Problem, Research Strategy, and Findings: Economic diversity is a widely practiced economic development strategy, yet no research has examined how diversity affects regional resilience to shocks caused by natural disasters. We examine whether diversity helps regional economies withstand and recover from a natural disaster, comparing to the relationship between diversity and economic performance that exists in typical circumstances. We conduct a quasi-experiment using the case of the 1993 U.S. Midwest flood, matching flooded counties in nine states to undamaged control counties and estimating the influence of diversity on performance both before and after the substantial shock. We find that economic diversity ordinarily has mixed associations with performance. Diverse counties gain employment faster than less diverse counties, but achieve slower per capita income growth. The effect of diversity on natural disaster recovery, however, is unambiguous, aiding in weathering the post-disaster downturn and hastening the resumption of long-term growth and performance patterns. Takeaway for Practice: Communities in areas prone to natural disasters might justify pursuing diversity to minimize the deleterious economic effects of disasters and accelerate recovery. Policies to enhance diversity should be informed by disaster resilience goals and the tradeoffs between risk and certain aspects of performance.