Three postcards after the Ashland flood

Water surrounds buildings and bare trees on West Main Street. The photograph’s caption places this scene in Ashland’s March 25, 1913 flood.

Heavy rain was falling across a much wider region. The Midwestern Regional Climate Center describes successive weather systems and a stalled front bringing rain across the Ohio Valley and Northeast during March 23–27. In his contemporary 1913 account, Thomas W. Lewis reported 5.96 inches of rain at Ashland in the 24 hours ending on the evening of March 24.

People, horses and a cart stand among debris beside the water. The printed caption names the task: “After the flood—Arthur St. Bridge—Clearing away the wreckage.”

Where the West Main Street cards show floodwater, this photograph shows the work that followed. It gives the group of cards a second scene: the aftermath at a bridge.

A pencil annotation on the reverse reads “Ashland, O., 1913.” The rest of the back is largely blank. The scan preserves this small addition alongside the printed image.

A second photograph returns us to the flooded street, with buildings and trees rising above the water. Its own caption also names the great flood of March 25, 1913. The two cards let us look at the street through more than one surviving image.

Together, the cards preserve two parts of the story: water on a city street and the work of clearing wreckage. Open the larger scans to explore the photographs, lettering and handwritten note.