Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2007 - (Page 26)

A SECOND “FLOOD OF THE CENTURY” In the first week of January 1932, government forecasts predicted a high water mark of 46 feet. “It is unfortunate,” read an editorial in the Monroe Morning World, “that the task of dealing with high water should be added to the general economic difficulties which are common throughout the country. But there is nothing in the situation that should cause us to lose our equilibrium.” The editorial worried that undue apprehension could create a panic that might effect relief efforts. “No such situation as that which prevailed in 1927 need be feared at this season of the year, in spite of the fact that the present overflow is in itself unusual.” In 1927, Monroe and West Monroe had felt the brunt of the Mississippi River innundation. A crevasse at Arkansas City, Arkansas, fed water into the Boeuf and Tensas basins, flooding the area. In early January 1932, from almost $65 million to just over $43 million. The area’s agricultural income fell by almost 65 percent. Similar drops in total payroll and retail sales stood as testaments to the economic devastation in the region. The flood that exacerbated those problems was not entirely unexpected. Though 1932 was the first winter flood of significant magnitude, it was not Monroe’s first experience with winter flooding. The town, situated in the northeast corner of Louisiana, lies in a baratropic region characterized by saturated air and a year-round susceptibility to severe fronts. Rainfall is frequent, and storms often appear in bunches. Though the temperature had yet to drop below freezing in the Monroe area in early 1932, ice was reported in several areas, and icy ground made the earth less willing to absorb excess water. As of January 3, Kate Key, Monroe’s weather recorder, received The Great Ouachita A view of West Monroe from atop a building in downtown Monroe in February 1932. The proximity of the bridge and the water gives an indication of how magnanimous the river’s rise became. however, West Monroe faced an overflow from bayous Black and Toni, two tributaries unable to drain into the Ouachita, which had surpassed flood stage. The situation, reported the Morning World’s editorialist, “adds to the prevailing economic distress.” The economic distress inflicted by the Great Depression hit Louisiana hardest following Franklin Roosevelt’s election in November 1932. But widespread economic distress existed long before the stock market crashed. The cotton market’s decline began in earnest in the mid-1920s, only to be exacerbated by the 1927 flood and later bank closures around the nation. In Northeast Louisiana alone, the Mississippi River Flood Control Association estimated the 1927 flood damage at more than $17 million. Roosevelt’s Emergency Relief and Construction Act and Louisiana’s corresponding Unemployment Relief Committee would not appear until July 1932, after the Ouachita had fully receded. Between 1930 and 1935, total assessed property value in Ouachita Parish plummeted 26 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2007-08 word from the New Orleans weather bureau that the river would continue to rise. As the floodwaters from the Ouachita rose, however, city officials occupied themselves with the Mississippi’s potential to rise. The U.S. Supreme Court opened its 1932 session January 4, and the first case on the docket was a Monroe test suit submitted in its final form as Hurley v. Kincaid. As Ouachita Parish battled the 1932 inundation, it sued the United States Secretary of War to ensure that the Army Corps of Engineers’ floodways would not exacerbate the region’s distress. R. Foster Kincaid, Sr., owned 160 acres of land in the Boeuf Basin, the fertile region along Monroe’s southern boundary that served as the town’s economic backbone. He and many others in the area stood helpless in 1928, less than one year removed from the then-largest flood in Ouachita Parish’s history, as U.S. legislators and the Army Corps of Engineers battled in the halls of Congress to pass a flood-control bill that would satisfy public safety and their own states’ interests. The debate was divisive, to say the least. The plan of Army Engineer Major General Edgar 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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