Nature’s Fury

Brush Creek looking east along Ward Parkway in Kansas City, Missouri. Image source: Photograph by Frederick Solberg, Jr., Kansas City Star, in Hauth, Leland, and William J. Carswell, Jr. Floods in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas, September 12-13, 1977, U.S. Geological Survey, 1978.

INTRODUCTION

About this Exhibition

No place on earth is immune from natural disasters from tornadoes, heat waves, and droughts to floods, ice storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Nature’s Fury explores the science behind these natural disasters and how science has attempted to understand them.

The exhibition also examines the decades-long struggle to manage the Missouri River. Since the 1940s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation have built dams, reservoirs, and levees along the river basin. Known as the Pick-Sloan Plan, the projects have succeeded in controlling flood waters and providing irrigation for farmlands. The re-engineered river basin has also meant lost ancestral land for some Native American tribes and altered habitat for fish and bird species.

The exhibition was curated by Eric Ward, Vice President for Public Programs at the Linda Hall Library, and was on display at the Linda Hall Library from March 17 to August 25, 2017. The online exhibition is funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Exhibition content is solely the responsibility of the Linda Hall Library.