Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 - (Page 25)

A view of Coleman Avenue in West Monroe during the 1932 Flood. Though today the city is a center of business, industry, and land development, in 1932 it was a small, rural community separated from Monroe by the Ouachita River. O n May 4, 1927, the Ouachita River rose to near record levels at Monroe, Louisiana, in what most assumed would be the flood of the century. However, less than five years later, in February 1932, with lingering debates about how to prevent another disaster still raging in the papers and the courts, the river rose a foot and a half higher than in 1927. The inundation exacerbated the environmental impact of an already bonechilling winter and destroyed much that had survived the Great Depressionʼs ravages. This was Monroeʼs benchmark catastrophe, a calamity in which necessity bred resolve, hardship accumulated upon anguishing hardship, and disaster fed a desire for prevention reform. In a community shaped by its relationship to water, the 1932 disaster overshadowed local political and legal squabbles, social divisions, and years of neglect, and compelled Monroe residents to protect themselves. Fifty years prior, in 1882, water from the Ouachita had also reached higher levels than in 1927. W.T. Atkins, editor of the Monroe Bulletin, anticipated his counterparts generations later by calling for more effective levees: “The possibility of a cotton crop on overflowed lands, with poor teams, no forage and no credit, is but a shadow.” Something had to be done, “as it is more than folly to suppose that any planter can risk his labor any longer on such levees as have been. He must feel secure in his belief that the river is compelled seaward within its banks.” As in 1932, Mayor Fred Endom echoed the paperʼs sentiments. He called for citizens to be “universal in their assistance.” He asked the population to remember a prior natural disaster for historical assurance — the 1874 Ouachita flood, whose high water mark of over 49 feet was only bested by that of 1932. River Flood of 1932 by Thomas Aiello Winter 2007-08/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 25 OUACHITA PARISH DIGITAL ARCHIVE, OUACHITA PARISH PUBLIC LIBRARY, MONROE

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Katrina: Days of Terror, Months of Anguish Paintings by Rolland Golden The Historic New Orleans Collection The Great Ouachita River Flood of 1932 Jazz Notes Louisiana Architecture Louisiana: Where Land Meets Water Louisiana State Museum Through A Lens Sharply: An Interview with Michael Lewis MR-GO: A “miracle” mired in controversy Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Association of Museums New Orleans: An Autopsy Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007

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