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Head Of Passes

Head of Passes

Head of Passes is where the main stem of the Mississippi River branches off into three distinct directions at its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico: Southwest Pass (west), Pass A Loutre (east) and South Pass (centre). They are part of the "Bird's Foot Delta", the youngest lobe of the evolving Mississippi River Delta. The Head of Passes is considered to be the location of the mouth of the Mississippi River. The US Army Corps of Engineers maintains a 45 foot shipping channel from the mouth of the Southwest pass (20 miles downriver from the Head) up to Baton Rouge, US's furthest inland deep-water port. [http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/armymil/www.iwr.usace.army.mil/ndc/factcard/fc03/factcard.pdf] The Mouth of Passes comprises the mouths of the passes connected to the Head of Passes, including the Southwest, South, North Passes and Pass a Loutre. [http://oaspub.epa.gov/pls/tmdl/w305b_report_v2v.huc?p_huc=08090100&p_state=LA] While the majority of the discharge of the Mississippi River flows through these mouths, a portion of the river flows out of the Atchafalaya River mouth, and a small portion continues to seep out of the 200 miles (300km) of the Delta shoreline. [http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2364] During the American Civil War, Head of Passes was the site of several naval battles. The Anaconda Plan called for a large Union blockade of the Confederacy, and included plans to control the Mississippi River. This began in 1861 with a Union blockade stationed at the Head of Passes. Ships involved in the ensuing conflict at the location include the CSS Manassas, the USS Vincennes, and the USS Richmond. Port Eads is located at the southern tip of South Pass. Category:Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

Mississippi River

This page is about the river in the United States; there is also a Canadian Mississippi River (Ontario). The Mississippi River, derived from the old Ojibwe word misi-ziibi meaning 'big river' (gichi-ziibi in the modern language), is the second-longest river in the United States; the longest is the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi. Taken together, they form the largest river system in North America. If measured from the head of the Missouri, the length of the Missouri/Mississippi combination is approximately 6,270 km (3,900 miles) long.

Geography

North America With its source Lake Itasca at 1475 feet (450 m) above sea level in Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota, the river falls to 725 feet (220 m) just below Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. The Mississippi is joined by the Illinois River and the Missouri River near Saint Louis, and by the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois. The Arkansas River joins the Mississippi in the state of Arkansas. The Atchafalaya River in Louisiana is a major distributary of the Mississippi. The Mississippi drains most of the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains, except for the area drained by the Great Lakes. It runs through, or borders, ten states in the United States -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana -- before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles (160 km) downstream from New Orleans. Measurements of the length of the Mississippi from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico vary, but the EPA's number is 2,320 miles (3733 km). A raindrop falling in Lake Itasca would arrive at the Gulf of Mexico in about 90 days. [http://www.nps.gov/miss/features/factoids/] New Orleans The river is divided into the upper Mississippi, from its source south to the Ohio River, and the lower Mississippi, from the Ohio to its mouth near New Orleans. The upper Mississippi is further divided into three sections: the headwaters, from the source to Saint Anthony Falls; a series of man-made lakes between Minneapolis and St. Louis; and the middle Mississippi, a relatively free-flowing river downstream of the confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis. A series of 27 locks and dams on the upper Mississippi, most of which were built in the 1930s, is designed primarily to maintain a 9 foot (2.7 m) channel for commercial barge traffic. The lakes formed are also used for recreational boating and fishing. The dams make the river deeper and wider but do not stop it. No flood control is intended. During periods of high flow, the gates, some of which are submersible, are completely opened and the dams simply cease to function. Below St. Louis the Mississippi is relatively free-flowing, although it is constrained by numerous levees and directed by numerous wing dams. Through a natural process known as deltaic switching the lower Mississippi River has shifted its final course to the ocean every thousand years or so. This occurs because the deposits of silt and sediment raise the river's level causing it to eventually find a steeper route to the Gulf of Mexico. The abandoned distributary diminishes in volume and forms what are known as bayous. This process has, over the past 5,000 years, caused the coastline of south Louisiana to advance gulfward from 15 to 50 miles. (See: Mississippi River Delta) Other changes in the course of the river have occurred because of earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault Zone, which lies near the cities of Memphis and St. Louis. Three earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, estimated at approximately 8 on the Richter Scale, were said to have temporarily reversed the course of the Mississippi. These earthquakes also created Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee from the altered landscape near the river. The faulting is related to an aulacogen (geologic term for a failed rift) that formed at the same time as the Gulf of Mexico. Davenport, Iowa is the only city over 20,000 people bordering the Upper Mississippi that has no permanent floodwall or levee.

