Amargosa River Flooding in 1970's and 1980's. Back to Amargosa Main Page
8/20/84: The Third Annual Hundred Year Flood
The Amargosa River (usually invisible deep underground) along
CA Highway 127, near Eagle Mt., looking north toward Yucca Mountain about 23 miles away. That
little dot on the right is a car.
Flooding
usually occurs in July and August. There are no alternative roads. Here, Susan Sorrells watches a family member
thigh-deep in the Amargosa, behind Shoshone on Highway 127 in 1984. It was
locally
called the "Third Annual Hundred-Year
Flood." One pickup was washed from the road just yards south of the
area at left, drowning the driver. People
in Shoshone and Tecopa have been cut off for up to weeks at a time
in the 70's and 82, 83, and 84. Supplies and dry ice were flown in. People
rode a skiff (1984) and inner tubes (1978) from one town to the other, over what is usually ten
miles of dry
desert.
View from the north.
Damage
to the road was visible, as repairs began.
This area is now a daily shipping route for nuclear waste to and from the Nevada Test Site, and the road engineering has not been upgraded in any way.
