Rising Tide. Part 9

CYPRESS C CREEK was located on the west bank of the Mississippi, about 35 miles by river (less than half that in a straight line) above Greenville and 15 miles below the mouth of the Arkansas, which drains a basin stretching deep into the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado. was located on the west bank of the Mississippi, about 35 miles by river (less than half that in a straight line) above Greenville and 15 miles below the mouth of the Arkansas, which drains a basin stretching deep into the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado.

The 1916 Mississippi River flood was not a great flood, but during it 336,000 cubic feet of water each second escaped from the Mississippi into Cypress Creek. This amount exceeds the flow of the Danube in flood, far exceeds Niagara Falls in flood, and more than doubles the flow of the flooding Colorado River.

The water that escaped into Cypress Creek inundated a huge natural reservoir, and eventually found its way into the Boeuf, Ouachita, or Red Rivers, thence to the sea either by returning to the Mississippi or going down the Atchafalaya River, the greatest outlet of the Mississippi.

Closing Cypress Creek sparked controversy. James Kemper and a few others argued that increasing the volume of the Mississippi by 300,000 second-feet or more was madness. He insisted that the closure would raise the flood height 6 feet higher than it would otherwise be.

To prove his case he and others tried to convince the Corps to build a hydraulics laboratory for studying the river. It was not a new idea, but General Lansing Beach, chief of engineers, rejected it, explaining: "The art of dam construction is so far advanced in this country that a national hydraulic laboratory is not necessary to advance that science.... I particularly desire to emphasize my opinion that the hydraulic laboratory proposed would have no value whatever in solving flood control."

As Kemper later observed, "It is so much easier to believe than to think; it is astounding how much more believing is done than thinking. It is more astounding that an honest study was not made of conditions resulting from [the levees-only policy]. Not only was essential data not available but it appeared as though the failure to acquire it was deliberate. The determination to carry out this impossible theory was so great that, with many, it appeared to be an obsession."

The obsession was proving dangerous. The Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission closed the Cypress Creek outlet in 1921. No longer could Mississippi River water escape into Cypress Creek.

BY MID-MARCH 1922, shortly after LeRoy Percy first spoke against the Klan, Kemper was predicting a record or near-record flood. At the time, he stood alone in that prediction. 1922, shortly after LeRoy Percy first spoke against the Klan, Kemper was predicting a record or near-record flood. At the time, he stood alone in that prediction.

On April 10 in Greenville, the river rose unexpectedly over the 50-foot mark on the gauge, just inches below the all-time record of 50.8 feet.* Water already "in sight"-i.e., upriver or in tributaries-would keep the Mississippi rising for at least two more weeks. Water already "in sight"-i.e., upriver or in tributaries-would keep the Mississippi rising for at least two more weeks.

On April 11 the gauge at the foot of Ca.n.a.l Street in New Orleans, more than 400 miles downriver from Greenville, also neared a record. Along the entire length of the lower Mississippi, people grew tense, fearing they were in for the battle of their lives.

The next day in Louisiana a call went out for volunteers to guard the levee at night. In Mississippi identical efforts had already begun. Armed men walked every inch of the levee watching for weak points; they also watched for dynamiters. If the levee yields on one bank of the river, those on the opposite bank are suddenly safe.

On April 15 the river at Greenville rose to 51 feet-a record-and continued rising.

Each hour the river drained more resources, more energy, from the people along it. Supplies of sandbags were exhausted. The men stacking them were exhausted. Money was exhausted.

On April 19, Percy once again addressed a ma.s.s meeting convened in the People's Theater. The Klan fight was put on hold; the river took precedence. This address contained no rhetoric and little pleading. He stated the facts. Already the levee board had expended all of its funds. There was no money for sandbags, for barge fuel, for lumber, for any of the other things a high-water fight required. They needed to work together, he said, to pool all that they had, to make all their labor available, to devote all all their resources to this fight. Hundreds of people listened to him, and they organized in smaller groups, each agreeing to feed levee workers, or arrange for timber, or supply shovels. their resources to this fight. Hundreds of people listened to him, and they organized in smaller groups, each agreeing to feed levee workers, or arrange for timber, or supply shovels.