Watershed

levee The Mississippi River has the third largest drainage basin in the world, exceeded in size only by the watersheds of the Amazon River and Congo River. It drains 41 percent of the 48 contiguous states of the United States. The basin covers more than 1,245,000 square miles (3,225,000 km²), including all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces.
- [http://earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detail_static.cfm?map_select=390&theme=2 Information and a map of the Mississippi's watershed]

History

The word Mississippi comes from the Ojibwe name for the river, "Messipi" (or Misi-ziibi), which means great river, or from the Algonquin Missi Sepe, "great river," literally, "father of waters." The Ojibwe called Lake Itasca, the source lake of the Mississippi River, Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Elk Lake) and the river flowing out of it as Omashkoozo-ziibi (Elk River). After flowing into Lake Bemidji, the Ojibwe called the river Bemijigamaa-ziibi (River from the Traversing Lake). After flowing into Cass Lake, the river again changes its name to Miskwaawaakokaa-ziibi (Red Cedar River), only to change its name again after flowing into Lake Winnibigoshish as Gichi-ziibi (Big River). The Ojibwe name Misi-ziibi applied only to the portion below the Crow Wing River, but the ever-changing names of the river seemed illogical to the English speakers, so after the expedition by Henry Schoolcraft, the longest stream above the juncture of the Crow Wing River and Gichi-ziibi was named "Mississippi River". On May 8, 1541 Hernando de Soto became the first recorded European to reach the Mississippi River, which he called "Rio de Espiritu Santo" (River of the Holy Spirit). French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi, which they knew by the Sioux name "Ne Tongo" (which, like the Ojibwe name, means big river), on May 17, 1673. In 1682, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Henri de Tonty claimed the entire Mississippi River Valley for France, calling it Louisiana, for King Louis XIV. In 1718, New Orleans was established by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. France lost all its territories on the North American mainland as a result of the French and Indian War. The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Great Britain rights to all land in the valley east of the Mississippi and Spain rights to land west of the Mississippi. Spain also ceded Florida to England to regain Cuba, which the English occupied during the war. Britain then divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida. In the second Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolution, Britain ceded West Florida back to Spain to regain The Bahamas, which Spain had occupied during the war. Spain then had control over the river south of 32°30' north latitude, and, in what is known as the Spanish Conspiracy, hoped to gain greater control of Louisiana and all of the west. These hopes ended when Spain was pressured into signing Pinckney's Treaty in 1795. France reacquired 'Louisiana' from Spain in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. The United States bought the territory from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The river was noted for the number of bandits which called its islands and shores home, including John Murrell who was a well-known murderer, horse stealer and slave "re-trader". His notoriety was such that author Mark Twain devoted an entire chapter to him in his book Life on the Mississippi, and Murrell was rumored to have an island headquarters on the river at Island 37. Twain's book also extensively covered the thrilling steamboat races which took place from 1830 to 1870 on the river before more modern boating methods replaced the steamer. It was published first in serial form in Harper's Weekly in seven parts in 1875 and was intended to chronicle the rapidly disappearing steamboat culture. The full version, including a passage from the unfinished Huckleberry Finn and works from other authors, was published by James R. Osgood & Co. in 1885. The first steamboat to travel the full length of the Mississippi from the Ohio River to the city of New Orleans, Louisiana was the New Orleans in December 1811. Its maiden voyage occurred during the series of New Madrid earthquakes in 1811–1812. In 1815, America retained control over the Mississippi by scoring a decisive victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans, part of the War of 1812. The River was also a decisive part of the American Civil War. The Union's Vicksburg Campaign called for Union control of the lower Mississippi River. The Union victory at the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863 was pivotal to the Union's final victory of the Civil War. In 1900, Chicago built the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to link the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. The canal allowed Chicago to flush its waste down the Mississippi rather than having it pollute its own Lake Michigan waterfront. The canal also provided a shipping route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. The sport of water skiing was invented on the river in a wide region between Minnesota and Wisconsin known as Lake Pepin. Ralph Samuelson of Lake City, Minnesota created and refined his skiing technique in late June and early July of 1922. He later performed the first water ski jump in 1925 and was pulled along at 80 miles per hour (128 km/h) by a Curtiss flying boat later that year. In the spring of 1927 the river broke out of its banks in 145 places during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and inundated 27,000 square miles (70,000 km²) to a depth of up to 30 feet (10 m). The Great Flood of 1993 is considered the most devastating flood to occur in the U.S. in modern history. In 2002 Martin Strel swam the entire length of the river.

