Preserving the History of “Drowned Towns” in the American West

<p>NEH funding supported the community meetings that established core values for The Atlas of Drowned Towns. Image courtesy of The Atlas of Drowned Towns.</p> — NEH funding supported the community meetings that established core values for The Atlas of Drowned Towns. Image courtesy of The Atlas of Drowned Towns.

During the 20th century, communities throughout the United States were displaced by the damming up of rivers and creation of reservoirs—this was particularly true in rural areas of the American West. The Atlas of Drowned Towns seeks to preserve the history of these communities through a digital, publicly accessible archive and interactive map. The project was initially created with funding from an NEH grant, which helped project director Bob Reinhardt develop a method for identifying and recovering the history of these places. A cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has breathed life into the project, providing support for digitization, digital storage, website development, and community engagement.

NEH funding proved crucial for turning Reinhardt’s long-time interest in displaced western communities into a project that will ultimately preserve their histories. The funding helped Reinhardt bring together historians and other humanists, social scientists, natural scientists, and technological experts to identify how to create a usable, digital preservation platform. At the same time, Reinhardt held three community meetings that brought together representatives from local universities, museums, historical societies, dam-building agencies, and affected tribal nations. These community meetings led to core values for the project.

In a field, an abandoned grain silo sits to the left of some structural foundations. — American Falls, Idaho, is an example of a community displaced by the damming of rivers. The town was moved in 1925, but certain structures remain. Image courtesy of The Atlas of Drowned Towns.

A sidewalk and building foundations disappear into a lake. — Sidewalks and building foundations in American Falls, Idaho. Image courtesy of The Atlas of Drowned Towns.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reached out to Reinhard after a local newspaper published a piece about the project. Together, Boise State University and the Corps of Engineers developed a cooperative agreement aimed at establishing The Atlas of Drowned Towns as an online resource, hosting the Corps’ digitized collections related to displaced communities and engaging community members through digitization days—all with a focus on the USACE’s Willamette Valley Project. The first such program hosted in Detroit, Oregon, focused on the history of the town’s original location along the North Santiam River in what is now Detroit Lake. Seventy people attended the event, where the project collected 14 oral histories, digitized more than 500 pages of documents, and made its first 3D scans of artifacts. These and other materials related to displaced western communities will be made available on the Atlas.