. I want to thank you for the time you've

given.

F: (Added later) I believe the thing that actually broke the Dam or let the

water through first was the action of the winters of 74 and 75 on the fill

on that north abutment. -'The sun shone directly on that slope and that

end of the dam. It would melt the snow during the day and would run

down and soak into the fill and then the frost would work on it at night

and widen the cracks in the rocks and expand the fill and loosen it up.

Then the next day it would take on more water and freeze and expand again

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MI FULLMER -18-

at night. Until it opened up a soft muddy ditch for the water from the

lake above to find its way through. That is the side that the water

started through. It didn't even start through the other end that was

kept covered and at the same temp. The frost could have worked down

along the rocks 3 or 4 or 5 feet and loosened up the fill.