A Night of Terror on the Telephone Lines: Sally Rooke's Last Stand during the Disastrous Folsom Flood

 What would you do if you held the power to save your town from an impending disaster? Experience the riveting tale of Sally Rooke, a heroic telephone operator from Folsom, New Mexico, who, in 1908, put her life on the line to warn her fellow townsfolk about an imminent, catastrophic flood. In one of history's most tragic chapters, Folsom, located precariously along the Cimarron riverbed, fell prey to nature's wrath. The town's susceptibility to flooding, coupled with the limited opportunities accessible to women like Sally, paints a compelling picture of the era.

Fasten your seatbelts as we journey through the stormy night of the Folsom Flood of 1908 and the brave actions of Sally Rooke. Through local narratives and historical records, we learn of Sally's valiant efforts to alert her community, a task she pursued until her very last breath. Sally's legacy lives on in the annals of history, a beacon of courage in a world fraught with challenges. Listen in as we pay homage to an unsung heroine, whose story continues to resonate across the decades.

A special thanks to James Steinle for graciously allowing us to excerpt his song "The Tale of Sally Rooke" in this episode. Check out James over on Spotify and watch for him in the hills of West Texas or on his excursions into New Mexico!

For more on Sally Rooke, check out these links: Sarah “Sally” Rooke: NM Historical Women Marker

Folsom Flood  Primary  Source Accounts from the Folsom Museum. 

And keep listening to the Enchantment Chronicles for the discovery after the flood that changed our understanding of North American history!

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Episode Transcript

Johnny (00:15):
Bienvenidos.
This is the EnchantmentChronicles.
I am Johnny, the Man ofEnchantment.

Drew (00:23):
I'm Drew and we are here to tell you about a story from
our New Mexico history.
Hey, Johnny, have you everheard of a trolley problem?

Johnny (00:35):
No, I don't know what that means.

Drew (00:37):
Okay.
So it's like an ethicist'sdilemma.
It's one of these horribledecisions.
And in it there's a trolley, soit's on these little tracks and
you're right by the switch andyou see something like there's
an adorable little dog, beloveddog, on one set of tracks and

(00:58):
then there's a grandma crossingthe street on the other set of
tracks.
So the question is where do yousend the trolley?
Do you send it to the grandmaor send it to the dog?
And you know, I mean there'sdifferent versions of it, you
know.
But the basic dilemma is youcan't save everyone, so who do

(01:19):
you save?

Johnny (01:20):
How old's the dog?

Drew (01:23):
I said adorable puppy and grandma.

Johnny (01:30):
Yeah, I don't know, probably grandma.

Drew (01:35):
No matter what, grandma could probably live longer than
the puppy, Right?
Well, this is the story of awoman who found herself very
much in the midst of a trolleyproblem.
Only, in her case, it was herown life that she had to decide
whether she had to save.

(01:56):
And this is the story of theFolsom Flood of 1908.

James Steinle-- The Tale (02:05):
Here's the tale of Sally Rook, from
Folsom, New Mexico.
She was a telephone operator bytrade but, more important, a
hero.
River run high, the river runramps barreling down to a Folsom

(02:29):
town.
From the darkest sky throughthe valley white better head up
to higher ground.
Dust fell on the town summer1908, August 27th precise, in
the town of 998.
All the springs green, a turnof gray.

(02:52):
When the ranchers went to cutand hang, there come a deluge.
Just up the Dry Cimmarronalong the the river.
River run high, river run rampsbarreling down to a Folsom town
From the darkest sky, throughthe valley white better head up
to higher ground.
Sally Rook ewas an older ladywho manned a telephone station.

(03:18):
No patching plugs and punchinglines was her occupation.
And through the dark there ranga ring, this Cimarron where
the feed.
She said Sally, well, there's aflood coming like I've never
seen.
She went river run high, theriver run ramps barreling down

(03:40):
to a Folsom town From thedarkest sky through the valley
white, better head up to higherground.

