The muddy Mississippi has wound its way through this country's history since the first European settlers set foot on the shores of America. Since the dawn of mankind, humans have built their civilizations next to the water, and the early Americans were no exception. To the settlers of Mid-America, the Mississippi River was one of their most valuable resources. It provided them with a means of transportation for developing commerce and industry, as well as water for crops and irrigation. While settlers enjoyed their ready access to the river, they did not enjoy its ready access to them. Floods frequently swept away their attempts at permanent settlements. The consensus grew that the Mississippi would need to be artificially controlled in order for society to benefit from its proximity.
The history of man's attempts to control the Mississippi is full of both success and failure. Levees already existed when the first French trappers ventured into the wilds of Louisiana. These levees were formed naturally by the Mississippi's fluvial processes and tended to be no more than a meter or two in height. Building up these natural levees was the first solution to the flooding problem. In 1717, the first manmade levee system was started by Bienville, the founder of the city of New Oreans. The construction of the first levees, which reached only three feet in height, was completed in 1727. After that, it was left to private interests to extend the levees. By 1743, French landowners were required to build and maintain the levees along their riverfront property or forfeit their lands to the French crown. However, it soon became obvious that these small levees, although augmented through the efforts of the settlers, were not enough protection against Mississippi flood waters. During large floods, the river would frequently break through at weakened points in the levees, referred to as crevasses. Many crevasses, such as the Macarty Crevasse of 1816, took many lives and caused extensive property damage.
The unorganized levee system was finally turned over to the Army Corps of Engineers. The levees’ were designed to protect populated areas from potentially disastrous flooding and keep the Mississippi safely within its banks. However, not everyone agreed that levees were the best way to decrease flooding. In 1852, the federal government appropriated $50,000 in order to conduct studies on how to further eliminate the flooding problem. The first study was done by an engineer named Charles Ellet Jr., whose study produced some startling conclusions. His report to Congress attributed the increase of flooding in the Mississippi River Basin to four major developments, including:
"The extension of the levees along the borders of the Mississippi, and of its
tributaries and outlets, by means of which the water that was formerly allowed to
spread over many thousand square miles of low lands is becoming more and more
confined to the immediate channel of the river, and is therefore, compelled to rise
higher and flow faster, until, under the increased power of the current, it may have time
to excavate a wider and deeper trench to give vent to the increased volume which it
conveys."
Ellet also mentioned the effects of increased cultivation, manmade cutoffs/shortcuts, and the lengthening of the delta all of which will increase the probability and magnitude of floods. He concluded that the flooding problem would worsen with time as the Mississippi Basin becomes more settled. According to Ellet, “It is shown that each of these causes is likely to be progressive, and that the future floods throughout the length and breadth of the delta, and along the great streams tributary to the Mississippi, are destined to rise higher and higher, as society spreads over the upper States, as population adjacent to the river increases, and the inundated low lands appreciate in value”.
Unfortunately, Ellet’s opinion was ignored in favor of two Army Corps Engineers, Captain Andrew Humphreys and Lieutenant Henry Abbot, whose views became the consensus for the next 140 years. In their study, Report Upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, Humphreys and Abbot emphasized that levees were the best method of flood damage control. Since 1882, the USACE in conjunction with the Mississippi River Commission extended the levee system so that it included mainly the area from Cairo, Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi delta in Louisiana. However, the relief brought by the levees would prove to be short-lived. Soon, an even greater challenge would take precedence in the minds of both government official and citizen alike.
