The Balderas family salvages items from their flood-damaged home in Armourdale, KS. (Kansas City Public Library)
The Kansas City Public Library’s Irene H. Ruiz Biblioteca de las Americas is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The branch, named after educator and librarian Irene Ruiz, opened at 2017 West Pennway Street in Kansas City, Missouri, on Sept. 15, 2001.
Ruiz died in 2023 at the age of 102, but her legacy continues through an extensive collection of Spanish-language books, magazines, fotonovelas, CDs, and DVDs. They’re all housed at the Ruiz Branch, where a reception in her honor will be held on Sept. 15 from 4 to 5 p.m.
Another of Ruiz’s major contributions to the library is a collection of recordings of nearly 60 residents on Kansas City’s Westside.
The 1951 flood was a recurring theme for those interviews. Locals Ruiz spoke to described losing their homes and belongings, losing their livelihoods, and the terror of witnessing water that would not stop moving closer.
But, remarkably, even as they detailed the devastation, Special Collections Manager Jeremy Drouin says, “there were some light-hearted moments.”
For example, Westside resident Robert Hernandez told Ruiz that “the flood was probably one of the more exciting things in my life. Seeing cows and pigs escape, and barns float down the river … and swimming and getting pigs and taking them to shore.”
The library exhibition Hell and High Water: The 1951 Kansas City Flood, which runs through January 7, 2027, features dozens of historic photos, as well as oral histories about what’s considered Kansas City’s worst natural disaster.
From 1977 to 1982, Ruiz conducted interviews in English and Spanish using a tape recorder; the cassettes, later archived on CDs, have been digitized and can be accessed online. Now known as the Hispanic Oral History Collection, copies of the recordings are housed in Missouri Valley Special Collections on the fifth floor of the Central Library.
“The interviews are about their whole lives,” says Drouin. “She (Ruiz) just wanted to capture the immigrant experience, the experience of the Westside.”
The Hispanic community in Kansas City was hit hard during the 1951 flood in areas where they lived or worked in Argentine, Armourdale, the West Bottoms, Rosedale, and along Southwest Boulevard. Thousands of people were displaced from their homes.
Drouin says, “Those were the communities that were just engulfed on July 13, 1951, when the waters rose to the point that they overcame the levees.”
The Special Collections team dove into primary sources for the exhibition: newspapers and books, as well as audio and video recordings, including 30 minutes of 1951 flood footage, in color. They also tapped more recent recordings by Dr. Gene T. Chávez, historian in residence at the Museum of Kansas City, to highlight personal stories.
“After the flood, it was like dropping a stone in a puddle of water. Everybody went everywhere,” Argentine resident Lupe Gonzalez told Chávez about the flood’s impact on his neighborhood.
In the Kaw River Basin, about 20,000 homes and 3,000 businesses were damaged or destroyed, causing nearly $10 billion in losses in today’s dollars.
“We have a lot of photos of buildings underwater, absolute devastation of flood damage of properties — buildings, businesses,” says Drouin. “But I really wanted to make sure that we highlighted the impact on people. You know, people lived in these homes. People worked in these businesses.”
Special Collections Associate Elijah Winkler also pulled photos, video clips, and audio to create a 15-minute video installation that will run in the exhibition space.
“The oral histories have been really important to this project,” says Drouin, “to get those first-hand accounts.”
He adds, “It’s one thing to see the devastation. It’s also something else for people to describe the devastation, and that came out, too.”
