Newsletter V2012-5

Bridge, Phillips, Elam Drainage District News From the desk of Milton Sandy Jr

September 15, 2012

Vol 2012-5

This newsletter is directed to friends and supporters of our efforts to get something done about the repetitive flooding in Corinth and Alcorn County which on May 2, 2010, caused loss of life, public and private property and threatened public health and safety by the massive release of raw sewage into flood waters. If you have news, questions or comments, please fire away.

LOCAL WEATHER HISTORY Flood Threat for September

Our flooding history threat advisory shifts to RED and SEVERE this month of September. After the flood of May 2, 2010, I started looking for weather statistics. I was able to find 110 years of weather statistics for Corinth and used this information as a statistical base for this advisory. Back in Vol 2010-14, I reported on Gary and Doug Mitchell who have been doing their part for almost 40 years collecting and reporting weather records which are an important part of Corinth's weather archives. This week Stephanie found another interesting reference in her research of local records which gives us a glimpse at another unsung hero of public service. Without the contribution of these unpaid, under appreciated public servants, we wouldn't have the wealth of weather statistics we enjoy today. In a future issue, I'll try to document some of the other sources of weather data we now have in Alcorn County as well.

Daily Corinthian, 7/23/1950, 55#164, p.1, c.3-6, H.E.Meeks

WEATHER OBSERVER FOR 36 YEARS, MEEKS GIVEN AWARD H.E.Meeks, local weather observer for the Corinth area since June 1914, was recently awarded a 20-year pin by the Commerce Department for devotion to duty and careful attention to compiling weather data since he assumed the post 36 years ago.

The bronze lapel pin is highly prized by Mr. Meeks, who handles the readings of the temperature at the station daily for the benefit of residents of the Corinth area.

Hubert E. Meeks began making weather observations at Corinth in June, 1914, succeeding Milton A. Candler as special weather observer, when Mr. Chandler was appointed postmaster.

He was appointed through the late Hon. E.S.Candler, Jr. , who was representative from the First Congressional District at that time.

At the time of his appointment the station at Corinth was equipped with a barometer, as well as a rain gauge and thermometers, but the disastrous fire of December 1924, burned out a large part of the business district, including the weather station. Since that time the station has been equipped with only a rain gauge and thermometers.

Hubert Meeks has lived in Corinth practically all of his life and has seen the town grow from

Contact: Milton Sandy Jr 662-286-6087 - Fax 287-4187 - E-mail mlsandy@tsixroads.com

a few frame buildings in 1880, until it now ranks with the twelve large cities in the state. He was employed for many years as office manager of the W.T. Adams Machine Co., and for the past several years has been connected with the Woodmen of the World as district manager.

Fraternalism has been his main hobby in life and he has been a leading spirit in Corinth Camp No. 64, Woodmen of the World, since its organization and has faithfully served the Camp as its secretary for the past 41 years. His service to the Camp is believed to be a record in the annals of Woodmen activities in the state, if not in the South.

“My connection with the Weather Bureau has been very pleasant, and a work that I have enjoyed,” Mr. Meeks recently wrote Stephen Lichtblau, official in charge of the Weather Bureau at New Orleans. The work has mainly been a work of love, and Mr. Meeks feels recompensed in that he has been rendering a public service of value to all citizens who are in any way dependent upon the weather in their business or professional pursuits.

With clock-like regularity Mr. Meeks reads the “triggers” at the rain gauge at 7 o'clock in the morning and at 6 o'clock in the afternoon methodically records the readings on forms furnished by the Commerce Department and diligently forwards results of the readings by telegram to the controlling office for this area.

Accompanying the Length of Service Award was a letter from F.W.Reichelderfer, chief of Bureau at Washington, which read: “On behalf of the Weather Bureau and the Department of Commerce, it affords me a great deal of pleasure to present you with the enclosed Length of Service Award as a modest but sincere recognition of your more than 20 years of honorable service. Your record richly merits this recognition and we congratulate you for your achievement.”

Known to scores of local people as the “the weatherman,” Mr. Meeks' official title is climatological observer, and title which he eschews in favor of the one local residents have tagged him with.

Obliging and affable at all times, Mr. Meeks is frequently called upon to furnish data, not only to local manufacturing enterprises but to officials of the law, on occasion. He always responds courteously and promptly and his conduct of the weather station has met with almost universal approval.

