Speaker
Description
The Great Flood of 1862, which submerged the Pacific Northwest of the United States and especially California – including its capital Sacramento – for months and claimed thousands of lives, represents one of the most transformative environmental disasters in U.S.-American history. This “mega flood” followed a 43-day storm caused by shifts in the polar jet stream and brought torrential rain. In addition, unusually warm air caused an early snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada, which transformed California’s rivers into raging torrents that destroyed whole towns and mining camps. Drawing on eyewitness accounts such as William H. Brewer’s Up and Down in California, 1860–1864 and regional newspaper reports, this contribution explores how the crisis was perceived, narrated, and understood within the socio-environmental context of nineteenth-century California. Even though the flood was often described as an inevitable environmental disaster, it also revealed the deadly consequences of short-sighted human land use as well as colonial settlement patterns at the riverside. Thus, it prompted the citizens of Sacramento to make first efforts towards flood control, including the construction of levees and drainage canals, which lead to the early organization of reclamation districts. Taking into consideration a broader discourse of crisis and adaption after environmental disasters or ecocatastrophes, I argue that the Great Flood of 1862 marks a foundational moment in the development of flood risk management in California and beyond. In my contribution to the conference I want to adopt an environmental-historical perspective and demonstrate, how the flood not only reshaped the physical landscape of California’s Sacramento Valley but also encouraged transformation, adaptation, resilience, and sustainable coexistence between human communities and their environment.
| Keywords | environmental disaster, California, flood, flood control, transformation and adaptation |
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| claudia.pereira@fau.de |