There is only land here in South Louisiana if the Mississippi River, which drains some four-tenths of the United States, brings it to spread out over the edge of the continent at the Gulf of Mexico. Its alluvium is an offering to cypress, cattails, and spartina to build the land higher—if the next flood, storm surge, or rising sea level does not reclaim it first.Over millennia, the river has formed a 10,000 square-mile expanse of mud—the Mississippi Delta. This mud is both the product of the river and its primary impediment. The river always seeks a faster route to the sea, and so its course across the massive mudbank of its own making wavers over time. Some 5,000 years ago, as the last ice age receded, torrents of glacial meltwater flowed into the river. It sought open territory, and the delta shifted to the east.

Roger Siebert

.

Read this article now for Free!

Enter your email address to finish reading this article now.

— OR —

Subscribe now for $29.99 a year! You'll have access to our new issues as they are published, and access to our entire archive of back issues, starting with our inaugural issue in September 2014. Subscribers can also post unlimited classified ads. This is an extraordinary value!