(Photo illustration by Art Smith) Rendering of what a flood wall in Marietta might have looked like.

The Mid-Ohio Valley is home to Parkersburg, where a 20,000-foot wall and levee hold back any potential flood, and Marietta, where rising waters flow through the streets whenever the rivers decide to leave their banks.

The wall in Parkersburg was built following the 1937 flood. Constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it was designed to keep a flood the size of the 1913 flood out of the streets of Parkersburg and it has shielded the city from water dozens of times since it was constructed. To put that in context for Marietta. Water reached the second story of downtown structures in 1913 and it is possible it could again someday.

I had been based out of Parkersburg for a few years when the mammoth 42.41-foot flood hit the city in 2004. As then-city editor Jesse Mancini pointed out to me at the time, “we don’t worry too much about floods down here, we have the flood wall.” Without it I’m pretty sure that we would have had water around the Parkersburg News and Sentinel and in the warehouse where hundreds of rolls of paper were stored.

The 2004 flood hit Marietta pretty hard. Water reached into businesses that had not seen that much water since the 1970s and many of the businesses were caught off guard. It made a mess of businesses and homes throughout the downtown area and Harmar. Mud was everywhere. I took a few days off and went and helped with the clean-up, it was truly a disgusting mess.

Of course, Marietta had seen it before, including the 1937 flood that convinced Parkersburg and other communities that a wall and earthen levee were needed.

Marietta has a levee of course, but it is not really a levee, it’s a landing. A levee keeps water out of a town, and a landing welcomes people into it. Marietta has had plenty of floods during its long history. The river has hit flood stage more than 70 times since 1832. The community has chosen to keep its landing and not have a levee for a long time.

If Marietta had chosen to build a floodwall, how would it have changed the community?

Using what was done in Parkersburg as a model, I came up with a concept of what would have been.

The flood wall would have likely been located about where the River Trail is today. Starting on the south side of the Washington County Fairgrounds it would have likely had an earthen levee from the lower side of Muskingum Drive to the river. Earth levees take up more space than a wall, but this would have been fine until it reached the area above Washington Street. The Muskingum starts getting closer to Front Street so it would transition to a wall. Construction of the wall would have likely meant that the houses that are below the bridge today would have been removed. As it passed through Muskingum Park, it would have likely had an opening to the river near the monument before continuing behind the post office and armory. Goose Run, which drains most of Marietta, would have been dealt with the same way Pond Run was in Parkersburg, basically by pumping it over the wall during floods.

When it reached the confluence, it would turn and run down the narrow space between the Ohio River and Ohio Street. Another opening would allow passage to the landing, I mean levee, at Ohio, Greene and Front streets. It would then continue along the Ohio River, likely switching back to the less expensive earthen levee.

At some point it would need to curve and connect back to the higher ground near Greene Street. In 1937 the area had both homes and factories, so the area would have been protected not only by the flooding Ohio River, but a flooding Duck Creek as well.

The Marietta structure on the east side of the river would need to be about five miles long. A wall on the west side of the river to protect Harmar would be about a mile and a half.

The entire Parkersburg project was 20,000 feet long and cost $6.82 million, or about $1.8 million per mile.

To wall in Marietta in 1938 would have cost around $12.3 million. The cost today would be astronomical.

It is very unlikely that Marietta will ever get a chance to build a wall. The community has accepted the fact that from time to time it is going to get its feet wet.

Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times and The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com.