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Porter, invested her earnings judiciously in rich river bottom land, business properties and lucrative mortgages.

Construction was supposed to be finished in 2008 but the completion date slipped repeatedly, partly because millions of tons of earth had to be trucked in to fill flood-prone bottom land.

Once I ran into a flat piece of bottom land, and what seemed solid earth by the light of the moon was a marshy quagmire.

The rich have long claimed higher ground along waterways, and that left freed slaves to claim bottom land that made Princeville into the country’s first town incorporated by black Americans.

The chosen site, which had long been Missouri River bottom land, was ideal because the numerous westward trails obviously had to cross the river, sometimes taking apart covered wagons so that the pieces can be placed on log ferries and reassembling them again on the other side, according to Sward.