BY JOHN MOTT COFFEY
THE NATCHEZ DEMOCRAT

NATCHEZ — For 74 years the flood of 1937 had its place in the history books as the highest Mississippi River level ever recorded in Natchez and Vidalia, but the current deluge exceeded that on May 11.

“This is most unusual. I don’t think it’ll happen again,” said Howard Pritchartt Jr., a lifelong resident of Natchez who was a child when the February 1937 flood occurred.

Pritchartt has watched with amazement the river’s current rise, which began its crest Thursday at just higher than 61 feet.

The swollen river in 1937 severely tested the extensive flood-control measures implemented after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. They proved to be successful.

An 85-year-old businessman who owns land along the river in Mississippi and Louisiana, Pritchartt knows the waterway through his years of working and boating on it. However, he doesn’t recall much of what he saw as a boy 74 years ago during what was an unprecedented high for the river.

“I wasn’t but almost 11 years old then, but I did cross on the ferry boat. There was a lot of water over there,” he said.

The Concordia Parish levees held to protect Vidalia, but Louisiana evacuees from areas in flooded backwaters fled to Natchez, according to news accounts published by The Natchez Democrat throughout February 1937.

At least eight U.S. Coast Guard boats and a tugboat were sent to Jonesville, to rescue flooded residents. Some were taken to an evacuation shelter in Natchez at what was then the Baker-McDowell building on Broadway Street.

About 17,000 evacuees from the river’s backed-up tributaries in Mississippi and Louisiana were in Red Cross shelters throughout the region, The Associated Press reported.

The river in 1937 crested at Natchez-Vidalia on Feb. 21, when the floodwater reached 58.04 feet.

The river and its tributaries 10 years earlier inundated Vidalia along with other communities in a seven-state corridor from Illinois through Louisiana. In Mississippi, the flood went as far east as Yazoo City, about 40 miles from the Mississippi River. In Louisiana, it covered areas as far west as Monroe 80 miles away.

More than 700,000 people were displaced and 246 confirmed killed by the 1927 flood, according to historical accounts.

“The flood in ’27 really impacted Vidalia. The levees broke. They were just incapable of handling the water,” said Percy Rountree Jr., a 90-year-old Vidalia resident who noted the overflow spread throughout Concordia Parish.

Rountree recalled taking the Vidalia-to-Ferriday train through water on the elevated railroad bed.

“They told us the train could run as long as water didn’t get into the firebox. It was right on the verge of getting there,” he said.

The steam locomotive traveled on what was essentially a huge lake covering Vidalia, Ferriday and other parts of Louisiana.

“It looked like the train was floating on the water, but it was running on the mound for the railroad,” Rountree said. “We passed people in boats all around us.”

The 1927 disaster prompted the federal government to revamp how to prevent and control Mississippi River floods.

Levees were made higher and thicker to contain the river, but extensive measures were also taken to give the river more space to spread. Floodways were created in sparsely populated areas where the water could drain away with little damage. Spillways provided alternative channels for a swollen river.

Manmade cutoffs — wide trenches a mile or more in length dredged across river bends — were also created to make the meandering river more efficient and to lower its flow line.

In 1937, with the river predicted in early February to eventually reach a high of 57 feet, hundreds of laborers worked to raise the low levee in south Concordia Parish and to fortify the levee at Vidalia.

“Holding particular attention now is the levee at Deer Park, which is lower than the remainder of the giant dyke system. Work has been started to raise this stretch of levee with boarding and sandbags,” according to a Feb. 9, 1937, article in The Democrat reporting that 200 levee workers were on the job.

Three days later, it was reported that a construction crew of 100 was boarding up along the Vidalia levee to protect it from “wavewash.”

Even as the river was falling after its Feb. 21 crest, work continued to ensure the levees would hold. About 1,000 men were on the 35 miles of levee in lower Concordia Parish, according to The Democrat’s Feb. 28, 1937, edition.

As the water rose throughout February and overflowed into the parish’s low sections, farm animals were transferred from Louisiana to Adams County, according to news accounts. A herd of 850 was barged across the river by the Parker brothers and taken to area pastures. Another herd of 260 was ferried over by Concordia livestock owner S.L. Winston.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors placed an ad in the newspaper to announce that “all refugee cattle from Louisiana will be admitted to Mississippi on the same basis without discrimination.” Louisiana cattle could be tested for disease after crossing the river.

While Natchez sits atop the bluff protected from the river’s high water, Silver Street and Learned’s Mill Road are the two low-lying sections of town vulnerable to a swollen river.

In 1937, Pritchartt noted, Silver Street was a squalid area mostly occupied by impoverished residents and fishermen. It was not the historic district that now draws visitors to its saloon, restaurants and casino.

The Learned’s Mill Road in 1937 included a lumber sawmill no longer there and the Magnolia Vale estate. The mill and estate grounds were flooded but the house was not. (The antebellum home burned down in 1946 and was rebuilt.)

Government officials claimed victory in their battle against the 1937 flood on March 1. “Engineers declare flood fight is won on the Lower Mississippi River,” proclaimed a newspaper headline.

The steps taken after the devastating 1927 flood were credited with curbing the river’s raging flow in the Ark-La-Miss region 10 years later.

“In 1937, when another superflood occurred on the Mississippi, the waters did extensive damage

on the upper reaches but passed speedily, and with little damage, through Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The improved levees, the legions of flood fighters who maintained them and the cutoffs had made the lower valley safer,” according to an historical account written for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.