Maintaining a navigation channel

The task of maintaining a navigation channel on the Mississippi is the responsibility of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which began as early as 1829 removing snags, closing off secondary channels and excavating rocks and sandbars. In 1829 the Corps surveyed the two major obstacles on the upper Mississippi, the Des Moines Rapids and the Rock Island Rapids, where the river was shallow and the riverbed was rock. The Des Moines Rapids were about 11 miles (18 km) long and just above the mouth of the Des Moines River at Keokuk. The Rock Island Rapids were between Rock Island and Moline. Both rapids were considered virtually impassable. Moline The Corps recommended excavation of a 5 foot (1.5 m) channel at the Des Moines Rapids, but work didn't begin until after Lieutenant Robert E. Lee endorsed the project in 1837. The Corps later also began excavating the Rock Island Rapids. By 1866 it had become evident that excavation was impractical, and it was decided to build a canal around the Des Moines Rapids. The canal opened in 1877, but the Rock Island Rapids remained an obstacle. In 1878, Congress authorized the Corps to establish a 4½ foot (1.4 m) channel, to be obtained by building wing dams which direct the river to a narrow channel causing it to cut a deeper channel, closing secondary channels, and by dredging. The 4½ (1.4 m) foot channel project was complete when the Moline Lock, which bypassed the Rock Island Rapids, opened in 1907. To improve navigation between St. Paul and Prairie du Chien, the Corps constructed several dams on lakes in the headwaters area, including Lake Winnibigoshish and Lake Pokegama. The dams, which were built beginning in the 1880s, stored spring run-off, which was released during low water to help maintain channel depth. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connecting the Illinois River with Lake Michigan, was completed in 1900. This provided a link between the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes and replaced the smaller Illinois and Michigan Canal (1848). In 1907, Congress authorized a 6 foot (1.8 m) channel project on the Mississippi, which wasn't complete when it was abandoned in the late 1920s in favor of the 9 foot (2.7 m) channel project. In 1913, construction was complete on a dam at Keokuk, Iowa, the first dam below St. Anthony Falls. Built by a private power company to generate electricity, the Keokuk dam was one of the largest hydro-electric plants in the world at the time. The dam also eliminated the Des Moines Rapids. Keokuk, Iowa Lock and Dam No. 1 was completed in Minneapolis in 1917 and Lock and Dam No. 2 at Hastings, Minnesota, was completed in 1930. Prior to the 1927 flood, the Corps' primary strategy was to close off as many side channels as possible to increase the flow in the main river. It was thought that the river's velocity would scour off bottom sediments, deepening the river, and decreasing the possibility of flooding. The 1927 flood proved this so wrong that communities threatened by the flood began to make their own levee breaks to relieve the tension of the rising river. The Corps now actively creates floodways to divert periodic water surges into backwater channels and lakes. The main floodways are the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway; the Morganza Floodway, which directs floodwaters down the Atchafalaya River; and the Bonnet Carré Spillway which directs water to Lake Pontchartrain. The Old River Control structure also serve as a major floodgates that can be opened to prevent flooding. Some of the pre-1927 strategy is still in use today; the Corps actively cuts the necks of horseshoe bends, allowing the water to move faster, and thus lower flood heights. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1930 authorized the 9-foot (2.7 m) channel project, which called for a navigation channel 9 feet (2.7 m) deep and 400 feet (120 m) wide to accommodate multiple-barge tows. This was achieved by a series of locks and dams, and by dredging. Twenty-three new locks and dams were built on the upper Mississippi in the 1930s in addition to the three already in existence. Two new locks were built north of Lock and Dam No. 1 at Saint Anthony Falls in the 1960s, extending the head of navigation for commercial traffic several miles, but few barges go past the city of Saint Paul today. head of navigation Until the 1950s, there was no dam below Lock and Dam 26 at Alton, Illinois. Lock and Dam 27, which consists of a low-water dam and an 8.4 mile (14 km) long canal, was added in 1953 just below the confluence with the Missouri River, primarily to bypass a series of rock ledges at St. Louis, but also to protect the St. Louis city water intakes during times of low water. Dam 26 at Alton, Illinois, which had structural problems, was replaced by the Mel Price Lock and Dam in 1990. The original Lock and Dam 26 was demolished.

