"They tell me that isn't right," Harding said.
Judy Ellinghausen, archivist at The History Museum in Great Falls, agreed, calling such an account "unlikely." In all the reading she has done on the 1908 flood, she has seen no references to serious flooding in the center of town.
Great Falls was not the only community affected by the precipitation in June 1908.
Lewis and Clark County commissioners estimated the Helena area lost $100,000 worth of its roads and bridges, while the Tribune quoted a Fort Benton resident as saying the water had never been as high in that historic town along the Missouri as it was in 1908.
Great Falls still sports one clear public reference to the Flood of 1908 — a plaque located on a railroad overpass pier next to 6th Street North between Park Drive and River Drive North. The plaque on the east pier shows the peak water level of the June 1908 flood.
Based on that high-water mark, floodwaters would have intruded only a short distance into the Lower North Side residential area. However, the West Side was inundated with water in 1908, just as it was in 1964, another disastrous flood year for west Great Falls.
Harding said the worst recorded flooding on the Sun River, which runs through the West Side and connects to the Missouri River near the Meadow Lark Country Club area, occurred in 1964.
"The 1908 (flood) always was the granddaddy of them all until '64," Harding said. Along the Sun River, water levels were higher in 1964 "by about a foot and a half," than they were in 1908, he added.
Other notable floods in Great Falls occurred in 1953 and 1975, which gave rise to a theory that big floods took place in Great Falls every 11 years.
Before 1986 rolled around, much of west Great Falls formed a flood district, and contractors built a thick earthen dike to keep out any flooding.
Sun River dikes in Great Falls have yet to be seriously tested.
Reach Tribune Staff Writer Richard Ecke at firstname.lastname@example.org, or at 406-791-1467 or 800-438-6600.