 The Second Great Raft in 1873, photographed by Robert B. Talfor | |
| Date | c. 12th century – 1838 |
|---|---|
| Venue | Red and Atchafalaya rivers |
| Location | North America |
| Type | Log jam |
The Great Raft was an enormous log jam or series of "rafts" that clogged the Red and Atchafalaya rivers from perhaps the 12th century until its removal in the 1830s. It was unique in North America in terms of its scale.
The Great Raft possibly began forming in the 12th century, or earlier. [1] It grew from its upper end, while decaying or washing out at the lower end. By the early 1830s, it spanned more than 160 miles (260 km). The raft, at one point, extended for 165 miles (266 km) from Loggy Bayou to Carolina Bluffs. [2]
Because of its scale, the Great Raft became incorporated in the mythology of the regional Caddo tribe, which had been in the area for thousands of years. [3] They credited it with protecting them from competing tribes, as well as intermittently causing floods on the land and making it fertile for agriculture. [4]
Harrelson et al. describe the origins of the raft: [5]
This ecosystem of entangled logs, vegetation and sediments remained in place for almost two millennia, altering the flow regime of the Red River and causing a complete change in its geomorphic character from a single channel to a series of anastomosing channels. It is believed that the initial formation of the Great Raft was triggered by catastrophic flooding as the Red River was going through some major geomorphic threshold, such as a major avulsion. The main contributors to the development of the Great Raft are believed to be the shifting geomorphic conditions in conjunction with extensive precipitation, river bank rotational slips and slab failure, rapid lateral migration, copious, rapidly growing riparian vegetation, exceeding a geomorphic threshold, a flashy hydrograph and a very heavy sediment load.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the raft extended from Campti, Louisiana, to around Shreveport, Louisiana. The raft blocked the mouth of Twelve Mile Bayou, impeding settlement in the area west of Shreveport. There were many smaller logjams on the Red River. [2]
The raft raised the banks of the river, creating bayous and several lakes. Called the Great Raft Lakes, these included Caddo and Cross Lakes, along the lower reaches of the Red River's tributaries. [4] Ports developed along these lakes, and Jefferson, Texas, on Caddo Lake became the second-largest inland port in the United States during this period. The city thrived and was considered a major gateway to East Texas. It was important for shipping out area commodity crops, such as cotton.
In 1829, the US Army Corps of Engineers hired steamboat builder and river captain Henry Miller Shreve (1785–1851), Superintendent of Western River Improvement, to remove the Great Raft to improve the river's navigation. Harrelson et al. describes this effort: [5]
Captain Shreve was a steamboat entrepreneur who had successfully invested in the new steam-power technology by developing the snag boat, a steam-powered boat used for raft removal. He had already used this technology to clear navigational paths in the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1827. Captain Shreve arrived at the toe of the Great Raft in April 1833 with four snag boats and a force of 159 men. His group began clearing a navigational path through 115 km of the Great Raft and, finally, by the spring of 1838, a path had been cleared; however, the remnants of the Great Raft along the river banks were not cleared and the Great Raft immediately began to reform
When Shreve began work, the raft blocked a distance from 8 miles (13 km) directly below to 17 miles (27 km) directly above Shreveport. [2] By April 1835, Shreve had removed the raft up to the mouth of Twelvemile Bayou. [2] He concluded this work in 1838, having removed the last impediment to navigation on the Red River. [2] This task was continued by others until the latter part of the 19th century. For his efforts, the city of Shreveport was named after him.
Although Shreve had completely removed the original raft, another soon formed farther up the river. The new foot was at the head of the old raft, near today's Belcher, Louisiana. [2] This second raft gradually extended until it reached the Arkansas state line. This was removed in 1873 by Lieutenant Eugene Woodruff. [2] [6]
When the log jams were removed, the water level in Caddo Lake and others dropped dramatically, reducing their navigability for riverboats. The ports declined, and riverboats ceased to travel in Caddo Lake.
The removal of the massive log jams hastened the capture of the Mississippi River's waters in lower Louisiana by the Atchafalaya River, a major distributary emptying separately into the Gulf of Mexico. In the 20th century, to maintain the Mississippi, the US Army Corps of Engineers built the multibillion-dollar Old River Control Structure.[ citation needed ]
The Sabine River is a 360-mile (580 km) long river in the Southern U.S. states of Texas and Louisiana, From the 32nd parallel north and downstream, it serves as part of the boundary between the two states and empties into Sabine Lake, an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico.
Jefferson is a city and county seat of Marion County, Texas, in Northeast Texas. It has population of 1,875 as of the 2020 United States census.
Shreveport is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third-most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The bulk of Shreveport is in Caddo Parish, of which it is the parish seat. It extends along the west bank of the Red River into neighboring Bossier Parish. The 2020 census tabulation for the city's population was 187,593, while the Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area had a population of 393,406.