Major cities along the river


- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- Davenport, Iowa
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- New Orleans, Louisiana

Notable bridges


- Stone Arch Bridge - a former Great Northern Railroad (now pedestrian) bridge in Minneapolis and National Historic Engineering Landmark.
- Washington Avenue Bridge - connects the East Bank and West Bank portions of the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus.
- Black Hawk Bridge, connecting Lansing, Allamakee County, Iowa to rural Crawford County, Wisconsin, locally referred to as the Lansing Bridge.
- Julien Dubuque Bridge - A bridge connecting Dubuque, Iowa and East Dubuque, Illinois that is a National Historic Landmark.
- Interstate 74 Bridge connecting Moline, Illinois to Bettendorf, Iowa is a twin suspension bridge, also known historically as the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge.
- Rock Island Centennial Bridge connecting Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa.
- Santa Fe Bridge - in Fort Madison, Iowa, the largest double-deck swing-span bridge in the world; also listed as a National Historic Landmark.
- Chain of Rocks Bridge - A bridge on the northern edge of St. Louis, Missouri; famous for a 22-degree bend halfway across and the most famous alignment of Historic US 66 across the Mississippi.
- Eads Bridge - A bridge connecting St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois; the first major steel bridge in the world, and also a National Historic Landmark.
- Poplar Street Bridge - A bridge connecting downtown St. Louis, Missouri with East St. Louis, Illinois that carries three interstates and a U.S. highway; the bridge is one of the busiest on the river.
- U.S. Highway 82 Bridge connecting Greenville, Mississippi with Arkansas.
- Interstate 20 Bridge connecting Vicksburg, Mississippi, with Tallulah, Louisiana.
- U.S. Highway 84 Bridge connecting Natchez, Mississippi, with Vidalia, Louisiana.
- Mississippi River Bridge in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
- Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge near New Orleans, a cable-stayed bridge carrying Interstate 310 across the Mississippi, connecting the towns of Luling and Destrehan, Louisiana.
- Huey P. Long Bridge in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana.
- Crescent City Connection in New Orleans, LA.

Popular culture

Nicknames

Due to its size and historical significance, the Mississippi probably has more nicknames than any other river. Among these are:
- The Father of Waters
- The Gathering of Waters
- The Big Muddy (more commonly associated with the Missouri River)
- Big River
- Old Man River
- The Great River
- Body of a Nation
- The Mighty Mississippi
- El Grande (de Soto)
- The Muddy Mississippi

Literature & Music

Many of the works of Mark Twain deal with or take place near the Mississippi River. One of his first major works, Life on the Mississippi, is in part a history of the river, in part a memoir of Twain's experiences on the river, and a collection of tales that either take place on or are associated with the river. Twain's most famous work, Huckleberry Finn, is largely a journey down the river. The novel works as an episodic meditation on American culture with the river as the central metaphor. Herman Melville's novel The Confidence-Man portrayed a Canterbury Tales-style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel up the Mississppi River. The novel is written both as cultural satire and a metaphysical treatise. Like Huckleberry Finn, it uses the Mississippi River as a metaphor for the larger aspects of American and human identity that unify the otherwise disparate characters. The river's fluidity is reflected by the often shifting personalities and identities of Melville's "confidence man." The stage and movie musical Show Boat's central musical piece is the Blues-influenced ballad Ol' Man River. Ferde Grofe composed a set of movements based on the lands the river travels through in his Mississippi Suite. The song 'When the Levee Breaks', made famous in the version performed by Led Zeppelin on the album Led Zep IV, was composed by Memphis Minnie McCoy in 1929 after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

Slang

The Mississippi is probably the river meant in the phrase sold down the river, as a reference to slavery. Down the Mississippi was farther into the Deep South and plantation country.

