A project studying climate migration's impact on property and sovereignty in North America. By Noah Gotlib. Atlas of RetreatMediaAcknowledgementsAboutEmailInstagram
A project studying climate migration's impact on property and sovereignty in North America. By Noah Gotlib.
Atlas of Retreat
A growing collection of absent places.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa contains the largest contiguous site of flood-induced Managed Retreat in the Midwest. In 2008, the city was devastated by a flood inundated over 25 square kilometers and 7,000 properties.
Northwest Area of Cedar Rapids in 2024, with most residental streets and canopy stripped away.
In response, the city developed the Cedar Rapids River Corridor Redevelopment Plan, which involved acquiring 1,356 properties through floodplain buyouts funded grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and FEMA.
Impression of former streets, removed several years after houses in the area
Foundation slab of a removed home in the buyout zone
Devils Lake sits in a large closed basin in North Dakota with no outlet to any river or ocean, causing the lake to experience drastic fluctuations in size. With climate change bringing increased rainfall to the upper Midwest, Devils Lake has risen 13 meters, expanded 3,200% in volume, and 1,000% in area, submerging over 700km2 of land, nearly the size of New York City.
The Jeffersonian Grid is submerged by rising lake waters outside of Churchs Ferry, ND
The ongoing rise of the lake has resulted in infrastructure damage exceeding $1.5 billion, including the destruction of over 500 miles of road. The communities of Churchs Ferry, Penn, and Minnewaukan, once miles inland, are now mostly submerged and have been abandoned.
Timelapse of the growth of Devils Lake across the Jeffersonian Grid, with each square represening one square mile
With precipitation steadily increasing since the 1990’s, Devils Lake continues to grow. In response, an outlet was built to drain the lake into the Sheyenne River. While the lake could in theory be drained, doing so would cause downstream flooding in Fargo and Winnipeg, the governments of which have fought against any further modifications to the lake’s hydrology.
The street grid of Minnewaukan, ND sinks into Devils Lake
To control flooding, over $500 million has been spent on constructing dikes, levees, and other flood mitigation infrastructure, especially to protect the city of Devils Lake. However, these measures have often been overwhelmed by the continuous rise in water levels. Despite the lake’s limbo state, some residents of the area continue to pay a nominal property tax on lands up to four stories underwater in the hopes that the lake will one day shrink.
A gravestone for the de-incorporated town of Churchs Ferry, ND
Kaskaskia was originally founded in the early 18th century as a French colonial settlement and later became the first capital of Illinois in 1818. It was a thriving community due to its location on the Mississippi River, which provided economic advantages through trade and transportation. A series of major floods, particularly the devastating flood of 1881, dramatically altered the course of the Mississippi River, cutting Kaskaskia off from the Illinois mainland and turning it into an island, making it Illinois’ only settlement west of the Mississippi.
Kaskaskia, Illinois, occupies a 15-square grid in the center of the island.
Over time, repeated floods eroded much of the town’s land and infrastructure, forcing many residents to relocate to the center of the new island. The town’s Catholic Church, established in 1675 by French Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette, was deconstructed and rebuilt in the new town.
Birds Eye View of the old town of Kaskaskia, from the Illustrated historical atlas of Randolph Co, Illinois, 1875. Library of Congress
Kaskaskia was devastated by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1993, which inundated the town with up to 5 meters of water, destroying most of its homes. Like Valmeyer, Kaskaskia was destroyed by the failure of its levee, which burst from flood waters pressuring and weakening its foundation.
On of the few remaining homes in New Kaskaskia is elevated, one of the strategies funded by FEMA to remove the structure from the flood plain.
Kaskaskia never fully recovered from the 1993 flood, and today, it has fewer than 20 residents. Despite its diminished population, the town remains historically significant, with landmarks such as the Liberty Bell of the West, a gift from King Louis XV of France in 1741. Despite living scattered in surrounding towns, former resident of Kaskaskia descend every Sunday to the Immaculate Conception Church for services.
The Immaculate Conception Church shortly after the conclusion of weekly service
New Harmony, Indiana was among the first of the many utopian communities which would develop across the Midwest during the 19th century. Founded in 1814 by the Harmony Society, a German pietist sect led by George Rapp, New Harmony was envisioned as a self-sufficient, harmonious society based on Christian principles in which all goods and land would be held in common.
An early Harmonist house in the old section of New Harmony.
Despite New Harmony’s economic success, surrounding settlers were suspicious of the insular, German-speaking commune. Rapp eventually decided to move the Harmonists back to their original settlement in Pennsylvania where they faced a warmer welcome among the Low German-speaking Amish population.
A reconstructed Labyrinth, based on those built by the Harmonists for spiritual contemplation.
In 1825, the Harmonists sold the town to Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and social reformer, who sought to transform New Harmony into a cooperative society. Owen established a variety of social institutions designed to reduce inequality and promote a spirit of cooperation. However, by 1827, the utopian experiment began to falter, and many residents left in search of more stable living conditions.
The Roofless Church, completed in 1960.
New Harmony languished for the following century until Jane Baffler Owen, descendant of Robert Owen and heiress to a Texas oil fortune, poured money into the restoration of the Rappite and Owenite buildings. Owen also commissioned landmark public facilities for the town; a non-denominational “Roofless Church” by Philip Johnson, and an Athenaeum by Richard Meier. New Harmony stands as a unique blend of architecture from utopian social movements.
A condemned bridge connects New Harmony to Illinois. Richard Meier's white Athenaeum stands in the middleground.
Sitting on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in northern Illinois, Nauvoo is the site where the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) began their westward trek to Utah in 1844.