Percy stripped his own cotton compress and plantations of laborers and sent them to the levee under the command of his manager, Charlie Williams, an expert flood fighter. Tens of thousands of men were fighting the river, filling and stacking sandbags, building "mud boxes"-planks nailed together at the crown of the levee, backed up by sandbags-to protect against wave wash, searching for signs of sloughing or of the river undermining the levee.

Meanwhile, Percy was asking bankers across the country for money; he also, with nine other leading Delta planters, one from each affected county, created the West Mississippi Flood Committee to mount an emergency lobbying effort in Was.h.i.+ngton. As a result, up and down the river mayors, the heads of levee boards, and bank presidents rained telegrams on Congress. Read one wire: "Everything possible is being done to hold the levees from ravages of highest water in histroy [sic] but with funds exhausted by the river commission and levee board they cannot expect to hold the situation...." Read another: "Without the $2 million...the fight will be hopeless in this district. With sufficient funds we have every prospect of winning this fight." Within days, Congress appropriated $1 million for the emergency.

The levees were holding, but the river was so high that tributaries could not empty into it; instead, the Mississippi forced its own waters back up their mouths. The flooding covered parts of six Delta counties and turned 20,000 Delta people into terrified refugees. "People from Belzoni to Vicksburg flooded by backwater," pleaded a new wire to Congress. "Conditions desperate without food or means of escape.... Suffering growing daily more widespread and acute. Believe only relief organized by government on large scale can equal emergency."

There was no more federal relief. At Greenville the river, far above the old record, was still rising. Virtually every male black within miles was working on the levees. Meanwhile, the flood poured south.

IN 1922, NEW O ORLEANS was a city of 450,000 people. At its back lay Lake Pontchartrain, 22 miles across and 50 miles wide, and at its front lay the river. No bridge crossed the river, much less the lake. Roads were poor in the best of circ.u.mstances, worse than useless in heavy rain. The only way out of the city was rail; a flood would cut even that connection. In an emergency the city would be impossible to evacuate or escape. was a city of 450,000 people. At its back lay Lake Pontchartrain, 22 miles across and 50 miles wide, and at its front lay the river. No bridge crossed the river, much less the lake. Roads were poor in the best of circ.u.mstances, worse than useless in heavy rain. The only way out of the city was rail; a flood would cut even that connection. In an emergency the city would be impossible to evacuate or escape.

The Mississippi River Commission's official New Orleans flood gauge was at Carrollton Bend near Tulane University, where St. Charles Avenue, one of the most elegant streets in America, intersects with Carrollton Avenue. The 1912 flood had set the record height of 21 feet at Carrollton. On April 14 the 1922 flood registered 21.3 feet at Carrollton, and rising. The crest was still hundreds of miles upriver.

At the foot of Ca.n.a.l Street in downtown New Orleans, the U.S. Weather Bureau maintained its own gauge. On April 25 it registered 22.7 feet, with the crest still far upriver. The river rose above rooftops, to the top of the levee. In places it rose above the levee. City engineer John Klorer, in a highly confidential report to the mayor, warned: "At Octavia there is low levee as well as levee deficient in cross-section.... At Louisiana Avenue the levee occupied by the Celeste Street shed is below the present stage of the river by 18 to 24 inches.... [The river] is being held out by a line of sandbags plus loose dirt.... There is not enough progress being made by the present forces."

Three thousand city workers and the National Guard frantically struggled to raise the levees higher. Far above New Orleans, when a levee board president discovered a dangerous section of levee and begged Governor Parker for a few men to patrol it, Parker refused: "We are in a most desperate fight here and need every man we are able to secure."