Notes

¹ Median of the 7,305 daliy mean streamflows recorded by the USGS for the period 1978-1998. ² Median of the 7,305 daily mean streamflows recorded by the USGS for the period 1978-1998 at Vicksburg. The discharge is probably even higher further downstream at Natchez, but data for Natchez were not recorded. Further downstream from Natchez, approximately 25 percent of the water discharge of the Mississippi is diverted into the Atchafalaya River, and further discharge is lost as the river becomes a delta in Louisiana. ³ Median of the 1,826 daily mean streamflows recorded by the USGS for the period 1978-1983 at Baton Rouge.

Sources


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See also


- Mississippi River Delta
- Mississippi embayment
- Mississippi River (Ontario).

External links


- [http://www.nps.gov/miss/features/factoids/ General Information about the Mississippi River]
- [http://www.davidestrada.com/river/ Life on the River with David Estrada] - a view of the river from a modern day towboater's perspective
- [http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/SNT/noframe/ms137.htm Geography and biology of the Mississippi River]
- [http://www.archive.org/details/mississippi_flood_1927 National Archives footage of the 1927 flood] ko:미시시피 강 ja:ミシシッピ川 simple:Mississippi River

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a major body of water bordered and nearly landlocked by North America. The gulf's eastern, north, and northwestern shores lie within the United States of America (specifically, the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas); its southwestern and southern shores lie within Mexico (specifically, the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo); on the southeast it is bordered by Cuba. It connects with the Atlantic Ocean via the Florida Straits between the U.S. and Cuba, and with the Caribbean Sea via the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba. (Note: In common usage, at least in the U.S., the term "Gulf Coast" usually refers to either the continuous portion of the coast running from Cape Sable, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas, or from Cape Sable, Florida, to the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula at Cabo Catoche, Quintana Roo. Both meanings exclude Cuba as well as the Florida Keys.) Florida Keys The total area of the Gulf of Mexico is approximately 615,000 mi² (1.6 million km²), the southern third of which lies within the tropics, and plunges to a depth of 2,080 fathoms (3804 m). This deepest part is Sigsbee Deep, an irregular trough more than 300 nautical miles (550 km) long, sometimes called the "Grand Canyon under the sea." The cooler water from the deep stimulates plankton growth, which attracts small fish, shrimp, and squid. [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/GG/rrg7.html 1] The Gulf Stream, a warm Atlantic Ocean current and one of the strongest ocean currents known, originates in the gulf. The gulf has been visited many times by powerful Atlantic hurricanes, some of which have caused extensive human death and other destruction (see 2005's Hurricane Katrina, for example). Tidal ranges are extremely small in the Gulf of Mexico due to the narrow connection with the ocean – much like the Mediterranean. The Bay of Campeche in Mexico constitutes a major arm of the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, the gulf's shoreline is fringed by numerous bays and smaller inlets. A number of rivers empty into the gulf, most notably the Mississippi River. The land that forms the gulf's coast, including many long, narrow barrier islands, is almost uniformly low-lying and is characterized by marshes and swamps as well as stretches of sandy beach. The continental shelf is quite wide at most points along the coast. The shelf is exploited for its oil by means of offshore drilling rigs, most of which are situated in the western gulf. Another important commercial activity is fishing; major catches include various fishes as well as shrimp and crabs, with oysters being harvested on a large scale from many of the bays and sounds. Other important industries along the coast include shipping, petrochemical processing and storage, paper manufacture, and tourism. Coastal cities of note include Tampa, St. Petersburg, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, Beaumont, and Houston (all in the U.S.), Tampico, Tuxpam, Veracruz and Mérida (in Mexico), and Havana (in Cuba). The gulf's coastal areas were first settled by Native American groups, including those representing several of the early advanced cultures of Mexico. During the period of European exploration and colonization the entire region became a theatre of contention between the Spanish, French and English. The present-day culture of the coastal region is primarily Spanish-American (Mexico, Cuba) and Anglo-American (U.S.). English A point of interest about the Gulf is that 65 million years ago, the Chicxulub crater was formed when a large meteorite hit the earth. It is hypothesized that this impact was the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/a.buckley/dino.htm]

Pollution

Because of the ever increasing amount of nitrogen and phosphates dissolved in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, pollution has more than doubled since 1950. Current estimates suggest that three times as much nitrogen is being carried into the Gulf today compared with levels 30 years ago or at any time in history. Blooms of photosynthesizers die and sink, and the processes of their decay exhausts the available supplies of oxygen dissolved in the water. Every summer there is now an area south of the Louisiana coastline, larger than the U.S. state of Massachusetts at over 7,000 mi² (18,000 km²) that is hypoxic. These waters do not carry enough oxygen to sustain marine life. This annually enlarging "dead zone" is a major threat to the fishing industry and to public health. Also, there are frequent "red tide" algae blooms that kill fish and marine mammals and cause respiratory problems in humans and some domestic animals when the blooms reach close to shore. This has especially been plaguing the southwest Florida coast, from the Keys to north of Pasco County, Florida.