Drew (03:48):
August 27th, 1908.
Yeah, we don't actually haveany reports from August 27th
because, among other things, thenewspaper offices were flooded
out and the printing presseswashed out, so took a few days
for them to clean them up andget them ready.
So to give you a little context, in 1908, we had railroads,

(04:10):
kind of crisscrossing New Mexico, small narrow gauge ones, and
with these railroads you havetelegraph lines and telephone
lines everywhere.
But also in 1908, women werevery limited in terms of their
job options.
They could be a nurse, theycould be a teacher, they could
be a waitress at a Harvey HouseHeaven forbid, they'd be a

(04:34):
waitress somewhere else.
But one of their options was tobe a telephone operator.
That became a job that was opento women, but only after
Alexander Graham Bell tried tohire a bunch of teenage boys and
they started messing aroundinstead of plugging in and
connecting the phone.
So a woman named Sally Rookmoved to Folsom in 1905 after

(04:57):
visiting a friend and she got ajob as a telephone operator.
Sounds pretty nice as far as wego right.
But unfortunately Folsom wasalong the dry Cimarron, which
was a riverbed.
In the Cimarron that usuallywas just a dry arroyo and

(05:18):
unfortunately during flooding itwould turn wet.
We had a town of about 800situated right there along the
banks of the Cimarron and theywere a cattle ranch in town.

Johnny (05:34):
We're talking 800 in 1908?
.

Drew (05:38):
Yes.

Johnny (05:39):
That was pretty big back then.

Drew (05:41):
Yeah, according to one local rancher's website, a
modern local rancher they saidit was the biggest cattle head
north of Abilene, Texas at thetime.
So it was an up and coming townkind of place people could
start over.

Johnny (06:02):
And Folsom is up near Capulin Volcano.

Drew (06:06):
Right, it's about five miles from Des Moines, which
some of us have driven along ourway through Oklahoma and Kansas
.
If you take a shortcut back tothe Midwest probably, what 20
miles that or so away from Raton?

Johnny (06:20):
right?
Well, so we have Sally, and shemoved to Folsom in 1905.
1905.

Drew (06:28):
Yeah, she takes a job there and she's working the
switchboard, and according to alocal paper, there'd been a very
pleasant rain there that night,August 27th, in the evening,
but later there was a storm westof town up at the mountains,
and that storm was horrific.

(06:50):
Locals claimed that they're ifthey had cast iron bathtubs
sitting outside, as some peoplestill did back in 1908, some of
those cast iron bathtubsoverflowed just from the
rainfall and unfortunately, mostof these houses along there had
been built without foundations.
You know our New Mexico soil ispretty rocky, it's hard to dig

(07:10):
in, and so they just kind ofbuilt huts above the ground.

Johnny (07:16):
So can I read an excerpt from a newspaper three days
after the event?
Quote "ivid and continuouslightning soon developed.
Down came the torrents of water, amid the continuous flashing
and crashing of deafening pealsof thunder that were echoing
back and forth from peak to peak.

Drew (07:39):
Wow, yeah, you can imagine that that's the first time I
moved out to New Mexico.
I accidentally camped in astream bed.
Once I had to drag my tent outof the water.
That was only a couple ofinches, but I had to learn.
Well, Sally got a call from MrsBen F Owens.

(08:02):
She was still at the centraloffice at the switchboard after
dark when many of the peoplewere in bed.
Mrs Owens lived eight miles upthe river bed.
There she said there's a wallof water coming.
The accounts in the newspaperis very and it might be just

(08:23):
based on how wide the canyon wasat those various points between
12 feet high or only five feethigh but we know entire
buildings were overturned withthat wall of water.
Sally figures out that she'sthe only one that can call these
people.
She's the one warning.

(08:43):
She starts connecting theseplugs, connecting these wires,
one at a time.
This is where that trolleyproblem comes in.
I picture her calling thesefamilies over and over again.
I wonder if each time does shethink, okay, have I called
enough?
Or does she just keep going?

(09:06):
Has she already made herdecision?

Johnny (09:09):
Was she calling everybody in the path of the?
I'm assuming some folks weren'tin the path of this river or
the stream bed.

Drew (09:20):
Yeah, I mean we know some people were up ahead.
We actually know that someonewe'll talk about later, George
McJunkin.
He lived outside a town and hewas woken up by it, but there
was no way he could get on ahorse and outrun the floodwaters
to warn anybody.
He knew he couldn't.

(09:41):
But in a town of 800, she knowsthe layout.
She's calling everybody she can.
She has to wait for the phoneto get picked up.
She has to explain what's goingon.
But who knows how many peopleshe called, how many people
answered, who knows how manypeople ran out the door and
banged on other doors and wokeup their neighbors and said we

(10:03):
got to go, the water's coming.
All we know is that she keptcalling.
She kept calling even as thosewaters were coming.
Eventually they washed away hercentral office.
We even know that the lastperson that heard her calling

(10:25):
survived and reported that sheheard a crash and the line went
dead.
Then again, just relying on aweb, on a blog of a local
rancher, a lot of the locals saywell, first of all we should
say Sally was not found forquite a while.