At the Esplanade wharf at the edge of the French Quarter, the Mississippi curved around a sharp bend greater than 90 degrees. There the overwhelming weight and momentum of the water coming downriver threw itself directly against the levee. The turn is so sharp that the water surface on the outside of the bend rises a foot higher than on the inside, as if banking around a racetrack, and the currents generate such force that they make this bend the deepest spot on the river, 240 feet deep. On Esplanade Street 100 yards from the levee, the cobblestones suddenly broke apart and a cone of earth shaped like a miniature volcano thrust upward and water began to shoot out of it. It was a sand boil, caused by the tremendous pressure of the water pus.h.i.+ng its way underneath the levee; the muddy water it spewed forth meant that earth from the levee was being shot into the air. An emergency crew built a ring of sandbags to contain the water until pressure equalized.

New Orleans had four competing daily newspapers, each run by men who used their papers as tools in a compet.i.tion for influence and power. The New Orleans Times-Picayune New Orleans Times-Picayune was the oldest, the largest, the most conservative, the most powerful. Earlier, when the river equaled the all-time record at Carrollton, it had printed the news on page 15 in a one-paragraph story. The flooding of Arkansas City, 10 miles below the now-closed Cypress Creek outlet, had been kept out of the papers entirely. Now no newspaper published news of the sand boil on Esplanade. was the oldest, the largest, the most conservative, the most powerful. Earlier, when the river equaled the all-time record at Carrollton, it had printed the news on page 15 in a one-paragraph story. The flooding of Arkansas City, 10 miles below the now-closed Cypress Creek outlet, had been kept out of the papers entirely. Now no newspaper published news of the sand boil on Esplanade.

The silence did not calm the city. And the Times-Picayune Times-Picayune had to report what the competing had to report what the competing Item Item put on page 1: Isaac Cline, the highly respected chief of the regional office of the U.S. Weather Bureau, was predicting a record stage of 22.6 feet at Carrollton and warning, "I cannot say whether the present prediction will be final or not." Soon Cline raised his prediction to 23 feet, almost a foot and a half above the old record. put on page 1: Isaac Cline, the highly respected chief of the regional office of the U.S. Weather Bureau, was predicting a record stage of 22.6 feet at Carrollton and warning, "I cannot say whether the present prediction will be final or not." Soon Cline raised his prediction to 23 feet, almost a foot and a half above the old record.

New Orleans Mayor Andrew McShane announced that the city was in no danger. Simultaneously, he notified all city workers to hold themselves in readiness for emergencies, and said that twenty-four-hour patrols of the levees were being conducted for 100 miles upriver.

The Port of New Orleans ordered all s.h.i.+ps to proceed at slow speed to prevent wakes from was.h.i.+ng over levees and sandbags. An anonymous telegram to Governor Parker published in the press gave a more forceful warning: "Notify the barge line that if the state cannot stop this we will. The next boat that comes down at such high speed will need two pilots, as we intend to kill the first one. Our guards are armed with Winchesters and they have orders to shoot to kill."

The crest was still at least a week away, a week of ever-rising water. Major R. T. Cotner, the New Orleans district engineer for the river commission, affirmed, "The levees are better and stronger now than at any time in history." But were they strong enough?

ON A APRIL 24, the levee creva.s.sed at Myrtle Grove, Louisiana, 50 miles downriver from New Orleans in a region with few inhabitants. On April 26, near Ferriday, Louisiana, across the river from Natchez, Mississippi, two tiny sand boils, barely an inch in diameter and shooting water only a foot high, erupted. Less than five minutes later, the levee abruptly caved into the river. Soon the breach exceeded 1,000 thousand feet in width. The river roared through it in giant billows, waves exploding as high as the tops of trees, forcing 20,000 people from their homes.

Engineers were stunned. The creva.s.se broke at a spot more than a mile from the river's natural banks, where the water seemed still. No current had attacked the levee. The weight of the river alone, pressing against the levee for weeks, had caused the collapse.

