Before you can understand this project, you have to understand the first project. During WWII, the US Army Corps of Engineers began work on creating the world’s largest model of the Mississippi River Basin. It’s purpose? Well, it was a model – specifically a way to test how new levee systems would prevent flooding. In a time with no super-computers the best way to model an entire river basin was to build a small-scale version of the basin. The goal was to finish the complete model in 1948, and parts of the model were working and in use as early as 1949, but the full model was not finished until 1966. Although the model was used for actual research between 1949 and 1966, the completed model was used for the last time only six years after its completion.
In 1990, the US Army Corps of Engineers turned over the model to the City of Jackson, Mississippi. Although the model is within Buddy Butts Park and open to the public, the cost of maintenance has just been too high, and the model is now overgrown with vegetation and has fallen into disrepair.
