On June 11, 1917, things were perfectly normal in the rest of the world. An American diplomatic mission was negotiating in Moscow; the Germans were bombing England; a Greek king had abdicated. But in the upper Oriskany Valley it had rained for 48 hours. At Solsville and Cleaveland's Mills, residents eyed the rising waters apprehensively. Further downstream Warren Lyon went to bed, but the insistent patter of rain kept him awake. Finally he got up, lit a lantern and took another look at the dam. Water was seeping in around the sides. With three or four helpers he tried to bolster the banks with timbers. He kept at it all night.

By the first streak of dawn, things were happening up above. First, the Solsville dam gave way. Then the one at Cleaveland's Mills. Logs jammed into the one-span O&W bridge in the pond at Lyon's Mills, blocked off the water which was pouring through, and held firm while the deluge from above rose, poured over the tracks, and finally swept them away entirely and down on top of the doomed Lyon's Dam.

In a matter of minutes, $20,000 worth of dam had dissolved and one wing of the mill, undermined, dangled in the air. The rain had eased to a sprinkle. But too late. With a deafening roar the once pent-up waters of three mill ponds headed toward the sleeping village of Oriskany Falls.

Awakened by this roar was Mrs. William Huson, aged widow of an Oriskany Falls wagon-maker. She lived alone in a small house at the upper end of the village. Huge logs sheared away one side of the cottage, and she was seen to get out of bed, make her way toward the flapping front door, and cling to the sill as the terrific current sucked the house downstream and over the falls. Except for the kitchen stove and a patch of floor under it, nothing was ever seen of the building again. As the house slipped away, 14-year-old Francis Mason, next door, struggled vainly to break away from his mother. "I'm a Boy Scout and I've got to save her," he said.

Just above the station, two railroad men, John Conklin and youthful, 25-year-old Albert Talaczski, were struggling to get a gasoline hand-car out of the rising waters. Suddenly they looked up and saw a wall of water coming down upon them. Both struck out for high land. Insurance Man Ray Murdock snatched Conklin to safety as the water carried him through the railroad cut behind what is now Tyler's Hotel. Talaczski, too far out in the main stream, went over the falls. That afternoon the two bodies were found, both lodged in debris on Waterville Street, not far from a sagging undermined corner of what was then the Catholic Church.

Near Mrs. Huson lived Mrs. Will Smith, her aged mother, and four children. Finishing an early morning breakfast, Mrs. Smith went to the back door to empty out the coffee pot. She saw the advancing wall of water and hustled the family upsairs. Not a moment too soon. As she followed them, water surged above her waist, and the house trembling on its foundations, slipped away. One wing broke off, leaving a gaping hole. A couple of fruit trees held the main part of the house firm. By afternoon-the waters subsided and Mrs. Smith was busy cleaning mud out of her dining room with a hoe.

First tidings of the peril reached the sleeping village when E. B. Miner, Lyon's Mills, aroused Earl and Lynn Hatheway, shouting: "The dams can't last much longer." The Hatheways rang the fire bell and rounded up three or four carloads of villagers in the hope of bolstering the Lyon's Mill dam. They had just left the village when rising water on the Solsville road forced them to turn back.

Then it was that the muddied, debris-strewn deluge hit-twisting railroad tracks, tossing around freight cars, snatching up barns, tearing off parts of houses, uprooting bridges, floating away the village lumberyard, breaking through dams, flooding factories and undermining houses. Damage was estimated at $250,000. "It was as though you suddenly sent the West Canada Creek down Bank Place in Utica," one reporter wrote.

That Sunday came a second flood-30,000 auto-borne spectators. They crammed into the tiny community. They overwhelmed the village's lone traffic officer until for an hour things were in such a mess that not a wheel turned. They flocked into the ice cream parlors ("No ill wind, but . . :'). They cornered Oriskany Falls residents on their porches until one woman desperately joined the crowd herself so she wouldn't have to answer so many questions.