- [Crystal] Mother nature and history will repeat itself.

And it did again in 1952.

There again, it was one of those heavy, heavy winters.

In fact, the winter of '52, starting in January, was, at the time, likened to the 1888 blizzard that happened, The Children's Blizzard.

It was devastating, and there was a lot of loss of life during that winter.

There was a lot of snow, a lot of long blizzards, a lot of sub-zero blizzards that came through, dumped a lot of snow, and it just never went away.

And so it just piled and piled and piled.

And again, you've got a spring that just, unusually nice, nice weather, that was quick, and then nothing could melt underneath.

Same thing.

And this, you see, again, you know, your understanding of it is all depending on how well it was documented and where it was documented.

You know, WNEX spent some time in 1952 and they put together a disaster book about the blizzard and about the devastation and the water.

And here you see, you've got flooding in all of the major cities from North Dakota to Yankton, and it's all the same.

Not as bad as 1881.

Is it similar to 1916?

At the time, that was the most recent one that they were talking about, as far as being similar to.

And here again, we need to remember, the dams were not all in place yet.

They were in the making of it.

And it was something that had been talked about.

They hadn't necessarily started on all of them yet.

And so, like the Gavin's Point Dam didn't happen until two years later.

So water control was an issue, had none, very little, and the same thing happened again.