LITTLE ROCK — On this date in 1908, the citizens of Pine Bluff were frantically trying to protect their downtown from a marauding Arkansas River that was eating away at the bank and threatening the county courthouse. Ultimately, the city of nearly 15,000 was saved, but it took the illegal destruction of government levees to accomplish that goal.
Flooding and Pine Bluff go hand-in-hand. Do not let the word bluff mislead you into thinking that the city was protected by rock-bound high banks. The city is situated on the south bank of the Arkansas River-and flooding through the years had gradually gnawed away at the soft bank so that by 1908 the river lay fewer than 100 yards from the back door of the county’s magnificent brick courthouse.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers had worked through the years to protect the city. Starting in 1892, the Corps had built “a series of dikes and revetments along the town front,” but those had deteriorated to the point that two blocks of riverfront property had vanished gradually into the river. In October of 1908, the Corps, with partial financial support from Pine Bluff Paving District 25, began work on a 2,500-foot-long levee and revetment replacement project. Mother Nature did not cooperate.
Work had just gotten under way when heavy rains began falling in Oklahoma-and the river rose quickly. One journalist described the situation: “Pine Bluff is almost helpless as far as protection along the river front is concerned,” noting that “the bank has been eaten” to within 30 feet of the Jefferson Hotel, “a $100,000 structure,” the Jefferson County Bank, and the courthouse.
On Nov. 30, 1908, with the river taking several feet of shoreline each day, a mass meeting of Pine Bluff citizens called for destroying a levee upriver of the city at Boyd’s Point so as to divert the flow of the river. Not everyone was in agreement with this plan as it would mean the destruction of valuable farm land north of the river. Regardless, the mass meeting created a “committee of safety,” and told it to “proceed legally to protect Pine Bluff . . .”
The committee wasted no time in telegraphing the Corps of Engineers at the War Department in Washington asking for authorization to cut the levee at Boyd’s Point. The War Department responded the next day with a refusal, and President Theodore Roosevelt refused to intervene.
The late James W. Leslie, a diligent Pine Bluff historian, has written that on the afternoon of December 2nd, six men set out on the Miller ferry boat for Boyd’s Point with sticks of dynamite and shovels. Leslie does not say specifically, but it appears that some local Corps employees might have secretly aided the team by suggesting where charges should be placed.
At 9:40 p.m. at least two explosions tore through the levee, resulting in, as Jim Leslie wrote, “a wave of hysteria throughout the city.” Residents, some in their pajamas, rushed into the streets, fearing that the noise resulted from the courthouse collapsing into the river. The Pine Bluff Graphic newspaper reported that callers supported the clandestine destruction of the levee.
The breaching of the levee did relieve pressure on the river bank near the courthouse, but pressure grew worse just downstream. Pine Bluff residents worked hard to save the river banks. Hundreds of volunteers, including a contingent of students from the local black college, Branch Normal College, made huge blankets of woven willow branches to protect the soft river banks.
Fortunately, the flooding slackened and Pine Bluff was saved, but not before the city’s prostitutes were displaced from their “elegantly furnished apartments and houses.” One disappointed wag commented years later that “you know, Pine Bluff has not had a decent red-light district since.”
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist. Email him at tomd@pgtc.com.
Editorial, Pages 72 on 12/02/2012