As It Was - Episode 2253
The 1964 Christmas week flood affected almost everyone in Northern California and Southern Oregon. The worst of the flood was over when some folks in Crescent City, Calif., were standing on Citizen’s Pier in the harbor watching piles of debris coming in on the tide. Suddenly, one of the logs lifted its head.
The onlookers rushed for their boats and discovered the log was instead a 900-pound, black Angus steer with its legs caught in the debris, upright but barely alive. Carefully they pulled apart the debris pile, delicately freed the steer’s legs and lifted it into their boat.
They named the steer Captain Courageous. His rescuers surmised he must have been swept out of a pasture up one of the creeks or even the Klamath River. But wherever he came from, he had survived a stormy sea journey.
Dave Stewart took the steer home, nursed it back to health, and vowed it would live the rest of its natural life in a peaceful pasture and never become a meal. Stewart said Captain Courageous was symbolic of the courage and will to live that Del Norte county residents demonstrate during crises.
Source: Moore, Gary, and Amy Higday, eds. Medford, Ore.: Rogue Publishing Co. Print. Found in the Southern Oregon Historical Society Research Library Vertical File on the 1964 Flood.
