Flood Pictures: Mississippi River at Its Worst

1903 Mississippi River Flood

Photograph courtesy Detroit Publishing Company/Library of Congress

The steamer S.S. Chalmette sits docked near a New Orleans levee in the muddy, flood-swollen Mississippi River on March 23, 1903.

In February that year, heavy rains had caused the Ohio and lower Mississippi Rivers to steadily rise throughout the month. When another moisture-laden storm moved across the Ohio River Valley on February 27, the U.S. Weather Bureau issued flood warnings for the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cincinnati, Ohio.

More heavy rains fell in early March, further swelling the Ohio and lower Mississippi Rivers. Although the floodwaters were weeks away from the Gulf Coast, New Orleans was warned to prepare for high water. (Related: "New Orleans Levees Not Built for Worst Case Events.")

Published May 10, 2011

Mississippi's Roaring Twenties

Photograph courtesy National Photo Company/Library of Congress

An unidentified region lies under Mississippi River floodwaters in April 1927. During the spring of 1927, the "granddaddy" of all floods inundated parts of seven U.S. states and left about 800,000 people homeless.

Levees started failing as the floodwaters raced down tributaries into the Mississippi River and surged toward the Gulf of Mexico. Historian Clint Bagley said his parents recalled dogs starting to bark as roaring floodwaters approached their Mississippi home.

By late April floodwaters threatened to top the levees protecting New Orleans, yet the worst of the flood was still several weeks away. On April 29 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used dynamite to blow a 1,500-foot (457-meter) gap in a levee south of New Orleans to relieve pressure on the rest of the city's levees.

Historian Grady Howell of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History noted that the "staggering" cost of the Great Flood was about a billion dollars—at a time when the national debt was three billion.

The flood caused dramatic social and economic upheaval, Howell said, and prompted the U.S. government to begin the ambitious Mississippi flood-control program—mainly the building and maintaining of levees—that continues today.

Published May 10, 2011

Saving Cairo, 1937

Photograph courtesy Farm Security Administration/Library of Congress

Floodwaters race over a levee that was dynamited to save Cairo, Illinois, during a 1937 Mississippi River flood. U.S. National Guard troops had to ward off armed and angry farmers who wanted to prevent the levee's destruction from flooding their croplands.

In January that year heavy rain and snow swelled the Ohio and upper Mississippi Rivers, and levees were strained to bursting by the end of the month. Memphis, Tennessee, and other cities were flooded, and National Guard troops were on patrol in some places to prevent people from destroying levees to divert floodwaters away from their properties.

History repeated itself on May 2, 2011, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blasted open an earthen levee to divert rising floodwaters away from Cairo and into Missouri farmland. The swollen Ohio River had climbed to 61.2 feet (18.6 meters) that afternoon, breaking the 1937 record of 59.5 feet (18.1 meters), the Associated Press reported.

Published May 10, 2011

Mississippi Manor, 1983

Photograph by Nathan Benn, Corbis

Early morning fog shrouds a 19th-century house standing amid floodwaters in Greenwood, Mississippi, in March 1983. The house was a victim of floods in the Yalobusha River, a tributary of the lower Mississippi River.

The 1983 flood was the second severest flood on the lower Mississippi since 1927. Costs were estimated at U.S. $15.7 million, mostly from damaged river industries, docking facilities, and widespread agricultural losses.

Published May 10, 2011

Sandbagging the Mississippi, 1993

Photograph by Jodi Cobb, National Geographic

Residents of Des Moines, Iowa, stand on piles of sandbags during a 1993 flood along a tributary of the Mississippi River.

As the spring of 1993 turned to summer, a high-pressure weather system that sometimes forms off the East Coast appeared, and upper-level winds known as the jet stream swung south. The combination of factors held summer storms in place instead of allowing them to be swept eastward, as they normally are.

Heavy spring rains had already saturated much of the Midwest, so there was no outlet for the record-setting summer rainfall, which drenched the Midwest and the upper Mississippi River and its tributaries.

By early July, parts of nine U.S. states were under water. Iowa—where some places saw more than three feet (about a meter) of rain in only a few months—was one of the hardest hit.

Des Moines residents piled up thousands of sandbags, hoping to keep the flooded Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers at bay. But during the weekend of July 10 and 11, floodwaters surged into the city, knocking out power and the city's water-purification plant as well as flooding homes and businesses.

Published May 10, 2011