1.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
2.
Jackson Square (New Orleans)
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Jackson Square is a historic park in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2012 the American Planning Association designated Jackson Square as one of America’s Great Public Spaces, Jackson Square was designed after the famous 17th-century Place des Vosges in Paris, France, by the architect and landscape architect Louis H. Pilié. Jackson Square is roughly the size of a city block, sculptor Clark Mills equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, Battle of New Orleans hero and U. S. President for whom the former military parade ground was named, was erected in 1856. Iron fences, walkways, benches, and Parisian-style landscaping remain intact from the design by Micaela Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba. She also built the Pontalba Buildings, which flank the old square, the flagpole, symbolizing the 1803 ceremonial transfers from Spain to France and then from France to the United States, reflects Louisianas rich colonial history. During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration repainted façades, renovated buildings, in 1971, the pedestrian zone in the vicinity of Jackson Square was created, when three surrounding streets were closed to vehicular traffic — Chartres, St. Peter, and St. Ann. Early French colonial New Orleans was centered on what was called the Place dArmes. Under Spanish colonial administration in the half of the 18th century. Following the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, during the first half of the 19th century, in the center of the park stands an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson erected in 1856, one of four identical statues in the U. S. by the sculptor Clark Mills. The square also has 4 slightly older statues, neoclassical representations of personifications of the 4 Seasons, the square originally overlooked the Mississippi River across Decatur Street, but the view was blocked in the 19th century by the construction of higher levees. The riverfront was long devoted to shipping docks, the space between Decatur Street and the Moon Walk is designated as Washington Artillery Park. On the north side of the square are three 18th-century historic buildings, which were the heart in the colonial era. The center of the three is St. Louis Cathedral, the cathedral was designated as a minor Basilica by Pope Paul VI. To its left is the Cabildo, the old city hall, now a museum, to the cathedrals right is the Presbytère, built to match the Cabildo. The Presbytère was initially planned for housing the citys Roman Catholic priests, at the start of the 19th century, it was adapted as a courthouse, and in the 20th century it became a museum. The Place dArmes was the site for execution of criminals and rebellious slaves during the 18th. After the 1811 German Coast Uprising, three slaves were hanged here, the heads of some of the executed rebels were put on the citys gates. In the Reconstruction Era, Jackson Square served as an arsenal, during the insurrection following the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election, in March 1873, it was the site of the Battle of Jackson Square
3.
St. Louis Cathedral (New Orleans)
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The Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, also called St. Louis Cathedral, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and is the oldest cathedral in the United States. The first church on the site was built in 1718, the third, the cathedral was expanded and largely rebuilt in 1850, with little of the 1789 structure remaining. It is located next to Jackson Square and facing the Mississippi River in the heart of New Orleans and it is one of the few Roman Catholic churches in the United States that fronts a major public square. Three Roman Catholic churches have stood on the site since 1718, the first was a crude wooden structure in the early days of the colony. Construction of a brick and timber church was begun in 1725 and was completed in 1727. Along with numerous buildings, the church was destroyed in the Great New Orleans Fire on Good Friday. The cornerstone of a new church was laid in 1789 and the building was completed in 1794, in 1793 Saint Louis Church was elevated to cathedral rank as the See of the Diocese of New Orleans, making it one of the oldest cathedrals in the United States. In 1819, a tower with the clock and bell was added. Enlarging the building to meet the needs of the congregation had been pondered since 1834. De Pouilly also designed St. Augustine Church in Tremé, the first church building dedicated as a church outside the French Quarter. On March 12,1849, the diocese contracted with John Patrick Kirwan to enlarge and restore the cathedral and these specified that everything except the lateral walls and the lower portions of the existing towers on the front facade be demolished. During the reconstruction, it was determined that the sidewalls would have to be demolished also, then, during construction in 1850, the central tower collapsed. De Pouilly and Kirwan were replaced, as a consequence, very little of the Spanish Colonial structure survived. The present structure dates to 1850. The bell from the 1819 tower was reused in the new building, during the renovation, St. Patricks Church served as the pro-cathedral for the city. On April 25,1909, a bomb was set off in the cathedral, blowing out windows. The following year a portion of the foundation collapsed, necessitating the buildings closure while repairs were made, the cathedral was designated as a minor basilica by Pope Paul VI in 1964. Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral in September 1987, today the parish has over 6000 members
4.
New Orleans
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New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U. S. Census, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,452,502. The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723, as it was established by French colonists and it is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music, and its celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is referred to as the most unique in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River, the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranks third in population, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish, La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded May 7,1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time and his title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, during the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French oversight, nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians, Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. The Haitian Revolution ended in 1804 and established the republic in the Western Hemisphere. It had occurred several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue
5.
