People have always been drawn to rivers. They support life by supplying water and are economic
RIVER resources. The use of waterways for transportation and trade routes has spurred people to build homes along them where they could be close to food and supplies, but settlement along rivers is also a dangerous endeavor; rivers change. They move around in the landscape, carving out new locations for their flow. They rise and fall annually, swelling with the influx of snow melt and spring rains and subsiding as the dry summer landscape soaks up moisture. Sometimes that swelling floods where people have settled, which is what has continuously happened in Cedar Rapids since early development. The city needed the river to grow economically, however dealing with the consequences of such proximity to a dynamic river is a challenge of balancing ecological, economic, and cultural interests.