People often discuss the Flood of 1985 and the Flood of 1996. The Flood of 1973 is often forgotten about since each one of the big ones progressively got higher and more destructive. The Greenbrier rose to 20.3ft in Alderson on December 27th, 1973.
I can remember seeing these three photos from the schoolhouse side of the river in Pence Springs at Grandma Jones’s house when I was a kid. My father, David Jones, took these when he was 17 years old. He recalls this being the time the river rose much slower than usual.
As usual he helped with saving the contents of Country Roads Store. It was rising much slower than usual as I said, so this time they stayed in the store and moved items up shelf by shelf as the water rose. I don’t recall the exact measurement in the store, but it would have been around 2-ft deep when it finally crested.
The other two photos show the recently constructed factory in Pence Springs with the dike around it. And the dip in Route 3 on the other side of Echo Valley Farm. Notice the truck that had stalled when someone attempted to go through the water.
The other photo is on the post office side of Pence Springs. My late friend and fellow local historian Lorine Cales gave me this copy for my collection. You can see by the debris on the guardrail the river had started to recede when this photo was taken.
This bridge was taken out during the Flood of 1985 when a house hit it late that night. That flood reached a height of 23.95-ft on November 5, 1985. An interesting note on this event was that the owners of Country Roads Store were staying up on the hill above the store in the parking lot of Pence Springs Community Church that night.
My mother, Cheryl Jones, was talking to Nova that night on the CB Radio. Nove just happened to have the mike keyed when the house struck the bridge, so mom could hear it across the CB, and it could be heard the sound on the other side of Pence Springs both. Mom exclaimed “what was that, Nova?”
She replied: “something just took the bridge out!”
