DRAINING THE BIG SWAMP
By Sam Blackwell ~ Southeast Missourian
Editor's note: The following
story originally was published in the Southeast Missourian on March 4,
1993.
Just after the dawn of the 20th century, a
group of businessmen set out to mop up the swamp that was Southeast
Missouri. The job, the largest drainage project ever attempted at the
time, was completed in a stretch from 1909 to 1926 at a cost of $11
million.
It turned some half a million acres of soupy
cypress forests into some of the state's most fertile agricultural land.
Often called Dark Cypress, the Big Swamp or the
Great Swamp, the area in the flood plain south of Benton in Southeast
Missouri was all but uninhabited by humans until early in the 20th
century. All kinds of wildlife, including bears, abounded.
"It has a mystique of its own," says Frank
Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast
Missouri State University. "... It was sort of a forbidden area. There
were very few trails in it."
The marshlands, then constituting one of the
largest swamps in the American interior, would have resembled the Mingo
National Wildlife Refuge, which, ironically, is an artificial swamp
resurrected from cornfields.
Transforming the Big Swamp was Herculean work
that required mosquito-repellent men, steam-powered stump pullers and
dredges, and about 20 years.
Though it took many more years to clear the
land for farming, and the Depression nearly forced bankruptcy, the
Little River Drainage District eventually was a boon to Southeast
Missouri. Cotton, and later corn, soybeans, watermelon, potatoes and
other crops became the mainstays of the economy. Ancillary businesses
also blossomed.
The plan was not universally loved, however.
Cape Girardeau railroad builder Louis Houck was chief among the
opponents, challenging the plan all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
He called it a "scheme promoted by a bunch of
real estate speculators" and predicted "it will be a gigantic failure."
The project was opposed by the railroads the
Cottonbelt, Frisco and St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern because they
had built lines into the swamp to serve the timber industry and the few
farms that existed.
The district also created two distinct classes
of people in the region -- those who owned the newly drained land and
those who merely worked on it, says Nickell.
"The people in charge of draining the swamps
were the people who bought up the land, and they did not share with the
people on the bottom," he said.
The Bootheel counties today have the state's
worst poverty.
Until the district was formed in 1907, isolated
attempts dating back to the early part of the 19th century had been made
to drain parts of the land, but the swamp usually reclaimed its own. A
grand plan was needed, one that would encompass parts of seven counties
and move more earth than the builders of the Panama Canal.
The crucial element of the project was the
Headwater Diversion Channel, which stretches about 40 miles from near
Greenbriar in Stoddard County to its outlet into the Mississippi River
south of Cape Girardeau. Castor River, Crooked Creek, Hubble Creek and
the Whitewater River enter the channel at various points and continue to
the Mississippi.
"That was the key to making the other parts
work," said Larry Dowdy, executive vice president of the district. "It
diverted the source of the water supply that made that swamp."
The southern part of the project primarily
consists of five parallel ditches that carry runoff to the Arkansas
state line, where it becomes part of the St. Francis River and
eventually the Mississippi.
What makes this part of the project work is the
100-foot drop in elevation from Cape Girardeau to the Arkansas border,
Dowdy says.
Ditch No. 1 is the longest, running more than
100 miles. The ditches, including the many laterals carrying water to
the primary ditches, range in width from 20 to 220 feet, and have an
average depth of eight feet.
The lower portion of the district has 850 miles
of ditches and 240 miles of levees.
Also essential to the project are three water
detention basins that store flood water, preventing the levee on the
south side of the Diversion Channel from being topped when the rivers
are running high.
Today, the district's 27 full-time employees,
with the assistance of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, maintain more than
900 miles of levees and channels. The maintenance cost is about $1
million a year.
Two million acres of water a year move through
the district's channels and ditches. The Diversion Channel itself
carries 750,000 acres of water annually.
The 2,300 landowners within the district
contribute maintenance taxes at an average rate of $2.50 an acre.
Ninety percent of the land was covered in
timber before the draining of the swamp began. Today 95 percent of the
land is cleared.
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Copyright 2005,
Southeast Missourian
