For more than 350 years, the city of Baltimore has been centered around a stream known as the Jones Falls. Although the water flowing through the falls has changed in quality and the landscape around it has completely urbanized, Baltimoreans have connected with the Jones Falls through the centuries. This relationship, however, has not remained static. City residents have not always appreciated the channel that they depended upon, but it has nonetheless shaped city politics and urban development in countless ways. The Black Friday Flood of 1868 was a turning point in public opinion of the waterway through the heart of the city: what was once a prized resource became a danger of utmost concern. "Improving" the Jones Falls was the topic of endless discussion among city leaders and residents in the years following the flood, well into the twentieth century.