Sunday Sundries: Mississippi River Basin Model

Buddy Butts Park in Jackson, Mississippi is, in some ways, the very picture of state neglect. You'd be hard-pressed to find an entrance road more riddled with potholes! The entire park is imbued with a worn-out and forgotten aura-- especially the most interesting section, the site of the now-derelict Mississippi River Basin Model Waterways Experiment Station.

Visitors to the overgrown Experimentation Site are greeted by the creepy remnants of the pump house.

Work on the Station began in 1943, with the help of German prisoners of war. The model was used to predict flooding events and analyze levees, locks, etc. It was last used in 1973.

Mounds of wire mesh; the mesh was used to simulate the effect of vegetation along the shore.

Interior of the pump house

The model itself, made from contoured segments of concrete, with ridges functioning as levees.

The model is stunningly large-- the Station covered 200 acres and is by far the largest model of the Mississippi ever constructed.

The Station was once a lovely tourist destination.

It is sad to think that models such as this are made obsolete by computer modeling; the Station is impressive, and tangibly educational in a way that computerized models never can be. 

Now for the plant: Asclepias viridis, or "Antelope-Horn Milkweed," found growing by the pump house.

Although the Station would be a good set for a horror film or a nightmare, it's also a thought-provoking reminder of a time when engineers used slide rules and drafted by hand, and the prediction of natural events involved complex, physical scale models.