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Congress appropriated funds for the relief of flood victims and authorized the first federal control projects along the Ohio River.
Obtaining funds for a better levee was not an easy task. Col.William E. Merrill of the Army Corps of Engineers was assigned to make a study of possible solutions to flooding along the Ohio.
He reported that levees would not work, and recommended instead a cast series of reservoirs.
The disappointed members of Lawrenceburg City Council turned to their Congressman,William S. Holman of Aurora, for help.
Known as the “Watchdog of the Treasury” for his adamant opposition to government spending, Holman nevertheless sponsored legislation to award Lawrenceburg the princely sum of $18,000.
All told, between 1884 and 1901, the city and
the railroads spent more than $100,000 on levee improvement together with a total of $75,000 from the Federal government.
Protection still followed along the railroad lines,
which meant that on High Street, everything beyond the railroad tracks that led to Greendale was outside
the levee.
Added gravel and clay raised the level of protection to a 68-foot crest, which proved its worth when the river rose in 1897 and 1898.
Although poor construction and materials made for frequent landslides, they were promptly repaired, and residents of Lawrenceburg began to relax once again, secure, they thought, behind a foolproof levee.
It was widely believed that the Ohio would never again read a depth higher than that, despite the 71- foot crest in 1884.
Then came the winter of 1906-1907.
December was warm and rainy, and on January 18, 1907, a violent windstorm caused huge waves to
dash against the lower levee. Areas of the levee
began washing away, and hundreds of residents
worked through a stormy night to fill and place bags of gravel into the threatened breaks. The river had reached 64 feet.
During the night, six houses in Polktown, located just outside the levee to the west, were swept away, but the rest of the city remained dry.
Along the banks of Tanners Creek in Greendale, the
high water undermined the cattle pens at the Greendale Distillery, plunging head of cattle some 50 or 60 feet into the creek.Workers were able to save only about half
of them.
Even when water began coming over a low spot in
the levee near Elm Street, a last minute effort to add sand and gravel bags turned back the water, which crested
at 66 feet.
A sense of the magnitude of the effort can be obtained by the fact that among the bills paid by city council was one from the Lawrenceburg Roller Mills in the amount of $1000 for almost 14,000 sacks and 200 pounds of twine used in shoring up the levee.
Reaction to the 1907 near miss was swift.
Within a couple of weeks, the Press was urging the city to create a real levee, instead of taking stopgap measures. The editor estimated that a levee that would hold back 72
or even 75 feet of water would protect the town for all eternity.
More Congressional funding was obtained to face
the upriver portion of the levee with concrete and other areas with large slabs of rocks.At one point, city council even voted to solve the problem of Polktown and lower High Street by disannexing the whole neighborhood, but the move was successfully vetoed by Mayor
E.G. Bielby.
The crown of the levee was raised again, and the effort appeared to be successful.
Lawrenceburg residents believed they were secure behind the levee, and when the Ohio River began to rise in January of 1913 most people did not make preparations to move their furniture upstairs or find alternative housing for themselves.
Watchman Henry Schinaman was sent to patrol the levee, alert for any signs of problems. In the middle of the night, that portion of the levee near the gas plant began sliding, and Schinaman ran to the Newtown fire house and began furiously ringing the bell.
The signal set off a mass rush to leave the low lying areas of the city, but aside from a small amount of seepage, the core of the levee held firm, and a flood was averted.
Mayor Joseph L. Axby immediately ordered the slip to be repaired.
(The descendant of early Dearborn pioneer families, Dr. Axby was also a successful veterinarian and was later appointed as the Indiana State Veterinarian. )
For the time being, Lawrenceburg was once again safe.