Snyder: Tragedy In Water Canyon, 1920

By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society

In September of 1920, a young couple from the East arrived at the Los Alamos Ranch School (LARS).

Henry Ruhl was there to join the teaching staff as a master, and Virginia Ruhl, his wife of less than a year, would become the first faculty wife at the school.

The couple had New England roots, as many of the LARS masters did through the years. Henry was a Yale graduate, Class of 1917, and Virginia’s family tree held such names as John Alden and William Brewster, who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620.

Having graduated college during World War I, Henry immediately joined the army and earned the rank of First Lieutenant in the 118th Infantry. He was shipped overseas in May of 1918 and was soon commanding a gun crew on the British front near Bellicourt, France. The battle that ensued was preceded by the largest British artillery bombardment of the war. The heavy guns fired more than one million shells.

According to Wirth and Aldrich in Los Alamos: The Ranch School Years, Henry was gassed and severely wounded. He returned to the United States almost a year later and was discharged from the army in 1919. Within another year, he had signed on to teach English and history at LARS. Six weeks into the autumn term, Henry and a young student, Donald Thompson, left the LARS campus to hunt deer. While they made their way through Water Canyon, a snow storm overtook them, and the pair became disoriented. They found a cave and set up camp, hoping for better weather in the morning. Unable to find dry wood, they settled in for a cold night.

When young Thompson awoke the next morning, he found that Henry Ruhl had died in the night. The exhaustion was too much for Henry’s physical condition that resulted from his war wounds, and the cold may have affected his damaged lungs that were most likely compromised by mustard gas used in the Bellicourt battle. Though Thompson was only 14 years old, he stayed calm and used the training he had learned at the ranch school. The blizzard, still in full force, made it difficult, but Thompson walked 12 miles to Buckman, where the ranch school could be notified. He knew that if he walked down the canyon he would come to the river, and along the river he could find help.

The school truck arrived at Buckman and then took the rudimentary dirt road up Water Canyon to within two miles of the camp site. Though it isn’t mentioned in the history of this event, Thompson must have accompanied the truck to point out the location of the camp. Ruhl’s body had to be carried back to the truck. Young Thompson was a hero and most likely never forgot those hours in Water Canyon. Ruhl’s young wife accompanied her husband’s body to Clarksville, West Virginia, by train.

Henry was buried in his hometown of Clarksville, WV. Virginia remarried in 1923 and stayed in Clarksville. Thomson spent most of his life in Washington, DC, and died there in 1949 at the age of 45.

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