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Yazoo City after the Great Mississippi Flood, with hay bales and sand bags keeping the floodwater at bay while citizens scan the wreckage and begin to rebuild, Yazoo City, Mississippi, May 13, 1927
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| Title | Yazoo City after the Great Mississippi Flood, with hay bales and sand bags keeping the floodwater at bay while citizens scan the wreckage and begin to rebuild, Yazoo City, Mississippi, May 13, 1927 |
| Photographer | Unknown |
| Date | 1927 |
| Notes | This eight-part panorama is composed of separate images taken from the same viewpoint and mounted together on linen.
Printed on image: Yazoo City 5-13-27
PH Coll 715.204 |
| Contextual Notes | The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States. The flood began in the summer of 1926, when heavy rains pounded the Central Basin of the Mississippi. By September, the Mississippi's tributaries in Kansas and Iowa were swollen to capacity. Rain continued to fall throughout the winter of 1926, pounding the entire Mississippi Valley, from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains, in quantities that exceeded the yearly average by ten or more times. On April 15, 1927, 15 inches of rain fell in 18 hours, causing the levee system of the Mississippi River to break in more than 145 places. The resulting flood covered more than 27,000 square miles, affecting Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. By July 1, even as the flood began to recede, 1.5 million acres were under water. The Mississippi River was now 70 miles wide. Despite pleas from governors, mayors and other officials in the flooded states, President Coolidge refused to visit the area. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover stepped in to chair a special committee to handle the emergency, using the position not as a means to alleviate suffering but to get publicity for himself. He emerged a hero, and thus won the 1928 Republican nomination for presidential candidate.
Ultimately, the flood caused over $400 million in damages and killed 246 people in seven states. |
| Subjects (LCSH) | Yazoo City (Miss.); Floods--Mississippi--Yazoo City; Buildings--Mississippi--Yazoo City; Mississippi River |
| Location Depicted | United States--Mississippi--Yazoo City |
| Digital Collection | Panoramic Photographs
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| Order Number | PPC090 |
| Ordering Information | Restrictions apply to the ordering of this image. Please contact photos@u.washington.edu for more information. |
| Repository | University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division |
| Repository Collection | Wesley L. Jones Photographs. PH Coll 715 |
| Object Type | Panoramic photograph |
| Physical Description | Silver gelatin; b&w; 8 x 72 in. |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Scanned from a photograph at 400 dpi in TIFF format using a Graphtec CSX300-09, resized and enhanced using Adobe Photoshop, and imported as JPEG2000 using Contentdm's software JPEG2000 Extension. 2010. |
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