Encounters with Big Muddy: My Introduction to the Lower Mississippi River

Grain silos on Mississippi River from Audubon Park, New Orleans, LA

“You’ll have to wait around for a week or so for your security clearance. But don’t be far away from your cell phone.” The 20-something who delivered this news looked tired. He had been processing the new wave of some 300 contractors who had been arriving steadily over the past 10 days. They had been recruited to work on FEMA’s Long Term Community Recovery program for Louisiana following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- the one-two punch delivered to Louisiana and Mississippi in August and September of 2005.

An hour earlier, I had landed at the Baton Rouge Airport along with a plane full of official-looking types. It was late January 2006, almost 6 months after “Rita-Katrina,” as we called it. I was about to begin work as a historic preservation specialist assisting in the next phase of the federal hurricane recovery efforts.

I’d never been to this part of the country before, so I decided to explore as much of the region as possible until the background check was completed. I fashioned a crash course for myself in the geography, climate, history, and architecture, embarking each morning on a different route out of Baton Rouge.

My first target was the architecture of the region and learning what had shaped it.  On the east bank of the Mississippi, I found LSU's Rural Life Museum, with wonderful examples of vernacular architecture, well-suited to the climate and culture of the back country.

Early shotgun house, Rural Life Museum, Baton Rouge, LA

Traveling along the west bank of the Mississippi, I found such treasures as Oak Alley, one of the early plantations and, many say, the "Grande Dame of the Great River Road," which was completed in 1841 and restored in 1925.

Oak Alley Plantation, Great River Road, Vacherie, Louisiana

Providing an underlying theme to my excursions was the iconic Mississippi River.  This was the languid, mythic river of Mark Twain. It is the river of commerce, central to our economy even today. It was also the rampaging river of 1927, which flooded thousands of miles of the heartland from Ohio to Louisiana and forever changed the ways in which the government tries to tame its waters -- attempts the river continues to defy.

So it was with great anticipation that I traced the Mississippi up one side and down the other in my travels.  And yes, I crossed over it a number of times. But it was impossible to get close to it. In spite of its dominant economic and cultural presence in the region, and its central role in our national history, I never felt as if I ever got a true sense of the river. I could not smell it, touch it, or watch its strong currents flowing by.

Tank farm and refining facilities on Mississippi River near Gramercy, LA

In the rural areas, protective levees had long ago been raised high above the river, blocking any views from the road. "No trespassing" signs cut off public access to the waterway. Near Baton Rouge, much of the Lower Mississippi is unrelentingly heavy-duty commercial. Here, public access to the waterfront is often blocked by industrial facilities such as warehouses, docks, tank farms, and refineries. Enormous barges ply the river or are parked along the docks. My views of the Mississippi were mostly quick left-right glances at 65 mph as I crossed over the bridges. From that perspective, the river looked torpid, thick - like gritty coffee with too much cream. But, of course, I saw it when it was quiet.

Veterans Memorial Bridge,LA-3213 over the Mississippi River, Gramercy, LA

The Mississippi is North America's longest and largest river in terms of the amount of water discharged. Each spring, engorged by melting snows and spring rains, the river wants to spread out across the great alluvial plain in the heartland as it did, unfettered, before the European settlers arrived. Since the mid-19^th Century, we have sought to discipline it, harness it, and protect ourselves from it.

The Mississippi River Commission, founded in 1879, was the first to undertake an effort to constrain the river exclusively by levees. The levees-only approach only exacerbated the problem by increasing pressure on the banks during high-flow events, resulting in their collapse. The approach was finally abandoned after the great flood of 1927, when the most of the levees in the Lower Mississippi failed, flooding some 26,000 square miles from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans. 

Horace Wilkinson Bridge, Interstate Route 10 at Baton Rouge, LA

The 1928 Flood Control Act gave the Corps of Engineers supervision of flood control in the region and launched what today is called the “Mississippi River and Tributaries Project.” This project introduced new ways to reduce flood damage: reservoirs, channel improvement and stabilization, and myriad other engineering solutions to control the unruly Mississippi. And yet, all those efforts seem doomed to failure. In 1983,  the Upper Mississippi saw the largest flood in the history of the United States to date. Already at this writing, towns in the Upper Mississippi River Valley are filling thousands of sandbags in preparation for the potentially massive floods along the river resulting from an unusually high snowfall over the past winter.