In New Orleans outright panic erupted. Hundreds of people, not trusting the papers, came to the levee to see the river themselves. They left terrified. The water licked at the top of the levee; indeed, for long stretches it stood higher than the levee. Only sandbags held it. And the river was still rising.

On April 27, levee breaks upriver forced the New Orleans Times-Picayune New Orleans Times-Picayune for the first time to put the flood on page 1. Its editorial tried to calm the frightened city: "As for the high water situation, both state and federal engineers give us rea.s.suring reports. The levees are in better shape than they have ever been in.... This newspaper a.s.sumes that the expert and seasoned guardians of the levees know what they are talking about. In our judgment the official a.s.surances justify a reasoned and sane confidence." for the first time to put the flood on page 1. Its editorial tried to calm the frightened city: "As for the high water situation, both state and federal engineers give us rea.s.suring reports. The levees are in better shape than they have ever been in.... This newspaper a.s.sumes that the expert and seasoned guardians of the levees know what they are talking about. In our judgment the official a.s.surances justify a reasoned and sane confidence."

Twelve miles below New Orleans at a place called Poydras in St. Bernard Parish, the Mississippi River, after running in a straight line for several miles, took another sharp turn. Louisiana state engineers described the area as "the bight of a big bend in the river, where the full effect of the strong current was felt."

There, also on April 27, also without warning, less than an hour after a guard had inspected the levee and found no problem, the levee imploded. It happened almost precisely at a site, barely 5 miles from an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, that had long been considered for an artificial spillway. St. Bernard and neighboring Plaquemines Parishes were flooded. Rumors of sabotage swept the two parishes.

By luck the Poydras creva.s.se killed no one, but it ultimately reached a width of 1,500 feet and dug a hole 90 feet deep where the levee had been. The levee itself added 25 feet of height. That meant that a moving mountain of water nearly 1,500 feet wide and up to 115 feet high-as high as an eleven-story building-exploded onto the land.

AFTER THE P POYDRAS CREVa.s.sE, the river at New Orleans fell rapidly, as if a plug had been pulled out of a sink. With collective and immense relief, all New Orleans watched the river fall. All along the city's waterfront, from the most fas.h.i.+onable homes a few blocks from the river on St. Charles Avenue and in the Garden District, through the downtown business district, down to the working-cla.s.s slum of the French Quarter, down to the wharves and industrial areas below that, down past the largest sugar refinery in the world, the water level fell. It fell 6 inches in a day, when it had been rising with the crest still upriver. It fell 2 feet in three days, when it had been rising with the crest still upriver. By the time the crest arrived, so much water was pouring out through the Poydras creva.s.se that the river did not even approach the record set earlier.

Meanwhile, far upriver in Greenville, the crest had set a new record height of 52 feet. The people of the Delta had waged a tremendous struggle. Their levee system had held. Backwater flooding had created tens of thousands of refugees, but the levees had held.

After the flood, engineers interpreted these events differently.

THE M MISSISSIPPI R RIVER C COMMISSION and the Corps of Engineers believed that the 1922 flood proved that their ancient fight with the Mississippi River had nearly ended, and that they would soon see themselves crowned as victors. They insisted that the creva.s.ses in Louisiana had come in substandard levees. They bragged that for the first time in history a record-setting Mississippi River flood had pa.s.sed from Illinois to the Gulf without a single break in a levee built to commission standards. The 70,000 homeless in three states had been the victims of either substandard levees or backwater. and the Corps of Engineers believed that the 1922 flood proved that their ancient fight with the Mississippi River had nearly ended, and that they would soon see themselves crowned as victors. They insisted that the creva.s.ses in Louisiana had come in substandard levees. They bragged that for the first time in history a record-setting Mississippi River flood had pa.s.sed from Illinois to the Gulf without a single break in a levee built to commission standards. The 70,000 homeless in three states had been the victims of either substandard levees or backwater.