External links


- [http://www.epa.gov/water/yearofcleanwater/docs/Hypoxia_Factsheet.pdf EPA factsheet on hypoxia]
- [http://www.ncat.org/nutrients/hypoxia/hypoxia.html Gulf of Mexico hypoxia] Mexico ko:멕시코 만 ja:メキシコ湾

US Army Corps of Engineers

The United States Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, is made up of some 34,600 civilian and 650 military men and women. The Corps' mission is to provide engineering services to the United States, including:
- Planning, designing, building and operating dams and other civil engineering projects
- Designing and managing the construction of military facilities for the Army and Air Force
- Providing design and construction management support for other Defense and federal agencies The Corps' history began in 1775 when the Continental Congress authorized the first Chief Engineer whose first task was to build fortifications near Boston at Bunker Hill. The first Corps were mostly composed of French subjects, who had been hired by George Washington from the service of Louis XVI. In 1802 a corps of engineers was stationed at West Point and constituted the nation's first military academy. The Corps' authority over river works in the United States began with its fortification of New Orleans after the War of 1812. The United States Military Academy was under the direction of the Corps of Engineers until 1866. Another notable project of this era was the 555 ft 5 1/8 in (169 m) tall Washington Monument, completed under the direction and command of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey in 1888. In the Twentieth Century the Corps oversaw major hydroelectric projects as well as the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Chief of Engineers has separate and distinct command and staff responsibilities. As a staff officer at the Pentagon, the Chief advises the Army on engineering matters and serves as the Army's topographer and the proponent for real estate and other related engineering programs. As commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Chief of Engineers leads a major Army command that is the world's largest public engineering, design and construction management agency. This office defines policy and guidance and plans direction for the organizations within the Corps. The current Chief of Engineers is LTG Carl Strock. The US Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters is made up of an Executive Office and 17 Staff Principals. The Headquarters, located in Washington, DC, creates policy and plans future direction of all the other Corps organizations. The Corps is organized geographically into nine divisions and 45 subordinate districts throughout the US, Asia and Europe. The districts oversee project offices throughout the world. Divisions and districts are defined by watershed boundaries for civil works projects, and by political boundaries for military projects. The eight U.S. divisions are:
- Great Lakes and Ohio River Division (LRD)
- Mississippi Valley Division (MVD)
- North Atlantic Division (NAD)
- Northwestern Division (NWD)
- Pacific Ocean Division (POD)
- South Atlantic Division (SAD)
- South Pacific Division (SPD)
- Southwestern Division (SWD) Since 11 September 2001, the Corps has responded with the creation of expeditionary elements in Iraq (the Gulf Region Division or GRD) and Afghanistan (the Afghanistan Engineer District or AED). One of the major responsibilities of the Corps of Engineers is administering the wetlands permitting program under Section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. (AKA "The Clean Water Act"). This Act authorized the Secretary of the Army to issue permits for the discharge of dredged and fill material. Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 (codified in Chapter 33, Section 403 of the United States Code) gave the Corps authority over navigable waters of the United States. As navigable waters are defined as "navigable waters of the United States are those waters that are subject to the ebb and flow of the tide and/or are presently being used, or have been used in the past, or may be susceptible for use to transport interstate or foreign commerce", the Corps has broad authority to enforce this. There are three types of permits issued by the Corps: Nationwide, regional General, and individual. 80% of the permits issued are nationwide permits, which include several general types of activities, as published in the Federal Register. To get a nationwide permit, an applicant need only send a letter to the regional Corps office notifying them of your intent. Regional general permits are specific to each Corps division office. Individual permits are required for projects greater than 0.5 acres (2,000 m²) in size. The Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is the US Army Corps of Engineers research and development command. ERDC consists of eight unique laboratories. Research support includes:
- Mapping and terrain analysis
- Infrastructure design, construction, operations and maintenance
- Structural engineering
- Cold regions and ice engineering
- Coastal and hydraulic engineering
- Environmental quality
- Geotechnical engineering
- High performance computing and information technology There are several other major organizations within the Corps of Engineers:
- Huntsville, US Army Engineering and Support Center (CEHNC) - provides engineering and technical services, program and project management, construction management, and innovative contracting initiatives, for programs that are national or broad in scope or not normally provided by other Corps’ elements
- Transatlantic Programs Center (CETAC) - supports US government programs and policies overseas
- Finance Center, USACE (CEFC) - supports the operating finance and accounting functions throughout the US Army Corps of Engineers
- Humphreys Engineer Center Support Activity (CEHEC) - provides administrative and operational support for HQUSACE and Corps Field Offices
- Marine Design Center (CEMDC) - provides total project management including planning, engineering, and shipbuilding contract management in support of Corps, Army, and national water resource projects in peacetime, and augments the military construction capacity in time of national emergency or mobilization
- Institute for Water Resources (IWR) - supports the Civil Works Directorate and other USACE offices by developing and applying new planning evaluation methods, polices and data in anticipation of changing water resources management conditions.
- 249th Engineer Battalion - generates and distributes prime electrical power in support of fighting wars, disaster relief, stability and support operations as well as provides advice and technical assistance in all aspects of electrical power and distribution systems. It also maintains Army power generation and distribution war reserves.