The modern town of Nauvoo sits above the 19th century Mormon settlement on the Mississippi riverfront
Originally called Quashquema, the town was christened Nauvoo (from the Hebrew נָאווּ “they are beautiful”) in 1839 by Mormon founder Joseph Smith, who fled there with his followers from persecution in Missouri. At its peak, Nauvoo’s population grew to nearly 12,000, rivaling Chicago in size. With a rapidly growing population of religious outsiders and formidable militia, hostility with surrounding settlers rapidly escalated.
The Nauvoo Temple (right) sits above the former Mormon settlement of Nuavoo
In 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered by an anti-mormon mob after being arrested in Nauvoo in the midst of his presidential run. Shortly after, Smith’s successor Brigham Young decided to evacuate the Mormon community from Nauvoo and flee to the Utah Territory, which was then part of Mexico.
A portrait of Joseph Smith hangs in a hotel in Nauvoo
With the Mormons in Utah and Nauvoo empty, the city was taken over by the Icarians, a French utopian socialist movement led by Etienne Cabet. The community peaked at around 500 members, slowly dissipating due to political in-fighting by 1856.
A Mormon missionary choir rehearses for a summer pageant on the 4th of July
Nauvoo sat dormant for nearly a century, with most Mormons associating it with a dark chapter in their history. In the 1950’s the LDS began to slowly reclaim the town, turning it into a museum of early church history, and a memorial to their exodus. The large temple that once dominated the town was reconstructed by and completed in 2002.
The entrance to the Nauvoo Temple
The Safeguard Program was a U.S. Army anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system developed in the 1960s and 1970s to protect American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites from potential Soviet missile attacks. Safeguard’s radar would detect incoming missiles and relay the information to a large command center, which tracked their trajectory.
The Missile Site Radar facility of Safeguard with its distinctive truncated pyramid.
The command centre, located beneath the distinctive pyramidal Missile Site Radar (MSR) building, would then launch nuclear-armed Spartan Anti-Ballistic Missiles to intercept and destroy the enemy missiles in space. If the Spartans failed to intercept incoming warheads, short-range SPRINT missiles around the site would be launched, accelerating at over 1000m/s to destroy their targets.
Diagram of the Safeguard Complex as a system for continental nuclear defence. Library of Congress
Despite overal $20 billion in investment from the Department of Defense, The Safeguard Facility was only operational only 1975 to 1976. Despite its advanced technology, the system was deactivated due to its high costs and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which made such defences less critical. After the site’s deactivation, the town that sprang up around the MSR Pyramid was slowly removed, leaving the nearby village of Nekoma with a 60-meter high concrete pyramid.
A Remote Sprint Launch facility near Cavalier, ND
After being abandoned for many years, the Missile Site Radar facility was sold to a group of Hutterites, an Anabaptist Christian sect devoted to non-resistance, who farmed the surrounding land. Despite the county government’s desire to turn it into a museum, the site is currently owned by Bitzero, a data center company that plans to transform it into a cryptocurrency-mining facility.
MSR facility looking towards Nekoma in heavy wildfire smoke
Shawneetown is an early example of managed retreat performed by the US Federal Government. After a 1937 flood of the Ohio River, the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) was petitioned by residents to relocate their town to ensure it would not flood again.
Today, there are two Shawneetowns, the old and mostly depopulated one on the Ohio River, and a new one 4 km inland and 17 meters higher in elevation.
Shawneetown submerged by the Ohio River, 1937Image: Library of Congress
New Shawneetown was designed by Mary Long Whitmore, one of the first women to practice landscape architecture in the United States. The town’s relocation required a shift in its orientation—from the river, which had long been its economic and cultural anchor, to the highway, which became its new focal point.
Shawneetown's Bank, once robbed by infamous outlaw Jesse James, was too diificult to remove, and stands as one of the old town's few remaining structures.
The old town (left) sits on the Ohio River. The new town (right) sits 4 km inland.
Staten Island was among the hardest-hit areas in New York City after Hurricane Sandy struck the northeastern United States in October 2012. Entire neighborhoods, particularly along the island's eastern and southeastern shores, were devastated by the storm surge.
Remnants of driveways indicate homes removed after Hurricane Sandy
Few houses remain in the Oakwood Beach neighbourhood of Staten Island
A resident holds a warning to remove potted plants from buyout land next to her house in Staten Island
The small town of Valmeyer has become a key precedent for managed retreat of inland communities in the United States. The town was completely destroyed in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1993 when nearby levees failed, submerging Valmeyer in up to 6 meters of water. Soon after the flood, the residents of Valmeyer, led by mayor Dennis Knobloch, decided to build a whole new town well above the floodplain.
The empty old town of Valmeyer in the Mississippi River valley
With initial funding secured from FEMA, the new town purchased a farm as a new site, and broke ground just four months after the old town’s destruction. New Valmeyer sits on top of bluffs, while Old Valmeyer sits in the Mississippi River valley 2.4km away but 100m lower in elevation, with a bare street grid remaining.
A large single-family home sits on the edge of bluffs in the new town of Valmeyer
Every year on the 4th of July, Valmeyer’s residents drive downhill to the old town, setting up blankets on the sites of their absent homes to watch their annual Independence Day parade.
Old Valmeyer (left) and New Valmeyer (right)
Vast limestone mines sat underneath the proposed new town, whose deeds FEMA demanded must be obtained by the town. The town of Valmeyer turned this extra expense into an opportunity, transforming the vast caverns underneath the new town into a cold storage facility. The two main tennants of the complex, called Rock City are NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), and Little Caesars Pizza. Rent from complex provides the majority of Valmeyer’s town budget, making it one of the few communities whose economic fortunes were able to recover in the wake of managed retreat.
The entrance to the NARA facility underneath the new town of Valmeyer
Coming soon!
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