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Note: Hubert Elmer Meeks was b. 2 Oct 1880 in Theo, Alcorn Co., MS son of John Thomas Meeks (1858-1917) & Sarah Caldonia "Dania" (McPeters) Meeks of Alcorn Co. MS d. 9 March 1956, age 75, in Corinth, burial Henry Cemetery md. Myrtle Anderson d/o Ida L. Anderson children: Frances V. Meeks, b. 1907, H. E. Meeks, Jr., b. 1909 d. 1909, Harold W. Meeks, b. 1911, Orville Elaine Meeks, b. 1915

DRAINAGE HISTORY- BRUCE, MISSISSIPPI This week I want to take a rather rambling look at some drainage history of the nearby little town of Bruce in Northeast Mississippi. As I have written before, most of Northeast Mississippi “hill country” was swampy, poorly drained land which never really had a chance at prosperity until property owners banded together shortly after the turn of the last century, formed drainage districts and built the drainage canals which we still rely on today.

Every Thursday morning a fairly large group of mainly former Corinth High School alumni gather at a local restaurant (Martha's Menu) for breakfast. The volume of experiences represented in the room could fill several history books. Most of the friendships in the room go back fifty years or more. I've been attending regularly for a little over a year now. One of our honored guests is often Mr. Glen Parker, a retired Corinth High School educator who was my chemistry and physics instructor in high school and subsequently worked locally for 27 years in Quality Control for ITT. Mr. Parker approached me after breakfast and asked me to do some Internet research for him regarding a railroad abandonment taking place in Calhoun and Yalobusha Counties.

Glen Parker and his wife Sue (Clark) are natives of Calhoun and Yalobusha County. Glen grew up in a community called “Old Town” near Bruce. “Old Town”, originally called Hartford, was the site of the original county seat of Calhoun County before being moved in 1853 to Pittsboro.

Glen's great-grandfather moved to that area from Alabama after the Civil War and Parkers have been there ever since. Sue grew up in Grenada County but her family moved to Yalobusha County near Coffeeville when Grenada Lake was built and flooded their land. The disastrous Mississippi River Flood of 1927 served as the catalyst for the construction of four strategically located reservoirs in North Mississippi. Construction on Grenada Lake, which is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along with Sardis, Arkabutla, and Enid, began in 1947 and opened for operation in January, 1954. Glen and his wife, Sue still own family property in Yalobusha and Calhoun counties and live there part of the year.

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A local railroad, the Mississippi & Skuna Valley Railroad, ran beside their property and is now being abandoned. Glen was disturbed because the newspaper had announced the former railbed was being converted into a hiking and biking trail. Nobody had contacted any of the property owners or furnished them any information.

I think I have only been through Bruce once in my life. Calhoun County is what you might rightly call “off the beaten trail.” The population of Calhoun County by the 2010 census was 14,962 people and Bruce, the largest city in the county, was around 1,939 people. Calhoun County was formed in 1852 by the Mississippi Legislature with land from Chickasaw, Lafayette and Yalobusha Counties. Pittsboro (a village population 212) was established the same year as the county seat.

Besides being centrally located in the county, Pittsboro has an elevation of around 390' above sea level whereas Bruce, Calhoun City and Vardaman are at 100'+ lower elevations.

The first settlers came to the area that is now Calhoun County in the 1830's. Road systems were established as settlers arrived but flat boats and keel boats navigated Calhoun County's two rivers, the Loosa Schoona and the Yalobusha, in the 1800's to bring in supplies and to ship cotton from the county. The Loosa Schoona, also known as the Skuna, Schoona, and Scoona, rises about 4 miles west of Pontotoc. In Pontotoc County it flows generally southwestwardly through Chickasaw and Calhoun Counties, past the town of Bruce. In 1912, the Scoona Swamp Land Drainage District was organized in Pontotoc county and eventually dredged 10 miles. In 1912, the Schoona Swamp Land Drainage District No. 1 was organized in Chickasaw County and dredged 5 miles of the Skuna River Canal. In Calhoun County, the Loosa Scoona River Drainage District No. 1 was organized in 1913 to complete 17.25 miles and in 1919, the Loosa Scoona River Drainage District No. 2 completed 28.00 miles. 60.25 miles of the Skuna River Canal joins the Yalobusha River 6 mi east of Grenada, as the north arm of Grenada Lake, which is formed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam on the Yalobusha.

Loosascoona I found was originally a Choctaw name for the black polecat. The ancient Choctaws had four different names for that odoriferous little animal. It is a member of the weasel family, commonly referred to as skunks. Glen Parker told me he was very familiar with polecats and had heard that term more often than skunks most of his life. His most personal and up close encounter was with a polecat he caught in an animal trap as a boy, a December day before school was scheduled to get out for Christmas. He recalls that the animal looked so innocent, he thought he could release it without harm from the trap. The skunk sprayed him directly in the eye and he was blinded. His own brother even refused to guide him home he was smelling so bad. Everyone in school had drawn names for a Christmas party the next day and he had purchased a bottle of perfume for the girl whose name he had drawn. His family used the whole bottle of perfume trying to rid him of his “polecat aroma” - an alternate gift had to be found.

