History

Flood of 1927 Mississippi River 

Life in the Delta is continuously jeopardized by the Mississippi River and its natural tendency to flood.

The explorers accompanying Hernando De Soto in 1543 were the first Europeans to witness the flooding of the Mississippi River. For the first permanent European settlers along the Mississippi River, the most feared word was "flood."

Historical records show that great floods occurred frequently on the banks of the Mississippi-nine great floods were recorded between 1782 and 1850.

The year 2002 marked the 75th anniversary of the most devastating flood in history along the Mississippi River.

The Flood of 1927 occurred when the Mississippi River broke through levees in seven states (Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee) forcing over 42 major crevasses and inundating an area of approximately 26,000 square miles.

The nation's most destructive flood began with heavy rains in the summer of 1926 and continued throughout the spring of 1927. Three separate flood waves occurred on the lower Mississippi in 1927-in January, February and April, increasing in magnitude each time.

Headlines from the Helena World reported: Broken Levee Floods 20,000 Acres of Land (Jan. 31), One Hundred Thousand Acres Flooded Near Cotton Plant (Feb. 1), and Weather Bureau Reports Greatest Flood Recorded (Apr. 15).

In February, the White and Little Red rivers broke and flooded more than 100,000 acres with ten to fifteen feet of water in Arkansas and left more than 5,000 people homeless. By April 9, more than one million acres of land were covered by flood waters and the rain continued to fall.

In the spring of 1927, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assured the public that the levees would hold. However, the levees failed. There were numerous breaks on the levees but the greatest single crevasse ever to occur on the Mississippi River was at Mounds Landing.

It flooded an area 50 miles wide and 100 miles long with up to 20 feet of water. It put water over the tops of homes 75 miles away from the original break.

By July 1, the waters finally began to recede but 1.5 million acres of land was still under water.

The disaster left behind more than 500 people dead, over 700,000 people displaced from their homes, buildings and crops destroyed, and industries and transportation paralyzed.

The Red Cross supervised 154 relief camps that sheltered and fed over 325,000 refugees.