The Center for Land Use Interpretation

Model of Decay: The Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model

Left abandoned and crumbling, in a warehouse in Matapeake Maryland (until it was totally destroyed in 2006), lay a unique vestige of terrestrial modeling heroics: The Army Corps of Engineers' Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model. Covering eight acres, the model was a hand-made landscape in miniature, built to mimic the massive estuary which lies a few hundred yards beyond the warehouse doors. Though conceived in the 1960's and shut down in the 1980's, this engineering marvel had an operational existence of only three years, during which time it generated mountains of data - much of it on digital tape, disks, and printouts left in the model's offices and control rooms, to be covered in the same dust as the model itself. It is fitting that this monument to physical modeling lay amidst forgotten boxes of punch cards and computer tape, a titanic analog to the emerging digital age.

Read the newsletter article about this exhibit.