In the early days of 1937, the Ohio River, swollen by heavy winter
rains, began rising. And rising. And rising. By the time the waters
crested, the Ohio and Mississippi had climbed to record heights. Nearly
four hundred people had died, while a million more had run from their
homes. The deluge caused more than half a billion dollars of damage at a
time when the Great Depression still battered the nation.
Timed to coincide with the flood's seventy-fifth anniversary, The
Thousand-Year Flood is the first comprehensive history of one of the
most destructive disasters in American history. David Welky first shows
how decades of settlement put Ohio valley farms and towns at risk and
how politicians and planners repeatedly ignored the dangers. Then he
tells the gripping story of the river's inexorable rise: residents fled
to refugee camps and higher ground, towns imposed martial law, prisoners
rioted, Red Cross nurses endured terrifying conditions, and FDR
dispatched thousands of relief workers. In a landscape fraught with
dangers--from unmoored gas tanks that became floating bombs to powerful
currents of filthy floodwaters that swept away whole towns--people
hastily raised sandbag barricades, piled into overloaded rowboats, and
marveled at water that stretched as far as the eye could see. In the
flood's aftermath, Welky explains, New Deal reformers, utopian dreamers,
and hard-pressed locals restructured not only the flood-stricken
valleys, but also the nation's relationship with its waterways, changes
that continue to affect life along the rivers to this day.
A striking narrative of danger and adventure--and the mix of heroism and
generosity, greed and pettiness that always accompany disaster--The
Thousand-Year Flood breathes new life into a fascinating yet
little-remembered American story.
