The destruction of Ulu Selangor
This short note by H. P. Bryson, M.C., documents the destruction of the village of Ulu Selangor by flood and its subsequent rebuilding as Kuala Kubu.
Summary
Bryson references an extract from A. B. Rathborne’s Camping and Tramping in Malaya (1898), previously reprinted in JMBRAS 28(4), 1955, which mentions the flood destruction of Ulu Selangor. He notes that the official account of the disaster appears in the Annual Financial Report for the State of Selangor for 1883, published in the Straits Settlements Government Gazette of March 14, 1884, and written by the British Resident (p. 183).
The village was rebuilt at Kuala Kubu on higher ground overlooking the disaster site, and was thereafter officially known by that name, though “Ulu Selangor” persisted as an alternative on SBRAS maps of 1887 and 1893. Bryson adds that the town was rebuilt again in the late 1920s, with present-day Kuala Kubu Bahru centred approximately two miles from the 1884 site (p. 183).