Mary Elizabeth's Preservation and Rescue of the Hansen Family during the Flood

“She stood fascinated. The clouds had not yet met, and were under the glare of intense sunlight. When they did meet they convulsed, recoiled, billowed and rolled against each other. The sun was instantly blotted out, and there was such a crash of thunder as shook the earth and blue sheet lightning blazed athwart the scene... The monster of destruction, blind and pitiless, was just emerging from the canyon. Fully twenty feet high, the flood waters were pushing a wall of uprooted trees, with limbs and roots interlocked, dead cows and sheep, rocks and brush turning over and over helplessly, the whole mass gaining momentum with every second. It was coming down the main channel, and might be deflected in part by the spillway, but it looked as though it was heading straight for the house... The little boy concluding that he had been a bird in the rain long enough, was determined to get down, and probably would have done so if he had not been securely tied to the tree; and the girl had her hands full on her precarious perch... She wondered at her own calmness, for it was very near now, and the men on horseback, ride as they would, could not reach them in time. — The Young Woman's Journal 39:8”