The Levee Boards of the Yazoo Mississippi Delta: A Fight to Control the River and Region

This thesis traces the historical geography of local Mississippi River control in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta from the 1850s through the present, dividing each distinct period in its flood control history into spatio-temporal "landscape eras." Local leaders in each of the Delta's historic landscape eras had slightly different strategies for managing Mississippi River flooding, and these differences manifested themselves on the Delta's physical, political, and economic landscape. Since the spatial diffusion of power and resources in the Delta directly stemmed from the region's flood control policies, those who controlled the river, controlled the region. Today however, as each large flood event causes the nation to question the lower Mississippi's current system of structural flood control, the Delta's historic power structures are changing.