Three Major Problems, and a Ditch solves them all

The Marker for Flipper's Ditch

A few years ago, I went "home" to Oklahoma to visit my parents for Christmas. That same year, my boyfriend, Trey accompanied me. We had been dating for some time, and it was decided that it was time to meet the parents. The only good time to make that happen was at Christmastime. The end result was that we spent several weeks in state that I was not super familiar with, and I was expected to play tour guide. Luckily for me, my dad was very familiar with the area, that being his second tour of duty at Ft. Sill.

It was sometime during our second week in Oklahoma that my dad looked at me and asked me if I had taken Trey to see Flipper's Ditch. I responded in the negative, having never heard of it before and asked him what it was. It was at this moment that I discovered that one of Ft. Sill's attractions was it's nationally-famous ditch. You read that right. Ditch. I didn't even know ditches could be famous.

Henry Flipper

The story of Flipper's ditch starts with the story of it's creator, Henry Flipper. Flipper was born in 1856 as a slave. As he lived through the Civil War, he came to appreciate the United States Army, and eventually developed a dream to attend West Point. He achieved that dream, being appointed by a Republican representative of Georgia to West Point in 1873. He was the fifth African-American candidate to apply, the third to be accepted, and the first to graduate. He was commissioned in 1877, and soon headed off for his first assignment at Ft. Sill.

Now, at Ft. Sill, there were three big problems. One of the defining characteristics of Oklahoma, particularly Southern Oklahoma, is that it is about as flat as land gets. This wasn't the problem. The problem was that all of this flat land meant that there was little drain-off for any water. Water would just stay in one spot and stagnate. This was a huge problem. Not only did that render large parts of the fort unusable, it also attracted mosquitoes. And with those mosquitoes came malaria. So Flipper put his engineering experience gained at West Point to work, and designed Flipper's Ditch.

Over the next few years, the construction project went underway, and by 1879 it was completed, improving the health of everyone on post. Flipper's ditch is still under use today.

Further reading:
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM7PQ8_Flippers_Ditch_Fort_Sill_Oklahoma
http://www.army.mil/article/73083/