The Citizens' Relief Committee, on advices from engineers, decided that this reconstruction work would require four months, even if building material could be obtained promptly.
So far as the business and industrial buildings were concerned, it was estimated by architects who looked over the different premises that it would require eight months before repair work and rebuilding could be accomplished. In the interim business was done in whatever premises were available.
Thousands of men were employed, together with many teams of horses, and work was pushed to the utmost in all departments. Surveys of the damage done were made and large quantities of material were ordered by telegraph, to be shipped immediately.
Generations must come and go before the Dayton flood will be forgotten, and standing out in bright contrast with all else there will perhaps remain longest the inspiring picture of the energy and fortitude with which the stricken residents set about the retrievement of their city from the devastation of the angry waters.
CHAPTER VI
Dayton: "The City of a Thousand Factories"
SURVIVOR OF SIX FLOODS—ESTABLISHED BY REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS—PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS—OTHER OF DAYTON'S FEATURES OF INTEREST—A CITY OF CIVIC PRIDE—"A THOUSAND FACTORIES"—ITS SUCCESS.
Dayton has stood in the shadow of disaster from flood ever since its foundation. No less than six times previous to the present inundation have the rivers which flow through it left their accustomed courses and brought death and destruction of property upon the town. The first of these floods occurred in 1805, the very year that Dayton was incorporated as a town. The sixth was in 1898 and the others in the years 1847, 1863, 1866 and 1886.