It’s been a quiet hurricane season so far. Fingers crossed …
Things were a lot different in 1954.
That year, Hurricane Carol struck on August 31. The Category 3 storm had winds of up to 110 miles an hour.
It was the most destructive storm to hit New England in nearly 20 years, and caused significant damage here. But its effects on eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island were much worse.
Just 11 days later, Hurricane Edna walloped Westport. It too was a Category 3, and dumped the heaviest amount of rain in 45 years on New York City.
The photoa below show the flooding on Main Street. The view is familiar. The stores are not.
And let’s hope that — thanks to mitigation efforts — the scene will not be repeated, no matter how powerful a hurricane may be.
(Photo courtesy of Christopher Maroc)
(Photo courtesy of James Gray)
Do you recognize the spot below?
It’s the corner of Hillspoint Road and Compo Hill Road, during Hurricane Carol.
The large building was Joe’s Store. It later became Cafe de la Plage, then Positano restaurant. Today it’s the site of the “blue house” — the still-unfinished home on Old Mill Beach.
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Hey Dan, what mitigation? There has been some waterproofing (bath-tubing) of the Main Street buildings with gates that are put up when the storms don’t hit and not when they do. But the overall problem of flooding has not and probably cannot be addressed. The river is silted almost full behind Main Street stores and narrowed almost all the way up to the mouth on the sound.
The town has heard many stories of dredging and mitigation, but I don’t believe anything short of a few channels to allow boat traffic has been achieved.
Oh yes I remember that. My father went out and spent $2,000 dollars for a gas powered generator after the storm. Looking back it seems like a ridiculous price since 9 years before one could buy a house in Westport for $3,000 dollars on Bauer Place!
And in that very spot outside Joe’s a bunch of us kids from the Old Mill neighborhood were rowing and motoring our boats down Hillspoint until it got too shallow on the road near Bluewater Hill beach.
The stores look plenty familiar to me. A hit or close call by a Cat 2 or 3 will wreak all manner of havoc. I think that the last time that the Saugatuck River was really dredged was when I-95 came thru in late 50’s and they were going after bank run gravel.
I recall my grandmother saying she couldn’t get understand how a loaf of bread costing 59 cents back in the 1960’s. She went on to say, it only cost a nickle when she was young. Similarly, I recall going into Ben Franklin’s 5 & 10, (shown in Christopher Maroc pic here), and walking into the back of the store where there was a luncheon counter. For a nickle you could get a large iced mug of A&W rootbeer, right out of their wooden barrel. Could I now be as old as my grandmother was then?
My mom (94) remembers this well. She and my Dad, who were engaged, went to save my Great Aunt, whose house was on the silvermine river. They made it back across the river over a bridge which was then washed out.
I lived on Old Mill Road and was 4 years old when hurricane Carol hit. I waded around the “circle” with my sister, and was amazed seeing people in rowboats and canoes paddling by. The water came all the way up our front steps but did not flood the first floor. One of my most vivid memories is how warm the water was.
Interesting – never knew there was a Ben Franklin in downtown Westport. Must have closed before I was born. It was one of my favorite stores to go into as a kid in general (in addition to Woolworth, Caldor, Rich’s etc) – they had a bit of everything and prices were reasonable – and I remember going into the one with my grandma near us in Meredith NH many times. That location (along with several other storefronts) is now a large Hannaford. Wonder what is currently where the Westport one was, I’ll have to try and match it up to the photo sometime.