Louisiana
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Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Louisiana is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States and its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the state in the U. S. with political subdivisions termed parishes. The largest parish by population is East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana is bordered by Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, Texas to the west, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Much of the lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh. These contain a rich southern biota, typical examples include birds such as ibis, there are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a process in the landscape. These support a large number of plant species, including many species of orchids. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the current Louisiana State had been both a French colony and for a period, a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African people as slaves in the 18th century, many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715, when René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane. The suffix -ana is a Latin suffix that can refer to information relating to an individual, subject. Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of related to Louis, the Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent, Pangea. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened, Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south. The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in such as the Kisatchie National Forest. The oldest rocks date back to the early Tertiary Era, some 60 million years ago, the history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearings Roadside Geology of Louisiana. The sediments were carried north to south by the Mississippi River
6.
Town square
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A town square is an open public space commonly found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, piazza, plaza, most town squares are hardscapes suitable for open markets, music concerts, political rallies, and other events that require firm ground. Being centrally located, town squares are surrounded by small shops such as bakeries, meat markets, cheese stores. At their center is often a fountain, well, monument, many of those with fountains are actually called fountain square. In urban planning, a city square or urban square is an open area in a city. Red Square in Moscow was originally used as a marketplace and later became the stage for Soviet military parades. Similarly, Beijings Tiananmen Square was the scene of both communist parades and anti-government protests, john-F. -Kennedy-Platz was the site of the West Berlin town hall and John F. Kennedys famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech. New York Citys Times Square as well as Bryant Park, Washington, D. C. s National Mall, trafalgar Square in London does the same for the United Kingdom. Saint Peters Square in Vatican City, the enclave within Rome. Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto is a renowned and famous square in Canada, nathan Phillips Square is a popular square in front of Torontos landmark City Hall. Hviezdoslavovo námestie is one of the squares in Bratislava and a centre of a social life. Dam Square in Amsterdam for the Netherlands, Main Market Square in Kraków, Market Place in Warsaw and Wrocław Main Square for Poland. The City Hall Square, Copenhagen for Denmark, praça do Comércio, in Lisbon, Portugal, was formerly known as the Terreiro do Paço. It was destroyed after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake but was rebuilt, the symmetrical buildings around the square hold government bureaus and ministries. Wenceslas Square is one of the city squares in the New Town of Prague. In Mainland China, Peoples Square is a designation for the central town square of modern Chinese cities. These squares are the site of government buildings, museums and other public buildings, the probably best-known and largest such square in China is Tienanmen Square. The German word for square is Platz, which also means Place and these have been focal points of public life in towns and cities from the Middle Ages to today
7.
Louisiana Purchase
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The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U. S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs, the Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U. S. states and two Canadian provinces. Its non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants, of whom half were African slaves, the Kingdom of France controlled the Louisiana territory from 1699 until it was ceded to Spain in 1762. Napoleon in 1800, hoping to re-establish an empire in North America, however, Frances failure to put down the revolt in Saint-Domingue, coupled with the prospect of renewed warfare with the United Kingdom, prompted Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States. The Americans originally sought to purchase only the city of New Orleans and its adjacent coastal lands. The Louisiana Purchase occurred during the term of the third President of the United States, before the purchase was finalized, the decision faced Federalist Party opposition, they argued that it was unconstitutional to acquire any territory. Constitution did not contain provisions for acquiring territory, but he asserted that his constitutional power to negotiate treaties was sufficient. Throughout the second half of the 18th century, Louisiana was a pawn on the chessboard of European politics and it was controlled by the French, who had a few small settlements along the Mississippi and other main rivers. Following French defeat in the Seven Years War, Spain gained control of the territory west of the Mississippi, the United States controlled the area east of the Mississippi and north of New Orleans. The main issue for the Americans was free transit of the Mississippi to the sea, as the lands were being gradually settled by a few American migrants, many Americans, including Jefferson, assumed that the territory would be acquired piece by piece. The risk of power taking it from a weakened Spain made a profound reconsideration of this policy necessary. New Orleans was already important for shipping goods to and from the areas of the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains. Pinckneys Treaty, signed with Spain on October 27,1795, gave American merchants right of deposit in New Orleans, Americans used this right to transport products such as flour, tobacco, pork, bacon, lard, feathers, cider, butter, and cheese. The treaty also recognized American rights to navigate the entire Mississippi, in 1798 Spain revoked this treaty, prohibiting American use of New Orleans, and greatly upsetting the Americans. In 1801, Spanish Governor Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo took over from the Marquess of Casa Calvo, Napoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, but the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control, until a transfer of power to France on November 30,1803, another ceremony was held in St. Louis a few months later, in part because during winter conditions the news of the New Orleans formalities did not reach Upper Louisiana. The March 9–10,1804, event is remembered as Three Flags Day, James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston had traveled to Paris to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans in January 1803. Their instructions were to negotiate or purchase control of New Orleans and its environs, the Louisiana Purchase was by far the largest territorial gain in U. S. history
8.
