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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.
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 ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Geology and Geography of the Lowlands2. The First Inhabitants3. Euro-American Settlement to 18114. The New Madrid Earthquakes5. Settlement, Early Agriculture and Civil War6. Transportation7. Timber8. Beginning Reclamation9. Little River Drainage District: Organization and Opposition10. Little River Drainage District: Planning and Construction11. Little River Drainage District: Floods, the Great Depression, Financial Failure and Recovery12. Land Promotion, Post-Drainage Agriculture and Social Change13. New Political and Religious Movements and the Sharecropper Demonstration14. Politics and Farm Labor Changes15. End of an EraChapter NotesBibliographyIndex
“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.
