John Riley Silsbee

John Riley Silsbee, about 1844-1890
Died in the Walnut Grove Dam Disaster

Buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 33, Grave B

(Grave marker photograph courtesy of the
​Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.)

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When the Walnut Grove Dam in Yavapai County burst on February 22, 1890, John Silsbee, a Union Army veteran of the Civil War, was one of the victims.
 
John Riley Silsbee was born between late 1843 and summer 1844 in Lee, Oneida County, New York, to John Silsbee and Mary Wright. In 1845, the Silsbee family moved to Winnebago County, Wisconsin.
 
Twenty-year-old John had been working as a photographer when he accepted a bounty payment for enlisting in the Union Army on September 3, 1864, in Albany, New York. He mustered in on September 5, 1864, as a private in Company A, 10th New York Heavy Artillery. It appears that Silsbee’s artillery unit participated in the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, followed by duty in the Shenandoah Valley until December, when it returned to Washington, D.C. From there, it manned defenses at Bermuda Hundred until the Appomattox Campaign in March and the fall of Petersburg on April 2, 1865. The 10th New York Artillery was mustered out on June 23 at the conclusion of the war.
 
By 1874, John and his older brother Edward were residing in Prescott, Arizona Territory. When a significant lode of silver was found between Crown King and New River, John and Edward briefly became saloonkeepers at the Tip Top mining camp. However, the silver strike eventually played out. By late 1883, John R. Silsbee was in Phoenix, working as a house and sign painter. While there, he joined the John Wren Owen post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). In 1886, he was elected Quartermaster Sergeant.
 
In February 1890, the Silsbee brothers journeyed over the Bradshaw Mountains to visit friends working near or at the Walnut Grove Dam. The dam was located along the Hassayampa River, 20 miles downstream from Prescott. It was one of the four largest dams in the western United States intended for water storage purposes. Though designed to be 80 feet high, it was built to 110 feet—a fatal mistake!
 
Around midnight on February 22, 1890, the Walnut Grove Dam burst, sending a wall of water a hundred feet high--including tons of rock--roaring down the canyon at over sixty miles an hour. The reservoir behind the dam released its immense store of 4 billion gallons of water in about an hour, leaving a scene of devastation below the dam site.  John Silsbee was among the casualties, although his brother Edmund [sic] Silsbee survived.

Edward Silsbee had his brother’s body transported to Phoenix for burial in the City Cemetery. On August 25, 1902, Silsbee was reinterred in Porter Cemetery, next to his Union Army comrades. In 1941, a government-issued military grave marker was installed on Private Silsbee’s grave.
 
© 2023 by Bob Cox. Last revised June 23, 2023.

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