Most people driving through Poinsett County have no idea they are passing one of the strangest engineering projects in the country.
Just outside the small Delta town of Marked Tree, three enormous steel pipes rise over a levee like something left behind from another era. They look odd and slightly out of place against the flat Arkansas farmland. But those pipes, commonly known as the Marked Tree Siphons, were built to do something remarkable: carry an entire river over a dam and somehow, they still work.
The siphons were completed in 1939, as part of a flood-control effort along the St. Francis River. Long before modern drainage systems transformed eastern Arkansas into rich farmland, much of the region was swamp and overflow country. Flooding was a constant problem. Heavy rains could turn fields into lakes, wash out roads and isolate communities for days.
Local leaders spent decades trying to control the water. Drainage District No. 7, organized in the early 1900s, dug ditches and built levees throughout the area. In the 1920s, engineers constructed a lock and sluiceway system near Marked Tree to help manage the river. But the Delta’s soft soil caused problems almost immediately. Then came a major flood in 1937 and another levee failure in 1938. Officials realized the old system was not going to survive. As a result, engineers came up with a solution that sounded almost impossible. Instead of forcing the river through the levee, they would lift it over the top.
The final design used three steel siphons, each about nine feet wide and more than 200 feet long. Once the system was primed with vacuum pumps, water flowed continuously through the pipes and across the levee using siphon pressure. In simple terms, the river climbed uphill long enough to cross the barrier before flowing back down on the other side.
When the project was unveiled in June 1939, crowds gathered to watch. Newspaper accounts from the time described the spectacle of seeing “a whole river lifted 30 feet across a dam.” It sounded exaggerated, but it was true.
Even engineers were impressed. Tests showed the siphons operated at more than 97 percent efficiency, an astonishing number for a structure of that size. At the time, many considered it one of the most unusual hydraulic projects in the world.
More than 80 years later, the siphons are still there, still carrying water across the levee and still protecting thousands of acres of farmland in northeast Arkansas.
What makes the Marked Tree Siphons so fascinating is not just the engineering itself, but the fact that so few people know they exist. The Natural State has never been particularly adept at promoting its lesser-known landmarks. Tourists flock to bigger attractions while places like this sit quietly beside county roads, largely unnoticed except by locals, hunters and the occasional history enthusiast.
The siphons tell an important story about the Delta because they help to remind people how difficult life once was in this part of Arkansas. Before levees and drainage systems, the landscape was unpredictable and often unforgiving. Entire communities depended on finding ways to control the water. The siphons were not built as a tourist attraction or a monument. They were built because people here needed them.
There is something very Arkansas about solving a massive problem with steel pipes, persistence and a willingness to try an idea that sounded a little crazy at the time. No grand speeches. No flashy architecture. Just a piece of infrastructure quietly doing its job decade after decade.
In May 1988, the Marked Tree Siphons were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and they definitely deserve that recognition. The siphons are a reminder that some of the most interesting places in America are not necessarily the famous ones. Sometimes they are one hidden in the Delta, beside a levee road, carrying a river uphill while most of the world drives by without noticing.
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