History
Named for Ross R. Barnett, the 52nd Governor of Mississippi a staunch segregationist, who became noted for his tumultuous clashes with the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, construction on the Ross Barnett Reservoir began in 1960 by MWH Engineering (now MWH Global) under the direction of the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District. The main purpose of the infrastructure project was to create a permanent water source to supply drinking water for the Mississippi capital city of Jackson. Construction on the lake was completed in 1963, and the water level reached average capacity in 1965. Planning then began to provide parks and recreation areas in cunjunction with the newly formed lake. Today, the Ross Barnett Reservoir serves as a significant water source, a major recreational area, and a catalyst for residential and economic development. There are currently 4,600 homes along the reservoir in Madison and Rankin counties.
Read more about this topic: Ross Barnett Reservoir
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)