Yellow River State Forest recovering from spring flooding

by Kelli Boylen
Freelance writer

The crew at Yellow River State Forest has been hard at work getting things back to how they were before the flooding of June 22 and 23, and they have been making good progress.
Of the 140 campsites at Yellow River State Forest about 100 are ready for visitors, says Rylan Retallick, Park Ranger with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
Many hours of hard work have occurred in order to get most of the park up and running. Currently, Big Paint Campground is open, many sites in Little Paint Campground are open and the Frontier Equestrian camping area (the one located farther back) is open.
Most of the campsites in those areas that are still not available are cleaned up and they are just waiting for the grass to get re-established.
The horse trails on the east (fire tower) side of the State Forest Road are ready for use, but the ones near what is referred to as the Larkin farm on the west side of the highway still need more work and will hopefully be open by the end of the month.
Some of the open trails are still a little rough. “The trails are still muddy, there is more vegetation than normal and we are advising (horse) riders to use extreme caution; but we really wanted to get them back open,” Retallick says.
Overall, Retallick says he is “glad to see the area being used again.”
The weekend of June 22 is not one he is likely to ever forget. “When we were evacuating the campgrounds on Saturday I thought the flooding was the worst I had ever seen, but that was nothing compared to Sunday,” he recalls.
Storms that weekend dumped 11 inches of rain through the wooded valleys in Allamakee County, raising area streams far out of their banks.
Saturday, more than 80 campers were evacuated by DNR personnel, the Harpers Ferry Fire Department, Allamakee County sheriff’s office, Mar-Mac Emergency Services, and campground hosts Jim and Missy Sess.
One camper told Retallick that he had woken up when his back was wet from water flowing against his tent, and within the first 10 minutes he was up trying to get ready to move to higher ground the water rose 18 inches.
Then Saturday night, heavy rains came again.  Sunday morning, the Big Paint and Little Paint Creeks were raging. Where the Big Paint normally runs about 15 feet below the bridge on State Forest Road, the waters rose above the roadway. The bridge on Donahue Road could not be seen under the flood waters Sunday, and when the water finally receded Retallick says they could still not see the bridge because of the amount of debris on it.
The horse day use area was under up to five feet of water.
The only bridge in the forest which washed away was the first pedestrian bridge in Little Paint Campground. A car had been swept away on Saturday when someone tried to drive through the water and it became wedged under the bridge. Sunday’s floodwaters pushed the car and bridge downstream. The bridge itself was not damaged, but it will take quite a bit to get it back in place.
Retallick says their first priority when the waters receded was getting the vehicles and belongings of the campers who had been evacuated. Even that was not a simple task.
First, the dry run after turning off of State Forest Road into the Little Paint Campground was washed full of rocks all of the way across the road and they needed to be cleared with heavy equipment.
In the Little Paint Campground, about 40 feet of the road, located about one-third of the way from State Forest Road to the first creek crossing, had been undermined by the flood waters. It took 10 yards of concrete to fill in under the road.
Retallick says he made the determination to close the Little Paint Campground to all traffic after seeing the amount of damage, and they decided to get the less damaged Big Paint Campgrounds opened first.
 
Retallick usually has two part-time seasonal employees in the summer months, who each work two days per week. The week after the flood, he, Jim Sess and Harold Welch each put in more than 50 hours running equipment to move debris and earth. Welch had a lot of experience in his career with heavy equipment and he ran a Trac Hoe, while Sess and Retallick operated rented skid-loaders. Retallick put in about 90 hours total in the first seven days after the floods.
“If it weren’t for those two guys I don’t know what we would have done,” Retallick said.
Debris, often including full-size trees with roots still attached, needed to be moved in many areas. Once that was completed, they could move on to removing rock that had washed downstream, fill in holes and smooth out rutted areas.
Thus far, more than 450 tons of black dirt has been brought in to fill areas that needed it the most, and more than 1,700 tons of gravel have been used.
Once the clean up was done they planted grass seed. Retallick said in the six weeks after the floods they had planted more than 500 pounds of grass seed.
Most of the picnic tables had been washed away in both the Big Paint and Little Paint Campgrounds, and many fire rings – which are embedded in concrete and weigh more than 700 pounds total - were lifted up and moved up to 60 yards.
Miraculously, all of the missing picnic tables have been accounted for. A few of the fire rings will have to be replaced due to damage.

In Big Paint Campground one of the latrines, including the concrete base it sits upon, was moved about 20 feet by the powerful water. Other latrines had water up to five feet deep flowing around them.
Other work that needed to be done before the campsites were reopened didn’t require heavy equipment – it consisted of cleaning fire pits and picnic tables.  A lot of lime screenings and gravel also had to be replaced.
Big Paint Campground was open for campers for the Fourth of July, just shy of two weeks after the flooding.
One of the unique features of these floods along the Paint Creeks was the amount of rock that washed downstream. In many areas it filled the entire streambed and forced the water to take new routes. “We will be picking up rocks for the next two years,” Retallick says.
The Creekside Equestrian Campground is closed for now, possibly until next summer. The streambed running next to that camping area is one of those that is forever changed. The stream now runs a little ways farther over, narrower and shallower in that area than it used to be. The creek bed used to be at an elevation about eight feet lower than the camp area, after the flood it was about level. Retallick said they received permission from the Corp of Engineers to dig the creekbed back down a bit, so that it is now about four feet lower than the campsites.

Although much of the Little Paint Campground is ready for use, it will be a while before a contractor is hired and the first pedestrian bridge is brought back into place. It is hoped that the bridge will be back in place and ready for use before winter. The second bridge is usable, but it also needs the abutments reinforced due to washout.
The embankment next to the registration gazebo in Creekside Campground had more than 60 inches of earth washed away.
Saddle Trail, which used to run alongside the creek, had to be moved many yards over because the trail was worn away by the rushing water.
It is impossible to say how many hundreds of trees were taken down by the flood waters along the Big Paint, the Little Paint, the Upper Iowa and Yellow Rivers, but Yellow River crews are doing what they can to save trees on the state land. Many trees near the waterways were undermined around and under the roots. Crews used black dirt to fill in around the trees and are now hoping for the best.
They did locate all of the donated park benches, but at least two of them were damaged beyond repair.
“It’s nice to have the campers back,” Retallick says. “And people need to know that we still have plenty of sites left if they want to come camping."
Yellow River State Forest  consists of 8,503 acres and is well known for camping, equestrian accommodations, fishing, hunting, and over 25 miles of trails for hiking, equestrian riding, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. There are six miles of trout stream and the Iowa DNR Fisheries Division has resumed trout stocking.