Mill Dam Tragedy

Mill Dam Tragedy. . On May 13, 1912, during a flood of the Big Sioux River, four young Sioux Falls' men steered two crafts, a rowboat and a canoe, over the Cascade Mill dam. Guy Beck and Mat Yost successfully made the descent, but John Meehan and Will Dahl were thrown from their canoe when it capsized., When Beck and Yost pulled Meehan into their rowboat, the dam's turbulent current overturned it. Pitched into the backwash, the three men were swept upstream to the dam where flood water surging over the dam pushed them down to the river bottom and then downstream. The hydraulic action of the lowhead dam then circulated them to the surface where the backwash again carried them upstream to the dam., The cycle repeated again and again as a hushed crowd of over 2500 watched recovery of three bodies. Using over 100 dynamite charges, searchers tried vainly for three days to bring Will Dahl's body to the surface. He was finally located pinned between rocks only 40 feet from the dam., The Big Sioux River claimed nine lives in Minnehaha County during the 1912 spring flood.