When a wall of water swept through Manti

                                            Manti Creek.

UTAH was plagued by some summer cloudbursts and flooding in the early 20th Century. Mostly caused by overgrazing, the most infamous of such floods struck Willard and Farmington in the early 1920s. However, a summer flood in 1899 -- several decades earlier -- devastated Manti, Utah.

                                      The mouth of Manti Canyon.

"A wall of water. The City of Manti swept by a cloudburst. Streets turned into a raging river. Thousands of dollars of damage done -- No lives are lost" was a July 14, 1899 headline in the Times-News of Nephi, Utah.  The flood, with overgrazing by sheep as a contributing factor -- roared out of Manti Canyon, on the City's east side and made the town look like the bed of a river.

                        Sheep were common livestock Utah, but led to overgrazing.

"At about 6:45 (p.m.) some men came riding down from the canyon, shouting that a flood was coming, but the people were loth to believe the report," the newspaper stated. "In an incredible short time after the warning a wall of water about eight or ten feet high came rushing down the creek carrying with it an immense quantity of logs, stumps and other debris."
Some logs jammed under a bridge, forming a dam and directing much of the water into town. Cellars were filled with mud and crops were damaged. It was estimated that up to $60,000 damage was done to the town. A mass meeting of residents was called to start a cleanup effort.

 The Manti Temple was not damaged by the 1899 flood, being located on a hill in town.

-"One less bear to prey on herds that graze in Manti Canyon" was a July 23, 1907 headline in the Salt Lake Herald Republican newspaper. Nephi Ottosen killed a 500-pound bear in a hunting expedition to go after the bruin who was responsible for killing livestock. He shot the bear from 15 feet away as it approached him.
A few months earlier, a large grizzly bear had been killed with poison honey in Manti Canyon. Ranchers had reported that five or six cows a week were killed in the spring of 1907 and that the first bear killed didn't stop the damage.
"Bear tracks in the mountains are almost as common as those made by the cattle," the newspaper reported.

NOTE that the early 20th Century was the time for the last of Utah's grizzly bears to be wiped out. Besides the Manti bears, the last bear in the Mount Nebo area and the infamous Old Ephraim of Logan Canyon were all killed in the early 1920s.