Abstract

Low lying counties along the lower Mississippi River have battled excess water for over two centuries. While today these lands are among the most fertile and heavily agricultural in the country, widespread development required protection from, and removal of, excess water. The Great Flood of 1927 is often characterized as the turning point toward federal control and success in these efforts. We argue using data from the US Agricultural Census that the reality is more complex. Local levee and drainage districts, formed mainly between 1870 and 1910, had by 1920 effectively coordinated landowners in lowland counties, resulting in improved farmland, rising land values, and increases in cotton production. It was the economic success of levee and drainage districts that created the tragic circumstances of the 1927 flood. In the reclaimed floodplains, large cotton plantations developed after the Civil War induced migration of the black workers most catastrophically affected. The economic productivity of these farms led to increases in landowners' wealth and increases in their political power post flood in shaping state and federal policy. The destruction of these farms created a sympathetic narrative related to the broad public benefits of flood protection. While other authors have focused on 1927 as a failure of localism, we argue that it was also a demonstration of its success.