Otte-Coleman - City Magazine

| HISTORY
mandan levee–GOOd fOr
nearly 60 years
For nearly 70 years, since Mandan’s
incorporation in 1881, the Heart River,
snaking through the city’s south side,
flooded Mandan more than two dozen
times.
The biggest floods came in 1910, 1937 and
1943, according to the United States Army Corps
of Engineers. However, with flood control projects
in the 1950s (the Heart Butte Dam on the Heart
River and the Garrison Dam on the Missouri
River), overflows into Mandan became more of a
historical footnote.
Today, Mandan residents know that although
the Heart River continues to flood – that is,
overflow its banks – they are safeguarded by
the old installation and construction of a near,
12-mile-long earthen levee. Estimated then to cost
$246,000, the levee, authorized by Congress in
1946, was designed to protect nearly 1,000 acres
within the city and about 120 acres of what was
then known as the N.D. State Training School.
According to the Mandan Daily Pioneer,
Construction began in June 1949, raising and
widening 17,000 feet of levee and 350 feet of
railroad embankment used as a levee, and
raising the grade of U.S. Highway 10, protecting
the Training School (now the N.D. Youth
Correctional Center). The new levee also was
shifted 50 to 60 feet back from the Heart’s banks.
A previous floodwall had protected Mandan,
but not nearly as well. “The floodwall was
originally only eight-feet-high, and generally
failed to hold the rampaging Heart from
By Stan Stelter
200 3rd Ave. NW Caption: Canoeing near
downtown Mandan in the flood of 1943. Residential Street Caption: Canoeing in
the flood of 1943, Mandan.
Heart River Bridge Caption: The Heart River
Bridge in the flood of 1943.
Credit: Grace Gould Imhoff Collection –
Mandan Historical Society
overrunning the Syndicate and Dogtown sections
(old names for southern city parts) of Mandan in
floodtime,” noted the Fargo Forum in a 1949 story
about the new levee’s construction. The Fargo
contractor was elevating the levee to 15 feet, the
Forum reported.
On Aug. 1, 1950, the Pioneer headlined the
project’s completion, “Final Work On Mandan
Levee Finished – Army Engineers Give It O.K.”
Since then, there have been upgrades and changes
to the levee system, including raising the levee’s
main and southern units to allow three feet of
“freeboard,” and even “ice-affected” flooding.
This spring, serious flooding eroded the
Heart’s banks at two or three spots in Mandan
requiring repair, but those damages don’t threaten
the levee itself, according to Shannon Jeffers of
the Corps office at Riverdale. Jeffers’ job includes
inspection of Mandan’s levee system, while
operation and maintenance responsibility lies with
the Lower Heart River Water Resources District of
Morton County.
According to the United States Army Corps of
Engineers, the levee system and Heart Butte Dam
provides “adequate flood protection for the city”
assuming the free flow of ice and flood waters at
the city’s southeast edge.
For nearly 60 years, it has done just that.
Stan Stelter, development director at the Abused
Adult Resource Center, is a native North Dakotan
and free-lance writer.
44 thecitymag.com