So the Mississippi River Commission turned its attention to completing its work: seeing that all levees met its standards for grade and section, and laying plans to close the final and greatest outlet of the Mississippi-the Atchafalaya River.

But if the commission was congratulating itself and saw final victory in the near future, other engineers, especially James Kemper, looked at the 1922 flood and saw imminent danger.

The 1922 flood had broken no records for height and had threatened no levees above Cypress Creek, but it had broken records on every single gauge below Cypress Creek, from Greenville all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Critics of the Army argued that the closure of Cypress Creek had raised flood heights dangerously high.

Walter Sillers, Sr., head of the levee board based in Greenville, warned both Percy and Charles West, whose appointment to the Mississippi River Commission Percy had engineered, "A situation has been created in the upper part of the Mississippi Levee District which, in my opinion, is a menace and endangers...all of the counties of the district." Kemper pointed out: "The Mississippi River Commission closed off Bayou Plaquemine, and they closed off Bayou Lafourche. They have closed off everything that can be closed. They closed Cypress Creek, all under the same policy, and every closure has raised the flood stages to a stage higher than they were before.... In 1850 the levee at Raccourcci was required to be 8 feet high. It is well above 30 feet now. At Morganza, a levee of 7.5 feet held the flood of 1850. It had 38 feet of water against it this year. Forty miles above New Orleans the levee that held the flood of 1850 was 1.8 feet high. Now it must be 20 feet high."

Water runs to the sea. If an obstacle-such as a dam or a levee-prevents water from flowing where gravity would send it, then the water's ma.s.s and potential energy builds. The greater the force applied in an effort to block water from its natural flow, the greater will grow the ma.s.s of water so blocked, and the greater will become the potential power of its energy. The engineer of the levee district immediately north of Greenville, stated, "[W]e are in reality facing a condition and not a theory."

The Corps clung to its theory.

IF PEOPLE UPRIVER VOICED CONCERN, in New Orleans they were desperate.

Kemper warned loudly that New Orleans had escaped disaster in 1922 only because the flood had, despite its record height, carried far from record volume. He pointed out that, measured in cubic feet per second, twelve floods in the preceding forty years had exceeded the 1922 flood.

The terrible flood of 1882 had carried 2,250,000 cubic feet per second. The 1912 and 1913 floods had each carried 2,000,000 cfs. The 1922 flood had carried not quite 1,750,000 cfs. Kemper believed that 1922 did not even suggest the forces that the Mississippi could unleash.

What would happen if a flood as great as those of 1912 and 1913, much less 1882, moved down the river with Cypress Creek closed? What would happen if the river commission proceeded with its plan to close the last outlet, the Atchafalaya-thus increasing the volume of water pa.s.sing New Orleans by approximately one-third?

More than ever, Kemper was convinced New Orleans needed a spillway for emergencies. He believed the experience of the Poydras creva.s.se proved his case. He began to fight, hard, for his beliefs, and was now joined by far more powerful allies.

Jim Thomson threw his weight behind Kemper. Long interested in the river, Thomson owned two New Orleans newspapers, the Morning Tribune Morning Tribune and the afternoon and the afternoon Item Item. He was also well connected in Was.h.i.+ngton; he had worked in several presidential campaigns and, using family like a medieval potentate cementing alliances, became the son-in-law of the Speaker of the House and the brother-in-law of a senator, with his niece married to a senator. He contacted the presidents of every bank in the city, the Cotton Exchange, the Board of Trade, the a.s.sociation of Commerce, and union leaders, then formed them all into the Safe River Committee of 100. Together their connections stretched from Was.h.i.+ngton to Wall Street.

For the next five years Thomson pushed Presidents Harding and Coolidge, the War Department, and the Congress to require the river commission to build a spillway.

