PURISSIMA, Jan. 10th.–The flood has been most disastrous on this creek, especially to N. C. Lane. About two or three acres of ground slid into the creek above the saw mill, overwhelming the barn, and killing instantly two valuable horses and four oxen. It then struck the Snelling House, completely demolishing it. Lane had just completed his house and furnished it with new and costly furniture, which is all a perfect wreck. The family saved themselves with difficulty, having only four or five minutes notice before the water bore the house away and dashed it to pieces among redwood trees hundreds of feet long and many of them six or eight feet in diameter. The most remarkable incident that occurred during the disaster was the saving of the piano forte. While almost every other article was either crushed to fragments, or borne away by the resistless torrent, the piano was lifted on the top of a large redwood log, and deposited unharmed some distance below the general wreck. All along the creek roads and bridges are completely washed away, or so much injured as to be impassable, and every hillside bears evidence, in numerous slides, of the devastating power of the storm. Saturday morning presented. a scene seldom witnessed in our quiet community. The Purissima has a fall of about seventy feet over the bluff into the ocean. Over this cataract, borne by the turbid flood; were hurled in wild confusion the debris of denuded ranches, dwellings, outhouses and fences, mixed with giant redwood trees and logs, and the whole precipitated into the boiling surf, and thrown high upon the jagged rocks of this iron bound coast.
Sacramento Daily Union, 17 January 1862
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