"IF THE LORD'S WILLING AND THE CREEK DON'T RISE" FLOOD CONTROL AND THE DISPLACED RURAL COMMUNITIES OF IRVING AND BROUGHTON, KANSAS

Authors

Robin A. Hanson, Jefferson College

Date of this Version

Fall 2010

Document Type

Article

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 30:4 (Fall 2010).

Comments

Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

In this case study, I examine how the residents of two displaced rural Kansas towns, and their descendants, exhibit a sense of identity common to small farm communities throughout the Great Plains, and how tenacious these ties are even after the physical reminder of their communal bonds no longer exists. By examining the struggles to survive faced by these two towns, Irving and Broughton, the resiliency of the people who called them home, and the continuing expression of community solidarity by the individuals associated with them, I propose that the individuals living within these communities created a transcendental identity similar to that of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. This communal identity remains a unifying bond without the need for an enduring physical signifier.