Very heavy snowfall piled up in early 1965 as prolonged deep cold delayed the melt. Even March was extreme: It was the coldest March since many organizations began keeping records. When winter finally moderated, spring came with a vengeance. Early April rains only compounded the quickly escalating problems. "This," said Minneapolis Weather Bureau meteorologist Joseph Strub, "is what we were afraid of." Water poured into streams until they climbed out of their banks. The situation was so dire that Stillwater schools excused all able-bodied high school students from their studies to go downtown and assist in the building of a mile long dike. Also assisting in the effort were about 50 prison inmates from the nearby state prison. "Most of us have families, too," said a con.
All the hard work paid off. On Easter Sunday April 18, 1965 the river crested 19 feet above normal but the hastily built dike saved the business district of downtown Stillwater. Grateful residents erected a sign with an Easter lily in their 5,000-foot sandbag heap, naming the lifesaving structure "Teen-agers' Dike." Someone quickly revised that to read "Teen-agers' and Convicts' Dike" to commemorate help from the city's young people as well as from its prison inmates.
The posted coordinates will bring you to a plaque that commemorates the great flood of 1965. To achieve credit for this cache please send the cache owner an email with the answer to the following questions. Do not post your answers in your log (even if encrypted) or I will delete your find.
1. Exactly how many feet above sea level (not flood stage) did the river crest?
2. How many words are in the last line of text on the plaque?
Extra credit: Please feel free to snap a picture of the views from the area around GZ and post them with your log.