The flooding Missouri River was 14 miles wide, blowing out rural levees and swallowing land from bluff to bluff as it sliced its way south between Nebraska and Iowa.
Swollen by a flash thaw in the mountains of Montana and the snow-covered plains of the Dakotas, the nation's longest river mounted a last, historic rampage before dams tamed its wild nature.
At the river's Omaha and Council Bluffs narrows, hills and levees channeled the water into a 500-yard funnel. Either the river would choke past the cities, or it would pop the Council Bluffs plug and wash through 7,700 houses and scores of businesses in the West End lowlands, where evacuations already had displaced nearly 30,000 people. Thousands also had been moved on the Omaha side of the river.
Hydrologists raised flood-crest estimates daily. Omaha's industrial riverfront and community water-supply systems on both sides of the river were doomed — unless nearly 30 miles of federal levees were quickly elevated and reinforced.
What happened next is part of Omaha and Council Bluffs lore.
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