Wayne Wesley Hinds of Trumann died March 7 at age 77. In his obituary, it was noted that Hinds held the record at Trumann High School, where he graduated in 1956, for the most touchdowns scored in a game until 2011.
What should have been mentioned is that he probably knew more than anyone about the Marked Tree Siphons, an engineering feat that attracted national attention when they were installed in 1939 by the Memphis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. These days, the vast majority of Arkansans would have to admit that they've never heard of the siphons.
Hinds was the general manager and executive secretary of what's known as Drainage District No. 7. You would have to be from east Arkansas to understand fully the importance of drainage and levee districts in the Delta. The row-crop farming areas in the eastern half of the state were covered until the late 1800s and early 1900s by swamps and thick hardwood forests.
"Reclaiming the swamp and overflow lands in the Delta required draining those lands and building levees to mitigate the inevitable floods that periodically occurred," Donna Brewer Jackson wrote for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "Without drainage, the land was useless for farming. Early residents realized that once the land was cleared of the timber and drained, the rich alluvial soil would be productive for a variety of crops, especially cotton. Initially, settlers had attempted to build makeshift barriers to halt the powerful floodwaters, but these attempts were ultimately useless. Although the line of levees along the Mississippi River expanded during the 19th century, the water always found a weak spot and inundated the region."
Drainage District No. 7 of Poinsett County was authorized by the Arkansas Legislature in 1917. Congress had created the Mississippi River Commission in 1879 to work with the Corps of Engineers on flood-control issues. The Arkansas Legislature, in turn, began passing laws in 1905 to ensure a unified flood-control effort. Floods along the St. Francis River had long been a fact of life in northeast Arkansas. The river often was blocked by trees and other debris, and it changed course frequently. Drainage district officials decided that a floodway was needed to divert the overflow.
At a point just north of Marked Tree, the decision was made to build an artificial channel known as a sluiceway along with a lock to facilitate river traffic. The Department of War had jurisdiction over the St. Francis River since it was designated as navigable to Wappapello, Mo. The department issued a construction permit in January 1924 and the lock, the sluiceway and what was known as the Steep Gut Floodway were completed in 1926. A portion of the sluiceway and levee collapsed in 1933. In 1936, the Corps of Engineers determined that the levee was seriously eroded. Navigation was halted on the river. A flood in May 1938 created a 90-foot gap in the levee.0
Engineers determined that the sluiceway and levee had failed because they were constructed on fine sands that sank when saturated. The Corps of Engineers decided that the best solution along this section of the St. Francis River was to pass water through tubes that would become known as the Marked Tree Siphons. The siphons were designed and installed from December 1938 through June 1939. There were three steel tubes, nine feet in diameter and 228 feet long. Constructed in Corps of Engineers shops at a cost of $215,000, they were among the largest tubes of their type in the world. A vacuum pump would prime each siphon, and then the water flow would become self-sustaining with an air valve regulating the rate of water flow.
Hundreds of people from across northeast Arkansas put on their finest clothes and turned out for the dedication of the siphons on June 7, 1939. The Marked Tree Tribune reported, "A whole river was lifted 30 feet across a dam and deposited on the other side." The district engineer for the Corps of Engineers described the Marked Tree Siphons as "unique in the annals of engineering." On May 2, 1988, the Marked Tree Siphons and the 1920s lock were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The lock is no longer used.
In the early years of flood-control efforts in the Delta, hunters and those who ran livestock in the wild sometimes would cut levees and perform other acts of sabotage against the drainage districts. Eventually, the work of the drainage districts changed the face of northeast Arkansas. Mississippi County, for instance, went from a county where only 5 percent of the land was in cultivation to a place that grew more cotton than any other county in the country. Many of the early levees were poorly constructed. The Great Flood of 1927 revealed the weaknesses in the system. As engineering and construction methods improved, levee failures became less common.
"It took many years for the levee systems and drainage canals to be successful in keeping the water out," Jackson wrote. "Opposition by large landowners and the Northern-owned lumber companies, who were averse to paying drainage taxes, hindered levee building for a time. ... However, through perseverance and sheer luck, the drainage districts became successful and enabled Arkansas to become one of the most productive farming states in the nation."
At no point in the system of levees, drainage ditches and other structures that crisscrossed east Arkansas, though, was there anything quite like the Marked Tree Siphons.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 03/18/2015