Moccasin and Foote Creeks: A Brown County Saga of Challenge and Response, 1880s–2013 by Arthur Buntin (review)

In Moccasin and Foote Creeks: A Brown County Saga of Challenge and Response, 1880s–2013, Arthur Buntin, professor emeritus of history at Northern State University, provides a unique history of the city of Aberdeen, South Dakota, and the surrounding landscape in a book that traces the role of waterways in regional development. The work is published through the Aberdeen/Brown County Landmarks Commission. Over the last century, communities have experienced benefits as well as negative impacts associated with Moccasin and Foote Creeks. As Dr. Buntin writes, although creeks provide benefits to a community, including "life-giving water to crops, plants, trees and people and serving as drainage outlets; they pose a negative influence when flooding banks and harming creek-side property" (xxvii).

With expertise in local history and historic preservation, Dr. Buntin illustrates the development of Aberdeen in relation to these two creeks, thus shedding light on community development in relation to place. Combining studies of local history, urban development, and civil engineering, Moccasin and Foote Creeks describes how Aberdeen's infrastructure grew over time in response to sometimes volatile waterways. Through an extensive study of newspapers, government reports, and county historical publications, the book charts the public's significant role in the development of sewage and storm drainage systems. Newspaper editors, civil authorities and the public all sought to mitigate the potential for flooding by instituting these systems early in the century, updating and expanding them in response to the continuing actions of floodwaters.

The narrative is divided into sections that, in turn, provide topical and chronological attention to turning points in the region's history. After a discussion of pioneer settlement and the arrival of the railroad, the book provides an extensive history of urban expansion, landscaping efforts, renovation of wastewater treatment systems, and continuing efforts to mitigate seasonal flooding. In addition, the work explores the development of recreation efforts, from swimming pools to pedestrian bridges, from ice skating to community gardening. Throughout the book, Dr. Buntin invites readers to contemplate their own relationships to these creeks.

As urban history, Moccasin and Foote Creeks captures the growth of a community by connecting its development to the continuing presence of water. As local and regional history, the work explores how a community interacts with and responds to waterways capable of providing important components of recreation, sewage removal and storm drainage. Through historical analysis, the work demonstrates the importance of these identifiable markers of the landscape to the communities that developed alongside them.