Why the Flood of 1955 should be remembered

It has been 60 years since the Flood of 1955 devastated Winsted.

The flood destroyed 170 of the 200 businesses parallel to the Mad and Still rivers, and 95 percent of the town’s industry was wiped out.

Approximately 1,500 residents were left homeless. Seven residents drowned in the flood.

The financial loss to the town was $30,123,190, and industrial damage was estimated at $4,889,050.

As the historical pictures republished in this Winsted Journal issue show, Main Street was practically destroyed. It took five years for damage from the flood to be entirely cleaned up.

Off and on since the flood, you might have heard various residents at times say that the town has never recovered from the flood. That business, industry, the population and Main Street never recovered from the flood. This is not true.

The town was a disaster zone after the flood and, if you review the pictures and the story in this week’s paper, it was a miracle that the town recovered at all after all of the havoc and destruction the flood caused.

There are plenty of businesses in the downtown Winsted area, including a movie theater, a grocery store, a bowling alley, quite a few restaurants and banks, several buildings that house artisan studios and a state community college.

In the next few weeks and months they will be joined by a tort law museum, a new medical center and a building housing a mural project. If Winsted was truly a dead town it would not have all of these businesses and nearly 8,000 residents.

The survival of Winsted in tough times has to do with people coming together. Back in the Flood of 1955, residents all came together to search for others in the treacherous waters, and several were saved from drowning.

During the rebuilding and recovery phase for the town, residents came together to help each other again tough out some really horrible times.

While it is not pleasurable to be nostalgic about a natural disaster that nearly destroyed a town, the Flood of 1955 should be remembered because it brought people together as a community in order to get through tragedy.

Through the years, residents have come together again and again to help each other out. Whether it is through fires, automobile accidents, major illness or some other misfortune, people are there for each other.

That is the memory that people need to take away from the Flood of 1955: To be strong, persevering and there for one another in the toughest of times.

That, right there, is the true spirit of Winsted.