Mississippi River Basin Model

One of the most successful experiments in physical hydraulic engineering ever constructed, the Mississippi River Basin Model was a large-scale hydraulic model—200 acres in size—which represented 15,000 miles of main stem river channel and tributaries, encompassing 41 percent of the land area of the United States.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the largest natural disaster the United States had experienced until that time. In response, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928, authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to design and construct projects for flood control on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. A scaled physical model of the river system was a valuable tool for simulating flooded conditions and demonstrating the effects of potential flood-control measures to officials, laypersons, and engineers. 

Model builders hand shaped reinforced 10 foot x 10 foot concrete topographic relief panels to a horizontal scale of 1:2000 and a vertical scale of 1:100 to reflect the river basin. The overbanks modeled 10-foot contours and the mainline of the Mississippi River integrated existing bathymetric data. The model consisted of the: 

• Mississippi River and its tributaries from Hannibal, Missouri to Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico
• Missouri River to Sioux City, Iowa
• Ohio River to Louisville, Kentucky
• Cumberland River to above Nashville, Tennessee
• Tennessee River to Pickwick Dam
• Arkansas River to above Tulsa, Oklahoma, and
• Ouachita River to Monroe, Louisiana.

Individual sections of the Mississippi River Basin Model were in operation as early as 1949 with the completed model in use from 1966 to 1971. The initial estimate was approximately 600 people would be required for manual operation of the model, but with instrument automation this number dropped to fewer than 10. After 74 model runs, the model converted to standby status in 1973. It returned to use in the late 1980s and early 1990s to determine the effects of raising levees along the Birds Point New Madrid Floodway in Missouri on the flood control system.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deeded the Mississippi River Basin Model to the Department of Interior in the 1970s , which deeded it to the City of Jackson in 1993, the same year it first appeared as a Mississippi State Historic Landmark. In late 2016, a group of volunteers founded the Friends of the Mississippi River Basin Model non-profit organization to restore the model, which is now open to the public in Buddy Butts Park. The project received its designation as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 2018.