The Old River Control Structure is a floodgate system in a branch of the Mississippi River in central Louisiana. It regulates the flow of water from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya River, thereby
The Old River Control Structure complex. View is to the east-southeast, looking downriver on the Mississippi, with the three dams across channels leading to the Atchafalaya River to the right of the Mississippi. Concordia Parish, Louisiana is in the foreground, on the right, and Wilkinson County, Mississippi, is in the background, across the Mississippi on the left.
Old River low-sill control structure discharging water into the Atchafalaya, May 2011
The Great Raft was an enormous log jam or series of "rafts" that covered the Red and Atchafalaya rivers in North America from perhaps the 12th century until its destruction in the 1830s. It was unique
Old River Control Structure
…became known as the Lower Old River. At first, the Lower Old River would flow eastward to the Mississippi, until 1839 when locals began removing the Great Raft, a natural log jam that was obstructing the Atchafalaya River. The project was finished in 1840. After that, the Lower Old River would flow eastward…
The Second Great Raft in 1873, photographed by Robert B. Talfor
U.S. Aid, clearing logjam in the Red River, Louisiana. Plate XV of the photographic album Photographic Views of Red River Raft, 1873
Plate CVII: Steamer Bryarly entering Red River through Sale & Murphy's Canal, 1873