The Flood of Nineteen Ninety-Three

This marker remembers the Great Flood of nineteen ninety-three, one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history. For nearly two months that summer, relentless thunderstorms fell on already saturated ground across nine states of the upper Mississippi and Missouri River basins. About fifteen million acres went under water, fifty people died, and damages approached fifteen billion dollars.

Manhattan bore the brunt of it in Kansas. The Kansas River overflowed its banks, and the low ground along South Manhattan Avenue flooded first. On July twenty-third, with Tuttle Creek Lake swollen sixty-three feet above normal, the Army Corps of Engineers threw open all eighteen flood gates of the dam, releasing some twenty-seven million gallons of water every minute.

The dam whose construction affected ten towns was now doing exactly what it was designed to do, and the people of Manhattan watched the river crest and slowly fall away.