General Beach, head of the Army engineers, responded by charging that New Orleans' interests wanted a spillway only to save money. The city's port infrastructure-docks, railroads, grain elevators, cotton warehouses, wharves-had been built to the old Mississippi River Commission standard. Raising it all to the new commission standard would cost millions of dollars, and the federal government would pay none of it. Beach also warned, "Some one has apparently started a propaganda, judging by the letters which are reaching this office.... Indiscriminate accusations against adopted methods can only result in harm." When the criticism did not stop, he threatened the city, subtly intimating that he might advise "capitalists" to invest in competing ports like Mobile or Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans.

But his critics persisted. Finally, at a meeting on spillways in August 1922 in New Orleans, Beach told the businessmen present, "If it were my property, I would rather blow a hole in a levee, if conditions became serious, and let the water take care of itself, rather than [pay to] build it and pay $250,000 a year continually in interest charges [for bonds] and the additional cost of maintenance."

The chief of Army engineers was recommending that his audience blow up a levee and flood its neighbors. It seemed an astounding position for him to take. In taking it he was conceding that they were right, that a spillway would work.

Later that year Thomson had a New Orleans congressman introduce a bill calling for a study of a "comprehensive" approach to the river, including reservoirs, cutoffs, and spillways. Before hearings on the bill, LeRoy Percy maneuvered unsuccessfully to work out a unified position among the levee boards of the lower river.

The hearings were acrimonious. Engineers called each other liars. Percy weighed in. On all technical issues he relied on Charles West, his man on the river commission, and West, like the other commission members, opposed spillways. So Percy had the Greenville Chamber of Commerce contact chambers in Vicksburg; Helena, Arkansas; Tallulah, Louisiana; and elsewhere to lobby against spillways. After four years of bitter fighting, Congress created a "spillway board" to conduct a new study and resolve the issue. The board scheduled a visit to New Orleans in the spring of 1927. It would arrive with the greatest flood ever known.

Part Three

THE RIVER.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

IN 1543, G 1543, GARCILASO DE LA V VEGA, a member of Hernando de Soto's expedition, was one of the first white men to see the Mississippi River. He recorded its power: "Then G.o.d, our Lord, hindered the work with a mighty flood of the great river, which...came down with an enormous increase of water, which in the beginning overflowed the wide level ground between the river and the cliffs"-meaning the river's banks, which towered above the river at low water-"then little by little it rose to the top of the cliffs. Soon it began to flow over the fields in an immense flood, and as the land was level, without any hills, there was nothing to stop the inundation. On the 18th of March, 1543,...the river entered with ferocity through the gates of the town of Aminoya [an Indian village near the present site of Greenville, Mississippi]. It was a beautiful thing to look upon the sea that had been fields, for on each side of the river the water extended over twenty leagues"-nearly 60 miles-"of land, and [within] all of this area...nothing was seen but the tops of the tallest trees.... These floods occur every fourteen years, according to what an old Indian woman told us, which can be verified if the country is conquered, as I hope it will be."

IN THE LATTER PART of August 1926, the sky darkened over much of the central United States and a heavy and persistent rain began to fall. Rain pelted first Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma, then edged eastward into Iowa and Missouri, then into Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Great cracks of lightning seemed almost to break open the sky, booming thunder made buildings quiver, and the wind rattled windows and tore away anything loose. Rain poured from the sky in sheets. Even in the intervals when the rain ceased, the darkness did not lift. The sky was impenetrable and uniform, the clouds themselves lost in gray. of August 1926, the sky darkened over much of the central United States and a heavy and persistent rain began to fall. Rain pelted first Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma, then edged eastward into Iowa and Missouri, then into Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Great cracks of lightning seemed almost to break open the sky, booming thunder made buildings quiver, and the wind rattled windows and tore away anything loose. Rain poured from the sky in sheets. Even in the intervals when the rain ceased, the darkness did not lift. The sky was impenetrable and uniform, the clouds themselves lost in gray.

The great storm lasted for days. Finally it broke and the sun shone, but within forty-eight hours a second low-pressure system heavy with moisture moved up the Mississippi valley and poured precipitation over this same region. It was followed by still another storm system. In the last fourteen days of August 1926, an area covering several hundred thousand square miles received little relief from drenching rain.

