Geoscience Reference
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Jeffersonville, Indiana, located across the Ohio from Louisville, Kentucky, was laid out in
1802 after a plan for an “ideal city” drawn by Thomas Jefferson, hence its name. The
town's strategic location on the Ohio River quickly made it a center for trade and for boat
construction during the steamboat era. But the same river that helped Jeffersonville grow
and thrive could be a destructive force as well, as demonstrated in this 1937 photograph of
the swollen river.
In the wake of the damaging flood of 1884, the federal government built a levee to protect
Jeffersonville. And the levee did its job when the floodwaters came in 1907 and again in
1913. But it proved to be no match for the rampaging 1937 floodwaters, which easily topped
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