Word: kickapoos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...town's business district, four square blocks of shops, bars and other enterprises, including a feed mill and a cheese factory, lay in the flood plain of the Kickapoo River. Five times in the past 75 years, the village was hit by devastating floods. After one, the citizens sent an arriving Red Cross contingent home. They would take care of themselves, they said. And they did. To thwart the rampaging river once and for all, they decided to pick up the whole business district and move it half a mile away and 55 ft. higher...
...Government's traditional answer to the kind of flooding that bedeviled Soldiers Grove is to build a dam or a levee. Both, at one time or another, have been ordered for the Kickapoo. But in 1975, after environmentalists complained about pollution from the proposed construction, these projects were stalled. At about the same time, studies began to show that the projected dam would not fully protect Soldiers Grove-or the other towns downstream from it-despite a price tag that topped $50 million. The annual maintenance of a proposed $3.5 million levee system would have doubled property taxes. Staying...
...crippled daughter were pulled from their two-story house just before it lurched down the street, borne away on the current. Discussion raged. Some said another big flood might not come for 75 years. Others supported the idea of an expensive levee. It was the Kickapoo that had the last word. On the Fourth of July weekend in 1978, the river rose up and smashed through the valley, knocking down buildings, ruining crops and adding another glum watermark to the town's soggy history. Damage to the business district reached half a million dollars...
...Palmdale, Calif., is a longish way from the old green-painted hangar in Burbank where it all began. But to everyone in military aviation, it is still the "Skunk Works," after the foul-smelling still where one of Al Capp's Li'I Abner characters brewed Kickapoo Joy Juice. A fitting nickname. Over the years an incredible string of secret weaponry-including the new breed of nearly "invisible" (to radar) planes-has emerged from the Skunk Works...