Glen also remembered working one summer as a boy for Mr. Tom H. Long who was a drainage commissioner in Calhoun County, clearing overgrowth along the Loosa Scoona Canal. He vividly remembered having to swim across the water with an ax to clear the opposite side.

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Transportation was obviously a challenge then as it still is today- you won't be traveling many 4-lanes if you visit Bruce even today.

In 1925, Robert G. Bruce, as general manager of E.L.Bruce Company, built a 22 mile railroad, the Mississippi & Skuna Valley Railroad Company, connecting what became Bruce, Mississippi, to the Illinois Central Railroad at Bryant, MS, just south of Coffeeville, MS. The railroad was chartered May 15, 1925 as the Mississippi & Schoona Valley Railroad Company but in 1926 the name was changed because “... there is a great diversity and variety of the local spelling of the name of the valley through which a railroad is being constructed by this corporation, and … the United States Geographic Board has adopted the spelling “Skuna” for the said Valley and the river flowing through it ...” Bruce obviously prospered after the coming of the railroad. It became a town under Gov. Theodore G. Bilbo on September 22, 1928.

The mill opened in 1927 and the E.L. Bruce Company provided the town water and electricity. E.L. Bruce Company also built houses for its employees, many of which still exist. Glen Parker said his family sold produce from their farm to the E.L. Bruce Company commissary which provided meals to employees.

E.L. Bruce Company also operated a general store which still exists in downtown Bruce and is today being restored as a museum. Glen recalled that most company employees made purchases there on credit which were deducted from their paychecks. He also remembered the mechanical transfer system used there for transferring cash and receipts to a central cashier.

Somewhat similar to today's bank drive-in vacuum tubes, many Corinthian's recall a similar system used in Rubel's Department store here in Corinth. The last operating system I've seen like this was several years ago at A. Schwab's Department Store on Beale Street in Memphis. As an accountant, I like to point out the great advantage of this system was that you only had one person handling cash. If there was a shortage, there wasn't much question who was to blame.

As Glen Parker described his life growing up near Bruce, I realized Bruce was a “mill town” owing it's existence to the E.L. Bruce Company. What was kind of dumbfounding to me was that Weyerhaeuser purchased the old Bruce flooring mill property, along with the railroad, and opened a modern yellow pine lumber mill there in 1974. My father and I purchased and shipped many loads of lumber from Bruce and our friends at Weyerhaeuser over the years. I never realized the town Bruce was named after E.L. Bruce Company before talking with Glen Parker.

In the summer of 1963 after my freshman year at Mississippi State, I had the opportunity to work and live in a “mill town” in Samoa, California. Originally the Hammond Lumber Company founded in 1892, in 1963 it was owned by Georgia Pacific Corporation. The redwood mill was located on an island peninsula of Humboldt Bay in northern California. It was quite an experience as I look back now I see that it was truly the end of an era. I lived in the company “bunk house”, a rather plain dormitory like building originally built to house the many single men who worked in the isolated mill. I ate at the company “cook Page 5/10

Cookhouse featured rows of long tables covered with "Oilcloth" and set for hungry mill workers

house” which served fairly plain but very good and substantial meals for company employees.

The work at the mill and in the woods was very physically demanding and dangerous. The best workers were often retained by the quality of the food and skill of the cooks who prepared the food in the company cookhouses. The whole town revolved around the mill schedule and the blowing of the whistle. The mill was later sold to Louisiana-Pacific Corporation and no longer exists today.

The cookhouse was turned into a tourist attraction and the last time we were there still existsSamoa Cookhouse, Samoa, California. If you ever visit the redwood country of northern California, I highly recommend a visit for a step back in time. Just south of Samoa at Fort Bragg, you can ride the “Skunk Line” of the California Western Railroad which is one of the most scenic railroad rides in America.

Samoa Cookhouse

Forests have always been important for fuel and shelter.

For that reason, the lumber industry has always been an integral part of the early history of this country. Early mills depended on water transportation until the building of railroads. Many towns and cities in Mississippi owe their existence to the railroads and sawmills built during the lumber boom of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Bruce Mississippi is one of those towns that grew up after the E.L. Bruce Company built their own railroad to harvest timberlands they purchased in the vicinity.

