Answers to Go with Susan Smith

Q. A few weeks ago, I read in the San Marcos Daily Record about proposals to reduce flooding in San Marcos from the Purgatory Watershed. Can you help me find past news articles about flooding on Purgatory Creek?

A. In scanning our index of San Marcos Daily Record articles on floods, I saw how frequently floods have brought rising water to San Marcos. Our local history index includes articles on Purgatory Creek floods on May 3, 1957 and Jan. 25, 1958. On Jan. 25, 1968, there was an article about another flood and the need for a dam on Purgatory Creek.

Eighteen months later, the Record ran a tragic story – May 21, 1970 – about a flood in which six-year-old Glenda and three-year-old Darryl Crittendon drowned when the boat rescuing them and their siblings capsized in Purgatory Creek. Their mother was African-American community leader Dolores Crittendon.

In this flood, 18 inches of rain fell here. Water from the Blanco, Sink Springs and Purgatory Creek poured into the San Marcos River. Two-thousand acres in San Marcos were flooded and hundreds of people had to be rescued including students and teachers at Travis Elementary. (Source: news release written by Melissa Millecam in our local history folder on dams.)

Next came newspaper stories related to construction of five flood prevention dams. An Oct. 27, 1983 article covered the first dam’s groundbreaking ceremony. This Freeman Ranch dam would hold back Sink Creek flood waters. Two other dams were built on tributaries of Sink Creek.

Two dams were built on Purgatory Creek. One, the fifth and final dam, was dedicated in 1991.

The Purgatory Creek and Sink Creek dams have made things safer in San Marcos, but our torrential rains still bring significant floods when heavy rains fall both above and below the dams and in the Blanco’s watershed. That was made abundantly clear in the two disastrous floods of 2015.

The San Marcos Daily Record articles can all be found in the library's San Marcos/ Hays County Collection.