With all our attention on visiting the National Czech and Slovak Museum we had not realized the Cedar Rapids June Flood had severely damaged the museum, major parts of the collection, and huge parts of the city.
Cedar Rapids is essentially a plug in the bottle with tall hills on both sides. The low head dam under I380 and the solid ramps leading to the bridge plug the upstream side of the river, but the water never quite reached the upper span.
Downstream you can see May’s Island which 150 years ago was a low grassy sandbar that flooded most years. Over time it has been filled in, built up, expanded wider and longer until now it supports most of the city offices and functions. Well it did until the water went over the bridge and up to the second floor windows.
At one point the water was 20 feet over the top of the levee and some people had 17 feet of water in their houses. There was block after block after block and mile after mile of houses of ordinary working people that were flooded, sometimes into the second floor. It was very sad to see people stripping their house to the bare frame so it could dry out and throw everything they had into big piles along the street.
About half of downtown was also flooded and as you can see behind the airplane sculpture many of the stores were still boarded up and I am not sure how many ever managed to reopen, at least in the floodable downtown. Once out of the river valley Cedar Rapids is vary nice with most of the new stores, restaurants, and developments up in them thar' hills. A real treat was the Noelridge Park which is almost a botanical garden I put on this other page.
Out on what used to be the far east side of Cedar Rapids is a large tract donated by one of the founding fathers for the Beaver Park complex. The ravine was originally developed as a zoo that has housed a variety of animals over the years and with the more restrictive animal care regulations had to be closed. Now it has been restored to Old McDonald's Farm
with prairie dogs in the red brick bear cage, farm animals around the red barn, and ducks in the ponds at the base of the ravine. A truly lovely place.
In the original Beaver Park, the sliding rock did not have the landscaping and easy access to the back side. Generations of kids had a rite of passage to grow enough to climb unassisted to the top and slide down into the sand in the small stream at the bottom. Great memories. With all the renovations even an old guy like me can climb on the rock, unfortunately, development has now dried up most of the stream and rocks now clutter the base so sliding down is not a good idea.