BOOK A HISTORY OF DRAINAGE DISTRICT

The Little River Drainage District has gathered information on its history and work and compiled the data into a booklet, "Little River Drainage District of Southeast Missouri 1907-Present." Copies were presented recently to Riverside Regional Library by the district.

Those interested in the history of the district and the area before the swamps were drained may pick up a free copy at the library's Central Center, 204 S. Union in Jackson.

A selection of photographs depicting the work and lives of the workers during the construction of the levees and the Castor River Diversion Channel are now on display at the library along with newspaper articles about the histories of area towns.

Before the federal government constructed the Castor River Diversion Channel and a series of levees to protect the drained swampland, the Missouri Bootheel was a catch basin for the waters of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and the eastern Ozark hill streams that flowed south into the Bootheel The result was a vast, uninhabitable swamp.

Since construction of the Diversion Channel, the swamp has been turned into highly productive farm land.