The rain drowned crops and ruined harvests. Though it fell in the dry season, it saturated the soil and filled the riverbeds. The rivers rose. On September 1, water poured over the banks of dozens of streams and flooded towns from Carroll, Iowa, to Peoria, Illinois, 350 miles apart. All the land in between lay heavy, wet, and glistening, reflections of silver drowning the green of crops and gra.s.s.

Still more rain fell. On September 4 floods deluged much of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, killing four people. The Mississippi River rose rapidly in the upper Midwest and washed out bridges and railroads. A few days later there was another storm. Flooding stretched from Terre Haute, Indiana, to Jacksonville, Illinois. Seven more people died.

The rains continued. Storms hung over the region. On September 13, the Neosho River roared through southeastern Kansas, killing five, causing millions of dollars in damages. In Illinois a flood rammed a tree through an oil pipeline, setting it ablaze, spreading fire on the water.

In northwestern Iowa, 15 inches of rain fell in three days over the Floyd River valley, the Sioux River valley, the Dry Creek valley. With the land already saturated and the streams bursting, this water exploded over the riverbanks, drowning ten, inundating 50,000 acres that included Sioux City, adding millions of dollars more in damages. On September 18, the national headquarters of the American Red Cross sent its special disaster team to Iowa, while the waters near Omaha rose to threatening levels.

When the rains began, they had first relieved the region of the summer's heat. As they persisted, they had irritated, then depressed. Now they frightened. People could do nothing but watch their crops drown and their rivers rise and, reminded of their own impotence and of the power of G.o.d and nature, pray.

In many a church preachers spoke of the rain as a sign from G.o.d of man's wickedness. Even without a preacher's sermon, the good, decent folk of the prairie had to be thinking of the story of Noah, of the end of the world, of the coming of judgment.

All through the month of September and into early October it rained. Floods followed in Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma. The Neosho River in Kansas and 600 miles to the east the Illinois River in southern Illinois rose to their highest levels in history. Flooding in those two states was the greatest and most disastrous ever-an extraordinary occurrence in October, when rivers normally run low.

The Mississippi itself grew fat and swollen, until it too overflowed above Cairo. Tens of thousands more acres went under water.

Along the 1,100 miles of the lower Mississippi, from Cairo to the Gulf, only levees were in place to contain the energy of the river. For the length of that levee line the great earthworks seemed an impregnable fortress, towering two and three stories above the flat delta land. The Mississippi River Commission had pride and confidence in them.

Indeed, that year, even while threatening clouds formed over much of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River, General Edgar Jadwin, new chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, had for the first time officially stated in his annual report that the levees were finally in condition "to prevent the destructive effect of floods."

But the gauge readings were disturbing. The U.S. Weather Bureau noted that the average reading through the last three months of 1926 on every single river gauge on each of the three greatest rivers of North America, the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi itself-encompa.s.sing nearly 1 million square miles and stretching the width of the continent-was the highest ever known. The Weather Bureau later stated, "There was needed neither a prophetic vision nor a vivid imagination to picture a great flood in the lower Mississippi River the following spring."

But that fall no one at the Weather Bureau or the Mississippi River Commission correlated or even compiled this information. The individuals who made the readings simply noted them and forwarded the information to Was.h.i.+ngton.

The gauge at Vicksburg, which lay at the foot of the Delta and roughly halfway between Cairo and the Gulf, was even more disturbing. In October the Vicksburg gauge usually hovered not far above zero, a low-water mark. Only six times in history had the river exceeded 30 feet on the Vicksburg gauge in October. Each time, the following spring saw a record or near-record high water.

Usually, records on gauges are broken by inches, rarely by more than a foot. No October reading had ever broken 31 feet. In October 1926, the gauge at Vicksburg exceeded 40 feet.

Late in October the rain ceased. Those watching the river relaxed.