Then & Now

Typical dredge equipment used in the Little River Drainage District with supplies being brought in by railroad. (Little River Drainage District

Submitted photo

People of the Little River Drainage District

There is an urban legend floating around parts of the Missouri Bootheel. It insists there are two structures on Earth visible from the moon.

One is the Great Wall of China. The other is the five main ditches dug to create the Little River Drainage District (LRDD) in Southeast Missouri. In its entirety, the Little River Drainage District spans 550,000 acres and covers seven counties, including Cape Girardeau, Bollinger, Scott, Stoddard, New Madrid, Dunklin and Pemiscot.

Only a handful of people could confirm or deny this urban legend, but it does enough to highlight the scale of a public project begun over 100 years ago and made the Bootheel a prime location for agriculture.

Steve E. Turner, a director and filmmaker residing in Jackson is working on a documentary about the LRDD. He plans to include bits of history, images, documents and informative interviews featuring trusted subjects.

“‘The Little River’ is an untold story of unimaginable scope,” the documentary’s website, littleriverdoc.org, reads. Turner planned to begin filming in May, but the need to continue fundraising through the summer and fall months will alter his original schedule, he says.

From swamp to soil

While the rest of the world may have to wait a little longer to hear this untold story, locals know the lore. The story goes like this: the area the LRDD covers was once a government-owned, uninhabitable, treacherous swamp land. People attempted to drain it during the 1800s, but it was too rough of a job. They needed the big tools and the right brains.

The Swamp Land Act of 1850 gifted land ownership to the states a swamp sat in, and the property in Southeast Missouri was soon dispersed throughout the counties. Clearing the area for cultivation was no longer mere desire; it was an order. During the years leading up to the formation of the LRDD, the land caught the attention of a cluster of lumbermen. They were looking to make a profit off of the vast amounts of mature wood the area provided.

This sticks out in history as a type of beginning. An abundance of materials were retrieved, but the water still loomed. These men needed the government and a way to fund what would soon be the country’s largest drainage project.

It was nonstop dredging, lobbying and likely, tears. Landowners were assessed, work crews lived in boats in sweltering ditches with their families and the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 occurred. Mounds of earth were moved, accompanied by buckets of sweat. Most importantly, groups of people were determined to make this land live up to its potential.

“I don’t think they would have given up,” says H. Riley Bock as he speaks about Houck v. The Little River Drainage District, the 1915 Supreme Court case that was one of many obstacles hindering completion of the project. The plaintiff, Louis Houck, was a railroad man, a well-known lawyer and a prominent landowner who fought against efforts to form the district.

Bock, a citizen of New Madrid, Missouri, and former LRDD attorney, recites pieces of local history inside of Pink’s Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street in New Madrid, another piece of recently revived local history. He works a printable version of a Washington Post crossword puzzle as he talks.

The Little River Drainage District maintains these ditches where Highway 162 crosses over them in this drone view west of Portageville, Missouri.

Fred Lynch ~ flynch@semissourian.com

“Drainage work is a specialty,” Bock says. He was hired by the district the same year his late father, Harry H. Bock, retired from it. He remembers sitting in on board meetings in his father’s law office.

“He taught me a lot. He told me a lot,” Bock says. “He handled more courtroom work for the district, and my work was more focused on environmental issues.”

Chief players

Bock refers to the ditches as “big man-made scars in the earth.” Who were some of the people there for the carving of these scars? Who stuck around to see the ditches through?

In 1905, the first chief engineer on the LRDD project was a self-taught man called Otto Kochtitzky. His name was the first on the 285-page petition presented to the courts to begin the district. The petition is full of strategies and boundaries, and known for being the largest petition ever filed in a Missouri civil proceeding at the time.

In 1913, the chief engineer was W. A. O’Brien, an illustrious mover and shaker on the project who died during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918.

In a room containing LRDD memorabilia, W. Dustin Boatwright, the current chief engineer, talks about the urgency that comes with his work.

“All of these guys that have come before me — I’m the sixth chief engineer — that was their lifestyle, too,” Boatwright says. “It’s not just a job. It’s a lifestyle. You have to love it, and we do. We absolutely love what we do.”

He credits his choice of a civil engineering education to his mentor and predecessor, Larry D. Dowdy.

“During his time here, [Mr. Dowdy] taught me an immense amount about the district and how to maintain the system we have,” Boatwright says. “He always encouraged me to never stop learning.”