sandbagging and closing down ro,
getting ready for major floodin,
and after the rain and snow this week,
the levels are creeping up.
The National Weather Service sas
there's now an 80 to 90% chance
that the Saint Croix River reacs
major flood stage in Stillwater,
but this is not the first
time they've seen it.
In fact, leaders are actually following
a blueprint that began 66 decades ago,
60 years.
Kent was in Stillwater today to
take a look at where this all b.
I'm told levy construction heren
Stillwater will be finished tod,
followed by placement of tempory
stormwater pumps like the one
behind me in the days to come.
After that, it's largely a waitg
game to see how high the river .
That's a much different situatin
than when the river reached an
all time high back in 1965.
There were trucks backing up with sand.
There were people all over.
It was raining. It was miserabl.
Forecasting then was, you know.
Tom Sweeney spent Holy Week 1965 trying
to plug holes in a makeshift levee as
he watched the Saint Croix River Swamp
Stillwater's Historic Lift Brid.
Frantic is the word I could saym
and hundreds of other teens from
throughout the region were bussd
into downtown by the National
Guard and worked in shifts 24/7o
keep Main Street from flooding.
We slept in the Armory up the h.
They had a tarp now in the midde
of the Armory, girls on one sid,
boys on the other. They came
and got us out of school. Chris
Nelson was a Stillwater senior n
he was called in to help constrt
the socalled teenagers.*. I
think there were kids from all .
He remembers the frenzy going as fast as
we could because the water was coming up.
But in the process,
another feeling surfaced.
I remember it as being fun,
and it was especially fun for h.
Lots of displaced people in Bay,
considering this is what he hado
come home to in Bayport that we.
This is my mother and dad's hou.
We were shooting muskrats out
the front windows to try to keep
them from coming into the house,
and the shotgun shells would eject and
splash on the floor of our living room.
Though he's working,
Stillwater was exhausting,
Chris says. The teens enjoyed
the freedom to take charge.
There weren't a lot of adults t.
We kind of figured we knew as
much about building* as
anybody else down there. One
of the city councilors at the
time says he's not wrong. This
is the first* ever built in
Stillwater, so we didn't really.
Have any experience that this was the
chalkboard we had in City Hall h
the elevations at the various streets
while Roger Peterson and the otr
adults worked non-stop organizig
shifts and supplies from City H.
They counted on that teen
workforce with one exception.
A bus pulled up behind us,
2530 guys got out. We thought,
oh we got we got adults to help.
We're tired talking to these guys here.
They were from Stillwater priso.
We were working with the with
the prisoners and it was fine.
They worked very hard and
they were happy to be out too.
Besides, they also had free
food provided by the Red Cross
and a couple of restaurants.
I had my first rib eye steak and
they wouldn't let us pay for it.
I don't know anybody that worked down in
the* that didn't have a good time.
Did you know that they were having so much
fun? No, but that's why we had
chaperones at the barracks.
We didn't want him to have too much fun,
and it certainly worked. By Easter Sunday,
the river crested and the* held.
Without the teenagers,
we'd never gotten the* built.
After the Crest, many teens
received special tokens of than.
Saint Croix River record
Crest teenagers* Stillwater
MN 694 feet above sea level.
I had never seen one of these until today,
but Chris says he'll take the priceless
memories over a coin any day.
You guys did help. Save
the town. I don't know that
we went into it thinking
we're going to save the town.
It was a really cool thing to d.
We were just having fun saving
the city at the same time,
and they also gave the city the blueprint
they'd need for decades to come.
This is amazing. Here to see
the way they're doing it now.
You paved the way.
Well, I didn't. I helped.
Thank God I was able to.
I just hope the heck that
records aren't broken.
Speaking of this year,
I'm told that this levee is currently
built up to 693.5 feet above sea level.
For context though, that's still just
below that all time record from.
So they're hoping, of course thy
don't have to go any higher.
But yes, Janna,
they can build it up a little bt
higher if history requires it.
Thanks Kent. So our local flood expert
Craig Schmidt with Noah says ths
still so much snowpack that it's
likely going to be at least a w.
Before they have a better clue if the St.
Croix will get to that Crest
point that it got to in 1965.