Louisiana (New Spain)
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Louisiana was the name of an administrative district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1762 to 1802 that consisted of territory west of the Mississippi River basin, plus New Orleans. Spain acquired the territory from France, who had named it La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV in 1682 and it is sometimes known as Spanish Louisiana. The district was retroceded to France, under the terms of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, in 1802, King Charles IV of Spain published a royal bill on 15 October, effecting the transfer and outlining the conditions. However, Spain agreed to continue administering the colony until French officials arrived and formalized the transfer. The ceremony was conducted at the Cabildo in New Orleans on 30 November 1803, Spain was largely a benign absentee landlord administering it from Havana, Cuba, and contracting out governing to people from many nationalities as long as they swore allegiance to Spain. During the American War of Independence, the Spanish funneled their supplies to the American revolutionists through New Orleans, in keeping with being absentee landlords, Spanish efforts to turn Louisiana into a Spanish colony were usually fruitless. For instance, while Spanish officially was the language of government. Even official business conducted at the Cabildo often lapsed into French, when Alejandro OReilly re-established Spanish rule in 1769, he issued a decree on December 7,1769, which banned the trade of Native American slaves. Although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others. A group of maroons led by Jean Saint Malo resisted re-enslavement from their base in the swamps east of New Orleans between 1780 and 1784, on May 4,1795,57 slaves and three local white men were put on trial in Point Coupee. Spanish colonial officials divided Luisiana into Upper Louisiana and Lower Louisiana at 36°35 North, in 1764, French fur trading interests founded St. Louis in what was then known as the Illinois Country. The Spanish referred to St. Louis as the city of Illinois, in 1778, several ships embarked for Louisiana with hundreds of settlers. The ships made stops in Havana and Venezuela, where half the settlers disembarked, in the end, between 2,100 and 2,736 Canarians arrived in Louisiana and settled near New Orleans. They settled in Barataria and in what is today St. Bernard Parish, however, many settlers were relocated for various reasons. Barataria suffered hurricanes in 1779 and in 1780, it was abandoned, in 1782, a splinter group of the Canarian settlers in Saint Bernard emigrated to Valenzuela. In 1779, another ship with 500 people from Málaga, arrived in Spanish Louisiana and these colonists, led by Lt. Col. Francisco Bouligny, settled in New Iberia, where they intermarried with Cajun settlers. In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War and the Anglo-Spanish War, Bernardo de Gálvez recruited men from the Canarian settlements of Louisiana and Galveston to join his forces. They participated in three military campaigns, the Baton Rouge, the Mobile, and the Pensacola, which expelled the British from the Gulf Coast
9.
Hurricane Katrina
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Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The storm is ranked as the third most intense United States landfalling tropical cyclone. Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, total property damage was estimated at $108 billion, roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in the United States. Early the following day, the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina, the cyclone headed generally westward toward Florida and strengthened into a hurricane only two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25. After very briefly weakening to a storm, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26. The storm caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge, severe property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as Mississippi beachfront towns, over 90 percent of these were flooded. Boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, over fifty breaches in New Orleanss hurricane surge protection were the cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina on August 29,2005. Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, according to a modeling exercise conducted by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, two-thirds of the deaths in Greater New Orleans were due to levee and floodwall failure. All of the studies concluded that the USACE, the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965, is responsible. This is mainly due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money, exactly ten years after Katrina, J. Many other government officials were criticized for their responses, especially New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, several agencies including the United States Coast Guard, National Hurricane Center, and National Weather Service were commended for their actions. They provided accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts with sufficient lead time, Hurricane Katrina formed as Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23,2005, as the result of an interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical Depression Ten. It strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24, the tropical storm moved towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before making landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura on the morning of August 25. The storm weakened over land, but it regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico, on August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification, but caused the storm to nearly double in size, the storm rapidly intensified after entering the Gulf, growing from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. This rapid growth was due to the movement over the unusually warm waters of the Loop Current. Katrina attained Category 5 status on the morning of August 28 and reached its peak strength at 1800 UTC that day, with sustained winds of 175 mph. However, this record was broken by Hurricane Rita
10.
