Did you know? Most of us today take the comprehensive and interconnected Mississippi River levee system for granted. The system proved its enormous value most recently in the enormous flood of 2011 when it prevented $234 billion in potential damages. But a century ago this was not necessarily the case. Many landowners then believed that higher levees simply meant greater flood damage whenever the river came up. One Mississippi planter put it this way: “I have always been opposed to levees and my father was before me. My idea about the levees is that they were forced upon us. As a consequence of the levees the bed of the river has been raised several feet.” Opposition to the levees often turned into open hostility in times of flood, and one of the major problems was the guarding of the levees. Distraught landowners would sometimes seek to relieve pressure on their property by dynamiting or otherwise destroying the levees on the opposite side of the river, or at some other point that would relieve the threat to their property. In high water periods, armed guards were hired to prevent sabotage, and “justice” was summary when someone was caught in the act. In 1890, two men were killed on the levee in Bolivar County, near Rosedale, Miss. No charges were made and the names of the levee guards were not published. Since the use of dynamite would invariably draw attention to the saboteurs, other methods of destroying levees were often used, such as cutting a small trench through a cross section, boring a hole through the levee, or even “sawing” through the levee by using a length of barbed wire. Often hogs would weaken a levee by their rooting, or other animals would burrow into the levee. The Mississippi Legislature passed a Hog Law which authorized local levee boards and their agents to kill all hogs found at large within two miles of the levee.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 17:35:31 +0000
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