The Waterways Experiment Station (WES) is a United States Army Corps of Engineers research campus in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

John Freeman is credited with reviving interest in hydraulic models in the United States, establishing a traveling fellowship in his name with the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1925 after repeated visits to the laboratory in Dresden.

[4] Today there are over 1,200 employees,[needs update] including several full-time members of the United States Armed Forces.

Over 650 of these employees are engineers and scientists who work in such areas as hydraulics, oceanography, chemistry, electronics, physics, mathematics, soils, seismology, limnology, forestry, microbiology.

The history of engineering is the story of men and women in their attempts to understand, control, and accommodate their environment.

Discoveries emanating from the laboratory, designated as the Waterways Experiment Station, paid immediate dividends and sparked a new confidence among the nation’s engineering community to make bold advancements and challenge or affirm long-standing doctrines.