Minnesota River Interviews - Bob Smith

"I can remember when I was just a kid it flooded, but nothing like it does now the river has gotten so much bigger because they put more water in it."

Video Text: "I have farmed all of my life, a little over 95 years of it. We raised corn, oats, wheat, grains of different kinds. Just general farming. I had cattle and horses, lots and lots of horses.

That lower part can be all under water. You see that all the flat ground up there up to where you see the tractor. The water will come up to there. That whole area can and has been flooded. The worse years for flooding were back in the 1970s and 1960s. A number of years we lost everything [all the crops] on the sites. We lost everything on [the land below] with just a few patches that were above water. There were quite a few years that we lost [crops] due to flooding.

I can remember when I was just a kid it flooded, but nothing like it does now the river has gotten so much bigger because they put more water in it. The bottom of the river changes. Around this bend, it used to be a real big bend. It used to have more bends and now on the second bend, when I was just a kid, my uncle, they lived in that log house. I have seen lots of changes in the river. The river always changes, it never stays the same. The river has gotten larger because it got more water into it. There is nothing else it could do."

This page was last updated 8/08