HEADWATERS PARK

Headwaters Park has been created by the citizens of Fort Wayne through their donations, ideas, and labor as a means of flood control in the city.

Earlier designs had a similar purpose. George Kessler's plan of 1912 envisioned a greenspace for recreation in the great bend of the St. Mary's River to absorb springtime floods, as did the park design submitted to the city in 1927 by Robert Hanna. In 1984, the Indiana Department of Transportation also developed a plan for the downtown flood plain.

The earliest recorded flood in the Three Rivers area occurred in 1790, four years before there was a Fort Wayne, when the Indian settlement of Kekionga suffered from the disastrous combination of a rapid spring thaw and heavy spring rains.

In the years before dikes were built, the average flood level was about 14 feet. After engineers built dikes to protect the riverside neighborhoods, the flood level rose steadily. By the 1920s, floods were more frequent, and the average flood level jumped to nearly 20 feet.

The worst flood on record occurred in March 1913. When the Maumee rose overnight from 7 feet to over 26 feet, the dikes along the Lakeside neighborhood gave way. In all, 15,000 people were made homeless, and six people lost their lives. Mayor Jesse Grice organized a heroic relief effort, and martial law

was declared with orders given to shoot looters. But Fort Wayne saved itself then, as it would do again in 1982 when an immense volunteer effort preserved the dikes against the second-highest flood waters on record.

In the wake of these tragedies, plans for allowing flood waters to wash across the great bend in the St. Mary's River assumed increasing importance. At the ground-breaking ceremony on October 26, 1993, Headwaters Park was heralded as the premier "lasting legacy" of the Fort Wayne Bicentennial Celebration and a monument to the cooperative efforts of all segments of the "City That Saved Itself."

The 1912 plan by George E. Kessler of St. Louis for a river-front park that centered on the confluence of the three rivers. (Fort Wayne Department of Parks and Recreation Report, 1912).

Presented by the Journal-Gazette Foundation

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