(10:45):
Afterwards.
She was found herself eightmiles downstream the next spring
, I think it was.
But some people say that whenthey found her she still had her
head set on.
She was still trying to makeone more connection, which would
of course jibe with what weheard about from the last phone

(11:08):
call she made.
There was that last horrificcrash and then the line had gone
dead.
It was the all-cut family thatthey were calling.
They reported hearing aterrible clash of thunder before
that line went dead.
Maybe it was thunder, maybe itwas the central office itself

(11:30):
washing away, but she never gaveup.
She kept calling.
She gave up her life in theservice of that town.
In the end, the day after, Ithink, they reported 10 dead at
first and later added seven tothe toll out of more than 800.
And you're right that not allof them would have been along

(11:52):
the banks of the river there,but it's probably safe to say
that she saved 10 times as manyas would kill just by getting
that word out.
And in fact that story reachedas far as the East Coast.
It was reported in Coloradonewspapers, it was reported in
the New York Times andeventually telephone operators

(12:13):
across the country raised moneyby contributing dimes 4,334
dimes were contributed to it setup a memorial to Sally Rook and
she later got recognized by ourstate and there's a historical
marker out there near Folsomwhich acknowledges her sacrifice

(12:36):
and how much she did to savethe people of Folsom.
Sadly the town itself didn'trecover.

Johnny (12:45):
but so do you know if this is the first document, kind
of documented 911, equivalentof the 911 operator?

Drew (12:57):
I think it may be.
It would be 60 years before thefirst 911 call was made, but I
think Sally in that moment, inthat one moment, identified what
she needed to do and was ableto get it done.
I'm sure there was other timesthat people made phone calls for
doctors, but in this case itwas a very dramatic story that

(13:20):
had reached across the country,such that 4,334 telephone
operators across the countrywould each contribute a dime of
their wages, which was not aninsubstantial amount back then,
to set up a memorial for.
So yeah, this is kind of apoint where some of the world

(13:41):
saw the potential for ourcommunication systems to warn us
.

Johnny (13:49):
So, and just I'm looking up the value of those donations
and it's about $3,400 intoday's dollars.
Yeah, and this the flood didthis wipe out Folsom completely.

Drew (14:12):
I mean, there's something like 80 people living there
today.
So I mean and part of itprobably is, we learn from our
mistakes, right?
The people that did stickaround stick around in the
county wouldn't have rebuilt inthe riverbed, and the people in
the town that we built wouldn'thave rebuilt right where the
flooded pass through.

(14:34):
But most of the townessentially washed away and
never came back.
So that was the end of Folsomas anything more than a census
designated place, as we call ourvery tiny towns here in New
Mexico.

Johnny (14:52):
But it wasn't the end of Folsom, because we will be
speaking or chatting aboutsomething else that came from
this flood and the guy later on,a guy by the name of George
McJunkin, who ended updiscovering a bunch of Fossils
because of the flood.

Drew (15:14):
Absolutely, yeah.
So that flood probably promptedthe greatest archaeological
discovery in the 20th century,certainly in the Americas, if
not in the world.
So stay tuned for that episodeand thank you for listening.

Johnny (15:29):
Thank you.

James Steinle-- The Tale (15:46):
Sally took a breath, sat up real tall
and straight underneath theglow of a flickering light and
she knew this was her fate.
In horror dread and the dead ofnight started calling up a
storm.
Everyone on the bossam town.
She dialed him up to war.
She said hitch those wagons,save your lives.

Johnny (16:08):
That river's coming, don't waste no time Get out now.

James Steinle-- The Tale of S (16:11):
I still gotta sit and get on with
that mountainside.
At the stroke of midnight, theoutskirts of town, came that

(16:46):
wall, five feet high water andmurky brown Sally still on the
line when she got washed away.
But in a town of 998, only 17met the gray.
This here's the tale of SallyRook from Folsom, new Mexico.

(17:06):
She was a telephone operated bya train but, more importantly,
a hero.
She was a telephone operated bya train but, more importantly,

(17:37):
a hero.