- With zero major dams available (to fail), the 1862 flood destroyed ~1/4 of all taxable property in California, and killed ~1% of the human population of California. (Today, 1% of that population would be ~400,000 people killed.)
- The 1862 flood is obvious in ocean sediment records, as a thick gray layer. Similar thick layers occur every ~120 years, and one of those is ~10X as thick as the 1862 sediment layer. The NYTimes is very annoyingly short of details here, but I found at least a paywalled version of the sediment research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00253...
- The devastating 1862 flood the article mentions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862 ) extended far beyond California - into British Columbia, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Mexico
- With zero major dams available (to fail), the 1862 flood destroyed ~1/4 of all taxable property in California, and killed ~1% of the human population of California. (Today, 1% of that population would be ~400,000 people killed.)
- The 1862 flood is obvious in ocean sediment records, as a thick gray layer. Similar thick layers occur every ~120 years, and one of those is ~10X as thick as the 1862 sediment layer. The NYTimes is very annoyingly short of details here, but I found at least a paywalled version of the sediment research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00253...