Levee
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A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels. It is usually earthen and often parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines, the word levee, from the French word levée, is used in American English. It originated in New Orleans a few years after the founding in 1718 and was later adopted by English speakers. The name derives from the trait of the ridges being raised higher than both the channel and the surrounding floodplains. The modern word dike or dyke most likely derives from the Dutch word dijk, the 126 kilometres long Westfriese Omringdijk was completed by 1250, and was formed by connecting existing older dikes. The Roman chronicler Tacitus even mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land, the word dijk originally indicated both the trench and the bank. It is closely related to the English verb to dig, in Anglo-Saxon, the word dic already existed and was pronounced as dick in northern England and as ditch in the south. Similar to Dutch, the English origins of the lie in digging a trench. This practice has meant that the name may be given to either the excavation or the bank, thus Offas Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a dike as in Rippingale Running Dike. The Weir Dike is a dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen. In the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, a dyke may be a ditch or a narrow artificial channel off a river or broad for access or mooring, some longer dykes being named. In parts of Britain, particularly Scotland, a dyke may be a field wall, Levees can be mainly found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough, along rivers for protection against high-floods, along lakes or along polders. Furthermore, levees have been built for the purpose of empoldering, the latter can be a controlled inundation by the military or a measure to prevent inundation of a larger area surrounded by levees. Levees have also built as field boundaries and as military defences. More on this type of levee can be found in the article on dry-stone walls, Levees can be permanent earthworks or emergency constructions built hastily in a flood emergency. When such a bank is added on top of an existing levee it is known as a cradge
11.
Mississippi River
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The Mississippi River is the chief river of the largest drainage system on the North American continent. Flowing entirely in the United States, it rises in northern Minnesota, with its many tributaries, the Mississippis watershed drains all or parts of 31 U. S. states and 2 Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains. The Mississippi ranks as the fourth longest and fifteenth largest river in the world by discharge, the river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Native Americans long lived along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies. The arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the way of life as first explorers, then settlers. The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, and the early United States, and then as a vital transportation artery and communications link. Formed from thick layers of the silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile agricultural regions of the country. In recent years, the river has shown a shift towards the Atchafalaya River channel in the Delta. The word itself comes from Messipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, see below in the History section for additional information. In addition to historical traditions shown by names, there are at least two measures of a rivers identity, one being the largest branch, and the other being the longest branch. Using the largest-branch criterion, the Ohio would be the branch of the Lower Mississippi. Using the longest-branch criterion, the Middle Mississippi-Missouri-Jefferson-Beaverhead-Red Rock-Hellroaring Creek River would be the main branch and its length of at least 3,745 mi is exceeded only by the Nile, the Amazon, and perhaps the Yangtze River among the longest rivers in the world. The source of this waterway is at Browers Spring,8,800 feet above sea level in southwestern Montana and this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase Trans-Mississippi as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. It is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, the New Madrid Seismic Zone along the river is also noteworthy. These various basic geographical aspects of the river in turn underlie its human history and present uses of the waterway, the Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca,1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, however, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, Missouri, fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation. The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river
12.
Canal Street, New Orleans
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Canal Street is a major thoroughfare in the city of New Orleans. Up until the early 1800s, it was the Creoles who lived in the Vieux Carré, after the Louisiana Purchase, a large influx of other cultures began to find their way into the city via the Mississippi River. A number of Americans from Kentucky and other Midwestern states moved into the city, along the division between these two cultures, a canal was planned. The canal was never built but the street took its place received the name. Furthermore, the median of the street known as the neutral ground. To this day, all medians of New Orleans streets are called neutral grounds, one end of Canal Street terminates at the Mississippi River. Canal Streets other terminus is in Mid-City at a collection of cemeteries, slightly offset from the Mid-City end is the beginning of Canal Boulevard, which extends to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain via the Lakeview neighborhood. Throughout its length, Canal, which runs east and west, serves as a line for cross streets running north and south. The street has three lanes of traffic in both directions, with a pair of tracks in the center. Canal Streets downtown segment serves as the hub of the public transit system or RTA, with numerous streetcar. Canal Street is often said to be the widest roadway in America to have called a street. For more than a century, Canal Street was the shopping district of Greater New Orleans. Local department stores Maison Blanche, D. H, the department stores began as sellers of fabric, notions, and accessories, with extensive floor space and glass windows. As elevators and escalators allowed for multi-floor department stores, the stores were enlarged, cities — and it received a boost in 1983 with the completion of Canal Places retail component. However, national trends disfavoring downtown retail finally caught up with Canal Street — with a key assist from the economic depression of the mid-80s. One Canal Place has three levels which are occupied by The Shops at Canal Place. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a fire inflicted heavy damage to the Saks Fifth Avenue store, the mall reopened in February 2006, and a completely-remodeled Saks reopened in November. One Canal Place Office Tower is a Class A commercial office building managed by Corporate Realty and it is adjacent to the Westin New Orleans Hotel