Each February, I think back to my first encounters with the Mississippi River in 2006. Although Baton Rouge proper is favorably positioned to ride out potential flooding along the Lower Mississippi unless it tops some 48-51 feet. elev., flooding on some of its tributaries have affected other areas of town. If all else fails, the Army Corps of Engineers can open the Morganza Spillway above Baton Rouge, which redirects the flow into the Achafalaya Basin where it can be absorbed by extensive wetlands. Nonetheless, everyone keeps one eye on the river when spring comes.

This treacherous and unpredictable river has created a distinct culture, built on commerce, wealth, and disaster. This river culture is what I hope to explore during the next phase of my learning about America. So the background readings have begun, the route is being plotted, research on the optimum season to begin the journey is underway. Perhaps I will see a few of you at some point along the Great River Road.

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Update (May 2011): The flooding along the Mississippi River anticipated some two months ago is now underway. The levees opposite Cairo, Illinois, have been dynamited, flooding hundreds of square miles of farmlands in neighboring Missouri. The Mississippi Delta, where the states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi come together, is preparing for historically high flood crests - higher even than the floods of 1927. Once again, all eyes are on the Mississippi.

See: Robertson, Campbell. "In Mississippi Delta, All Eyes on a Swelling River."New York Times (6 May 2011): A14. URL http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/us/07flood.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=mississippi%20delta&st=cse

Resources:

"Barry, John M. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. New York: Touchstone, 1998.

Davis, Edwin Adams, Ed. The Rivers and Bayous of Louisiana1968. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 1998.

Crawford, Dr. G. “Controlling Floods along the Mississippi: Stainless steel wire embedded in concrete helps control erosion, improve navigation.” Nickel Magazine (March 2008). Online version: URL: http://www.nickelinstitute.org/index.cfm?ci_id=16769&la_id=1#  [The 2008 archives were recently deleted from the Institute's website. Dr. Gerald Crawford a Toronto-based consultant to the Nickel Development Institute.]

“Flood! Dealing with the Deluge.” Nova Online. Website: URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/flood/deluge.html accessed February 28, 2011

Gazit, Chana and David Steward, Producers. “Fatal Flood.” Film aired on American Experience by Steward/Gazit Productions, Inc., WGBH Educational Foundation (2001). URL http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/maps/index.html accessed February 28, 2011. 

Geyer, Thomas. “Mississippi runs high risk of flooding this spring.” The Quad-City Times. Online version. January 28, 2011. URL: http://qctimes.com/news/local/article_280174dc-2aa1-11e0-9de5-001cc4c03286.html accessed February 28, 2011. 

The Mississippi River and Tributaries Project. New Orleans: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District. Website. URL: (last updated May 19, 2004) http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/bro/misstrib.htm accessed 8 February 2011.

“Mississippi River Basin.” Water Encyclopedia: Science and Issues. Website. URL: http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Mississippi-River-Basin.html accessed 8 February 2011. 

“The Mississippi River Flood Of 1993.”  The Weather Channel: Storm Encyclopedia

http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/flood/miss93.html  accessed February 28, 2011.

National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). “Flooding along the Mississippi (2002).” Visible Earth. Website. Visualization Date: 22 May 2002. URL http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2717 accessed February 28, 2011.

O’Connor, Anahad and Monica Davey. “Mississippi Surges over Nearly a Dozen Levees.” New York Times (20 June 2008). URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/20Floodcnd.html accessed February 28, 2011.
 

Scarpino, Philip V. Great River: An Environmental History of the Upper Mississippi 1890 – 1950. Columbia MO: University of Missouri Press, 1985.

Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. 1883. Rpt. Signet Classics. New York: New American Library, a Division of Penguin Group, 2009. 

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