World War II was ending, and the post war recovery had begun.  At Camp Clinton, a German POW facility in middle Mississippi, prisoners of war had arrived in 1943.  It was the only U.S. POW Camp to house German field officers – 25 Generals, a number of lower ranking officers, plus over 3,000 enlisted men.  Within the Clinton war camp boundaries, prisoners themselves helped to engineer and construct a most interesting scientific laboratorial creation.  An educational miniature replica of the entire Mississippi River basin… and it was huge: one foot = 2,000 feet!  Thirty-one states were represented within the model area.  Pumps and pipes allowed engineers to simulate various water volumes and currents.  At a mid-20th-century cost of six-million-dollars, the model was anticipated to save a billion dollars and countless lives by studying and understanding the regular flooding tendencies of the mighty “Old Man River”.  The risk was fresh on the minds of US leaders as the country had recently experienced devastating floods along the Mississippi and its source waters in the years 1912, 1927, 1937, 1945 and 1947. 

Architect D. Tracy Ward, and staff, began work in 2012 helping Mayor Isla Tullos to complete a major renovation to the City Hall complex for the small, charming and historic town of Raymond, Mississippi … just a few miles from Clinton.  The municipal facility is composed of three modules – (1) the 1950’s fire station to the left was renovated for the Mayor’s offices, (2) the new middle main-entry provides a museum quality interior to tell the history of Raymond.  On the right end (3) is the renovated 1940’s era building that today hosts the City’s municipal courtroom.  It had been moved to this site (ca. 1972) by a private citizen (Mr. Robert Kuhn) who operated the building for years as a used furniture store.  But it was originally built to house German prisoners of war . . . at Camp Clinton.