The forests in northeast Mississippi were largely mixed mature hardwoods with many different species growing together. Because each species of hardwood has different appearances, characteristics, and uses, logs harvested have to be separated and milled separately. For this reason, hardwood mills have generally been smaller scale operations because they could not obtain a large enough, continuous supply of the same species of logs. This led to a practice of many smaller mills shipping hardwood lumber to concentration points where it would be kiln dried and finished by planing or milling. Railroads had a regular tariff for “milling in transit” where lumber could be shipped to an intermediary point, unloaded, finished, and then reloaded and shipped to a final destination.

Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, became major hubs for these type dry kiln and milling operations in the hardwood industry. In 1881 Southern Lumberman, which remains today a major trade association publication for southern hardwood companies, began publication in Nashville.

The National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA) was founded in Memphis in 1898 to establish a uniform system of grading rules for the measurement and inspection of hardwood lumber. Today every inspector who grades hardwood lumber in the United States is trained and certified in Memphis at grading schools conducted by the NHLA. Charles Bruce in 1856 arrived in North Lawrence, Kansas, from Niles, Michigan. He was originally from Vermont. Charles Bruce and Son opened a wholesale lumber yard and expanded its operations into the manufacture of hardwood flooring in nearby Kansas City, Missouri as the Kansas City Hardwood Flooring Company. His son was Edwin Lawson Bruce (1855-1944) and in 1916 the company name was changed to the E.L.Bruce Company. Edwin Lawson Bruce had four sons, Charles Arthur Bruce (1883-1966), Robert Glenn Bruce (1885-1945), Frank Bruce (1888-?), Page 6/10

and Edwin Lawson Bruce, Jr. (1892-?) all of whom would eventually be involved with management and growth of E.L.Bruce Company into the largest hardwood flooring company in the world.

In 1916, E.L. Bruce Company built what was then called the largest hardwood flooring plant in the world at Little Rock, Arkansas. Robert G. Bruce was then listed as vice-president and general manager of the company. In 1921, E.L. Bruce Company expanded to Memphis with the addition of a major plant occupying 42 acres. E.L. Bruce Company distinguished itself by many innovations in hardwood flooring including some of the earliest “prefinished”, modular and parquet flooring products. E.L. Bruce Company obtained many patents under the name of Robert G. Bruce during the 1930's and 1940's. Hardwood flooring was an almost universal home product in the first half of the 20th century but was very labor intensive as far as installation. Manufacturers constantly sought the advantage of a product that was easier and faster to install. In the late 1960's, they lost that battle big time with the arrival of low cost, mass produced carpet which the FHA finally approved for government financed housing.

The information I found for Glen Parker regarding the railroad line abandonment has all been posted at: www.msdrainage.org I have to say that I don't have a dog in this fight. The easement seems pretty clear cut to me. What is going on is a relatively new concept which legally seems to me to be still in the testing stage. There are organizations formed which support both sides of the issue.

The term being used is “Railbanking”- a method by which corridors that would otherwise be abandoned can be preserved for future rail use through interim conversion to a trail. Established in 1983 as an amendment to Section 8(d) of the National Trails System Act, the railbanking statute allows a railroad to remove all of its equipment, with the exception of bridges, tunnels and culverts, from a corridor, and to turn the corridor over to any qualified private organization or public agency that has agreed to maintain it for future rail use. This property transfer precludes abandonment. In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Preseault v. United States, that preserving a corridor for future rail use through railbanking is a legitimate exercise of governmental power. This decision protects a railroad's legal right to transfer all forms of its ownership, including easements, to a trail group.

What is apparent is that someone made a major mistake by not contacting the property owners and attempting to secure their support and rapport before starting the project. The National Park Service along with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy publishes a handbook “Secrets to Successful Rail Trails”. The first thing I noticed in their Top 10 Tips was: 1. Reach out to adjacent residents.

Do not wait for nearby residents to learn about the proposal by reading about it in the newspaper. Talk to them directly, either by traveling door-to-door, circulating an open letter or giving a presentation at a community gathering. Meet with neighborhood leaders, store owners, members of service organizations, an official of the Parent-Teachers Association or the scouts, to explain exactly what you are proposing and the trail's benefits.

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So this is the information I'm passing along to Glen Parker. Glen was recently honored by the Corinth High School Class of 1962 at our 50th reunion. If you would like to see that interview you can view it at: http://youtu.be/BummpOYisv0

TUSCUMBIA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT At a recent board of supervisors meeting, Mr. Gary Ross asked me a question about the Tuscumbia Water Management District of Alcorn and Prentiss Counties. Because that organization is still active I thought that I would try to document some of its history which has not been well documented elsewhere and which has caused some confusion with what we have tried to do with the Bridge, Phillips and Elam Drainage Districts.

