New Madrid During the Flood of 1882. New Madrid, Mo., under three feet of water, from a sketch by Charles Upham which appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of April 1, 1882, along with view of other inundated river towns flooded by the Mississippi. Nearly 54 years later, the whole area in this vicinity was evacuated when county engineers dynamited new gaps in the New Madrid-Birds Point Floodway to permit waters of the Ohio and the Mississippi to pour over 131,000 acres, and thus lower the levels upstream at Cairo.

Wide World Photos, Inc. · [ca. January 1937]

[Information from item housing] Floods: Before 1960: Wirephotos