The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South to differentiate it from the Red River in the north of the continent, is a major river in the Southern United States. It was named for its reddish water color from passing through red-bed country in its watershed. It is known as the Red River of the South to distinguish it from the Red River of the North, which flows between Minnesota and North Dakota into the Canadian province of Manitoba. Although once a tributary of the Mississippi River, the Red River is now a tributary of the Atchafalaya River, a distributary of the Mississippi that flows separately into the Gulf of Mexico. This confluence is connected to the Mississippi River by the Old River Control Structure.
Henry Miller Shreve was an American inventor and steamboat captain who removed obstructions to navigation of the Mississippi, Ohio and Red rivers. Shreveport, Louisiana, was named in his honor.
The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) is the portion of the Intracoastal Waterway located along the Gulf Coast of the United States. It is a navigable inland waterway running approximately 1,300 mi (2,100 km) from Saint Marks, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas.
The Ouachita River is a 605-mile-long (974 km) river that runs south and east through the U.S. states of Arkansas and Louisiana, joining the Tensas River to form the Black River near Jonesville, Louisiana. It is the 25th-longest river in the United States.
Caddo Lake is a 25,400-acre (10,300 ha) lake and bayou (wetland) on the border between Texas and Louisiana, in northern Harrison County and southern Marion County in Texas and western Caddo Parish in Louisiana. The lake is named after the Caddoans or Caddo, Native Americans who lived in the area until their expulsion by the United States in the 19th century. The US forced most of them to move west to Indian Territory.
The Atchafalaya River is a 137-mile-long (220 km) distributary of the Mississippi River and Red River in south central Louisiana in the United States. It flows south, just west of the Mississippi River, and is the fifth largest river in North America, by discharge. The name Atchafalaya comes from Choctaw for 'long river', from hachcha, 'river', and falaya, 'long'.
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 preventing the Mississippi River from changing course. Completed in 1963, the complex was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a side channel of the Mississippi known as "Old River", between the Mississippi's current channel and the Atchafalaya Basin, a former channel of the Mississippi.
The Atchafalaya Basin, or Atchafalaya Swamp, is the largest wetland and swamp in the United States. Located in south central Louisiana, it is a combination of wetlands and river delta area where the Atchafalaya River and the Gulf of Mexico converge. The river stretches from near Simmesport in the north through parts of eight parishes to the Morgan City southern area.
Louisiana Highway 1 (LA 1) is a state highway in Louisiana. At 431.88 miles (695.04 km), it is the longest numbered highway of any class in Louisiana. It runs diagonally across the state, connecting the oil and gas fields near the island of Grand Isle with the northwest corner of the state, north of Shreveport.
A snagboat is a river boat, resembling a barge with superstructure for crew accommodations, and deck-mounted cranes and hoists for removing snags and other obstructions from rivers and other shallow waterways.
Wax Lake was a lake in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana that was converted into an outlet channel, the Wax Lake outlet, to divert water from the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico.
Big Cypress Creek is an 86-mile-long (138 km) river in Texas. It is part of the Red River watershed, with its water eventually flowing to the Atchafalaya River through the Atchafalaya Basin and entering the Gulf of Mexico.
Black Bayou is a 66.6-mile-long (107.2 km) river in Texas and Louisiana. It is a tributary of Twelvemile Bayou, which feeds Cross Bayou and consequently the Red River and the Mississippi River. It rises in Cass County, Texas, 7 miles (11 km) north of Atlanta, and flows south past Atlanta, then southeast into Caddo Parish, Louisiana. It continues southeast until reaching the Red River floodplain, then curves south and southwest to its confluence with the outlet of Caddo Lake, where Twelvemile Bayou is formed.
Cross Bayou is a 38.0-mile-long (61.2 km) river in Texas and Louisiana. It is a tributary of the Red River, part of the Mississippi River watershed.
Caddo Lake State Park is a state park located in the piney woods ecoregion of East Texas. The park consists of 484 acres (196 ha) on Big Cypress Bayou, west of Caddo Lake itself, in Harrison County, near Karnack, Texas. The park opened in 1934 and is managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. There are two separate units, Caddo Wildlife Management Area and Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge, nearby.
The Sherburne Complex is a joint land management venture of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that began in 1983. The area consists of 44,000 acres (180 km2), and is managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The complex is located in the Morganza Flood way system of the Atchafalaya Basin about 30 miles (48 km) west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and actually extends a little south of the I-10 Atchafalaya Basin Bridge at Whiskey Bay, Louisiana. The bridge crosses the Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel. Located on the graveled LA 975, the west boundary is on the east side of the Atchafalaya River with the east boundary being the East Protection Levee. The complex stretches just north of old highway 190, and a short distance to the south of I-10. The nearest town is Krotz Springs to the north off US 190.
