Removing the Mississippi's Mud Lump: The Eads South Pass Navigation Works

摘要

At the conclusion of the Civil War, most of the South was in dreadful disarray. War-torn populations had been uprooted, cities had been destroyed, and poverty was widespread. Severe flooding in 1866 and 1867 in the delta of the Mississippi River added to the region's postbellum woes. Once a thriving community linked to the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi, the impoverished city of New Orleans desperately needed to reopen the river to navigation. But as the nation's largest river spread and slowed near the Gulf, it deposited large amounts of sediment at the mouths of its three main channels: the Southwest Pass, the South Pass, and the Pass a l'Outre. However, despite the expectations and hopes of many New Orleanians, the salvation of the city and the river did not come from the efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Rather, it came from James Buchanan Eads, a self-taught civil engineer who understood the movement and behavior of the Mississippi better perhaps than anyone in the world.