Southeast Missouri from Swampland to Farmland: The Transformation of the Lowlands

by John C. Fisher

Overview

As the 20th century began, swamps with immense timber resources covered much of the Missouri Bootheel. After investors harvested the timber, the landscape became overgrown. The conversion of swampland to farmland began with small drainage projects but complete reclamation was made possible by a system of ditches dug by the Little River Drainage District--the largest in the U.S., excavating more earth than for the Panama Canal.

Farming quickly took over. The devastation of Southern cotton fields by boll weevils in the early 1920s brought to the cooler Bootheel an influx of black and white sharecroppers and cotton became the principal crop. Conflict over New Deal subsidies to increase cotton prices by reducing production led to the 1939 Sharecropper Demonstration, foreshadowing civil rights protests three decades later.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786479955
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	05/08/2017
Pages:	260
Sales rank:	212,214
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John C. Fisher is the author of three historical books, numerous food related articles, and a column for Missouri Life Magazine. He lives in Kennett, Missouri.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
 1. Geology and Geography of the Lowlands
 2. The First Inhabitants
 3. Euro-American Settlement to 1811
 4. The New Madrid Earthquakes
 5. Settlement, Early Agriculture and Civil War
 6. Transportation
 7. Timber
 8. Beginning Reclamation
 9. Little River Drainage District: Organization and Opposition
10. Little River Drainage District: Planning and Construction
11. Little River Drainage District: Floods, the Great Depression, Financial Failure and Recovery
12. Land Promotion, ­Post-Drainage Agriculture and Social Change
13. New Political and Religious Movements and the Sharecropper Demonstration
14. Politics and Farm Labor Changes
15. End of an Era
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This comprehensive and insightful book provides readers with an overview of Bootheel history from the prehistoric age to the mid-twentieth century. Carefully researched and well written...a must read for any person interested in the history of the Bootheel”—Missouri Historical Review.

From the Publisher