The history of the Tuscumbia Water Management District of Alcorn and Prentiss Counties (TWMD) could easily fill a book by itself. It was subject to controversy, great expectations, a lot of hard work by a lot of dedicated people, but ultimately fell short of all of its objectives. The TWMD had its beginnings on 11/14/1958 with a petition filed in Chancery Court by Earl Doty and others seeking the establishment of a new Drainage District embracing all the lands within Alcorn and Prentiss counties, except that part within the boundaries of the City of Corinth and towns of Rienzi and Booneville. A hearing was held on 12/8/1958 and the District established by a decree signed

by Chancellor William H. Dozier.

Prior to the Tuscumbia Water Management District being formed, the Tuscumbia Drainage District had been formed on 1/16/1909 and had issued bonds, dredged the original Tuscumbia Canal and was active until the organization of the Tuscumbia Water Management District, after which it became dormant. Early Doty who signed the petition for organization of the Tuscumbia Water Management District was a commissioner of the original Tuscumbia Drainage District.

Because the names are so similar, I have a combined timeline of both organizations which I post records to as I find them. If you are interested in any of the documentation on either of these two organizations, you may access it at: http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/93485 The City of Corinth later changed their position and became a part of the Tuscumbia Water Management District and signed on as a sponsor of the project. Two of the proposed projects in the USDA Soil and Water Conservation Service (SCS) watershed work plan were planned on Phillips Creek and Bridge Creek. Both of these projects plus some channel improvements on Elam Creek were part of the watershed work plan and would have helped prevent flooding in Corinth. None of these projects ever got built, although taxpayers in the City as well as county paid Tuscumbia Drainage Taxes until 04/09/2001 when the TWMD discontinued the drainage tax.

Documenting the financial history of the TWMD is not an easy task. The project started with the issuance of $875,000 in 30 year bonds by the District on 07/03/1970. Twenty Four (24) structures were to be built and many miles of channel improved. The District was to pay part of the costs of building the floodwater retarding structures and watershed lakes and the remainder was to be paid with Federal Funds under a program referred to as PL 566. The work was to be

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completed in seven years. By 1984, very little of the work had been done and costs had risen considerably. Supplements to the master plan in 1984 show the estimated Federal share at $11,003,800 and the local share at $5,040,300. In 2002, former tax collector Greg Younger estimated around $52,000 a year was collected until 1998. This would be an estimated $1,500,000 paid in local drainage taxes. I do not know the amount of Federal funds received or spent or the cost of the final project but if it was in the same local/Federal ratio as originally estimated, the watershed lakes built by the TWMD would have cost somewhere in the range of $4,500,000 to $5,000,000. The TWMD is the owner of record for this infrastructure and is still responsible for their maintenance. The lakes and retarding structures are inspected annually by the NRCS. Only 10 of the proposed 24 structures were ever built. I do not know of any channel improvements that were ever done as part of this project.

This drainage story had many twists and turns besides the short summary I've tried to relay above. I still find local people like Supervisor Lowell Hinton who was starting his career with the SCS and others who furnish pieces of information to help fill out the missing links in this story. I'll try to continue to flesh out this story in future newsletters but once again Stephanie furnished some very early press information from the Daily Corinthian printed below which dates from about the time I was graduating from Corinth High School. If I had only known how important drainage would become in the future , I would have tried to be a little more attentive back then. Before this article, I never knew Mr. Jim Smith with the Security Bank was involved with the TWMD early organization.

Mr. Smith and his family were always close friends with our family growing up. His grandson, Russell, owner of Russell's Steak House, was severely affected by the floods of May 2, 2010.

Daily Corinthian, February 2, 1962, Friday, 67#25, pg. 2&3

TUSCUMBIA WATERSHED Will Protect About 30,000 Acres of Quality Farm Land On Feb. 6, an engineering party of four surveyors will begin a preliminary study of one of the most important phases of soil conservation in this area- the Tuscumbia Watershed.

The information derived from the preliminary surveys will be used to support a request to Congress for funds to make final plans.

This group of men will work out of Corinth and Booneville for the entire month of February. After the money is allocated, it will take approximately nine months to complete final plans. It is estimated that between $40,000 and $70,000 will be needed for the planning stage.

This money will be paid entirely by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Tuscumbia Watershed is important to Alcorn County because it will protect the county's most desirable farm land from flooding which now makes about 20,000 to 30,000 acres of good land unprofitable or even impractical for farming.

The watershed will consist of a number of flood retention dams and an extensive system of drainage

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canals. The dams will trap rainwater and keep it from overflowing drainage ditches and covering good farm land with silt deposits.

Also, the main Tuscumbia channel will be improved to the extent of about $750,000.

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