If you happen to be driving on McRaven Road in Jackson, Mississippi, you might come across

Buddy Butts Park.

Yes, it is actually called Buddy Butts Park.

But that's not exactly what we're here to talk about.

We're here to talk about the fact that part of this park has this sort of strange post-apocalyptic

vibe.

There's a field of concrete that stretches nearly as far as the eye can see and undulates

in odd organic shapes beneath your feet.

What you might not realize is that as you walk across this concrete field, you are in

a way striding from Louisiana to Minnesota, each step covering miles.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

Today, we're visiting the Mississippi River Basin model, the greatest scale model ever

built.

One, that only got a few years to truly shine.

Why it was built, who built it, and the group trying to rescue it from oblivion.

After this.

If you took a walk, a really long walk from Baton Rouge to Omaha, it's safe to say

it would definitely take more than 60 minutes.

In the real world, you'd have to be an enormous giant to do that.

But at the Mississippi River Basin model, everyone's a giant.

That's because the model squeezes 16 states, the parts of those states that are all connected

...