Gallery 1 · permanent
High Water: 1937
Rowboats on Broadway, the Red Cross camps on the hill, and the line on the warehouse wall showing where the water stopped.
Plate 1
Second Street at dusk, two blocks from the river
In 1937 the Ohio stood on this street for three weeks. This is the museum of what came after.
Five galleries in an 1884 tobacco warehouse on Water Street: the flood, the river trade, the Atomic City years, the Southside's own recorded voices, and a changing exhibition upstairs.
On view
Five galleries, about ninety minutes
Start downstairs with the flood. Most people end in the listening room and stay longer than they meant to.
Gallery 2 · permanent
Where Two Rivers Meet
Packet boats, towboats and the pilots who learned every bend from Cairo to Louisville.
Upstairs · through January 31
Pieced in Paducah
Thirty-one kitchen-table quilts lent by local families, most never shown in public before.
From the oral history collection
Mama put the Bible and the photographs in a flour sack and we rowed out the upstairs window. When we came home the mud was up to the light switches.
Paducah in seven dates
A short walk through the long story
Each of these has a case downstairs, in this order.
1827
A town laid out at the mouth of the Tennessee
Surveyors plat streets on the bluff where the Tennessee meets the Ohio.
1884
The Elkins warehouse goes up
Built for dark-fired tobacco, the brick building on Water Street that now houses the museum.
1937
The flood
The Ohio rises past sixty feet. Nearly the whole town is evacuated for weeks.
1949
The wall
The floodwall is finished along the riverfront, with gates that close across the streets.
1952
Atomic City
The uranium plant west of town opens and the population jumps by thousands in two years.
1979
The museum opens
Volunteers open two rooms of the warehouse with objects collected door to door.
2008
The listening room
Volunteers record 212 oral histories with Southside residents. The archive is still growing.
Talks and walks
This autumn
Oct17
Floodwall walk
11:00 AM · Meet at the museum door
An hour along the wall with a docent. Flat, about a mile.
Oct22
The river pilots' logbooks
6:30 PM · Upstairs gallery
Curator Nadine Shemwell reads from three logbooks donated this summer.
Nov7
Bring your family's quilt
10:00 AM · Workroom
Our textile volunteers photograph and date family quilts. Free, no appointment.
Nov14
Atomic City memories
2:00 PM · Listening room
Former plant workers and their children share stories. Recorded for the archive.
Nothing in that category this month.
Open Wednesday to Sunday
$8 for adults, $5 for students and seniors, free for children under six. Free for McCracken County residents on the first Sunday of every month.