NSV Whatever Happened To...?

MISSISSIPPI'S FIRST EZINE

article and figurehead photo by Bill Pitts, all other photos courtesy of the US Navy unless otherwise noted

Throughout history, civilizations have flourished along the banks of the world’s rivers. Besides providing food, irrigation, and drinking water, and in more modern times, recreation, rivers have also served as a means of transportation. But there is a downside to this close relationship we have with our rivers. They flood. And when they do, we can lose our homes, our possessions, our lands, and sometimes, even our lives.

The Mississippi River Basin drains 41 percent of the continental United States through fifteen thousand miles of rivers. It is an area spanning 1,250,000 square miles in size encompassing all or part of 31 states and two Canadian provinces. People affected by floods in this basin are legion. The monetary losses incalculable. A solution was needed.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers, in the person of Chief Engineer Major General Eugene Reybold, rose to the occasion. During the record flood of 1937, General Reybold envisioned a model that would simulate the workings of this great river system and aid in the planning of levees, reservoirs, and other flood-control structures. The Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg was charged in May of 1942 with the task of building what would become the world’s largest small-scale working model of a river system. Two others were built in the United States: one in the San Francisco Bay Area and another near the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, but they paled in comparison to what would come to be known as the Mississippi River Basin Model.

But five months prior to this, the United States had entered World War II. Faced with the resulting shortage of manpower, General Reybold solved this problem by proposing that German prisoners of war be used in the initial construction. In July of 1943, Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps had surrendered to the Allies in North Africa. Two hundred and seventy-five thousand German and Italian soldiers lost their freedom, and General Reybold gained his construction force.

Three locations in Mississippi were considered for the model: one adjacent to the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, another near Warrenton just south of Vicksburg, and the third near Clinton. The third site won out because of its proximity to transportation, power, and of course, water. Another plus for the site was that its general topography could be more readily adapted to fit the requirements of the model’s designers.

A POW camp was authorized and built next to the site. Camp Clinton, as it was named, housed over 3,000 German POWs who were immediately employed in clearing trees and the thick Mississippi undergrowth from the 800-acre site. The prisoners began in August of 1943 and continued until May of 1946, working at first with only shovel and wheelbarrow to change the lay of the land, an onerous task in this southern clime. Although the POWs were paid for their work following the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions, that amount came nowhere near the estimated cost of their labor—$6 million.

The particulars of this construction project are as impressive as the scope of the model itself: one million cubic yards of dirt (that’s a cube of dirt 300 feet tall!) were moved around to change the contours of the land, 85,000 feet of drains were installed to direct the flow of water in and around the model, 30,500 feet of freshwater supply and return lines were laid, miles of electrical cables were put in place both above and below ground to power the various control and recording units as well as transmit signals to and from the recording units and the automatic programmers which were specially designed for the model. This equipment allowed the model to be operated by fewer personnel, an outstanding innovation at the time.

The construction of the 15-acre model itself, formed from concrete, was first done on-site but was then moved to an indoor area. The individual pieces, painstakingly contoured to match the proper shapes of the hills and valleys that make up the actual basin, are about 150 square feet each.

Existing levees and bridges were put in place in miniature as were thousands of feet of folded screen wire intended to offer resistance to water flow much the same way actual forests would. The scale of the model is such that one foot represents 2,000 feet in reality while one actual day would pass within the span of only five and one-half minutes. The model could be operated as an integrated unit or the various river systems making up the basin could be isolated and studied individually as needed. About 1,000 gallons of water per minute were required to operate the model, readily supplied from a 500,000-gallon elevated water tank. Almost the entire Mississippi River Basin was reproduced to scale with all of the streams and rivers represented in their correct geographic locations.

The model dramatically proved its usefulness during a disastrous flood in 1952. A severe winter followed by a rapidly warming spring quickly drove the Missouri River to peak levels. Engineers monitored the progress of the rising waters, and assisted in directing and planning the efforts of those fighting the flood.

The model was put on standby basis after a series of tests were finished in May of 1971 but it remained open to visitors. Facilities for “self-guided” tours had been in place since 1964, including walkways, raised observation platforms, and the now rusty, vine-covered observation tower that rises 40 feet above the upper reaches of the model. Many thousands of visitors have toured the site over the years, including famed French ecologist and marine explorer Jacques-Yves Costeau in August of 1983 during the filming of his documentary on the Mississippi River.

In a report issued by the Army Corps of Engineers in August of 1971, the fate of the model was stated, “The MBM was placed on standby and will be maintained in this status until it is definitely established that there is no further need for the model. The model and facilities will then be declared surplus and disposed of in accordance with existing regulations.” Inevitably, the model was replaced by the computers for which it amassed reams of data on the various aspects of river behavior, but not before being used for a final series of tests in 1992.
In 1993 the model and the land on which it sits was deeded to the City of Jackson. A city park was built around the model, which is now mostly hidden from view by the dense undergrowth that the German POWs worked so hard to remove almost 60 years ago. Despite its sadly deteriorated condition, the Mississippi River Basin Model stands as a monument to man’s desire to understand and control one of the mightier forces of nature–the Mississippi River.