External links


- [http://www.usace.army.mil/ United States Army Corps of Engineers]
- [http://texashistory.unt.edu/browse/collection/ACE/ Historic photos of Corps of Engineers lock and dam projects throughout Texas in 1910-20s from the Portal to Texas History] Corps of Engineers
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Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Baton Rouge, French: Bâton-Rouge (pronounced in English, and Image:ltspkr.png in French) is the capital of Louisiana, a state of the United States of America, and is the second largest city in Louisiana behind New Orleans. As of the 2000 census, its population is 227,818, city/parish area of 412,852 (would be 40th largest U.S city if completely merged with parish), and the metropolitan area of 602,894. Baton Rouge is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish. Baton Rouge is home to the main campus of Louisiana State University and to Southern University. Baton Rouge is served by the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport.

History

Establishment

The name "Baton Rouge" means “red stick” in French. In 1699, the Sieur d’Iberville led an exploration party of about 200 French-Canadians up the Mississippi River, and on 17 March, on a bluff on the east (“left”) bank, they saw a cypress pole festooned with bloody animal and fish heads, which they learned was a boundary-marker between the hunting territories of two of the local Houma Indian groups. The bluff (by consensus among historians) is located on what is now the campus of Southern University, in the northern part of the city, and a commemorative sculpture by Frank Hayden has been erected nearby. The first real settlement at the present site of Baton Rouge took place in 1718 when Bernard Diron Dartaguette received a grant from the colonial government at New Orleans. Records indicate two whites and 25 blacks (presumably slaves) resided on the concession. On New Year’s Day, 1722, the first mass at the settlement was celebrated in Dartaguette’s parlor by Father Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix, a Jesuit teacher and missionary who was on his way to New Orleans, having traveled from Quebec by way of the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi. By 1727, however, the Dartaguette settlement had vanished; the reason for its disappearance is not known, though it probably was a combination of crop failure and the concurrent success of the settlement at Pointe Coupee, across the river and a few miles north. As the location had no particular importance to the French, they ignored it thereafter; this period of less than a decade was the sum total of Baton Rouge under French rule.

The British period

The origins of Baton Rouge as a continuously settled community date from the establishment of a British military outpost there in 1763, following the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau in the fall of 1762 that included the cession of New Orleans and western Louisiana by France to Spain and the acquisition by Great Britain of eastern Louisiana. British territory on the east was separated from Spanish lands on the west by the Mississippi from its source down to Bayou Manchac, which flows into the Amite River and then into Lake Maurepas. Baton Rouge, just north of Bayou Manchac, and now part of the colony of West Florida, suddenly had strategic significance as the southwest-most corner of British North America. One post, named Fort Bute, was constructed on the north bank of Bayou Manchac itself, facing a comparable Spanish installation directly opposite it. A second post, Fort New Richmond, was built on the river on the present site of downtown Baton Rouge. A royal proclamation of 7 October 1763 granted the West Florida colonists “the rights and benefits of English law” and established an assembly. The colony’s first governor was Capt. George Johnstone of the Royal Navy, who was authorized to make land grants to officers and soldiers who had served in the recent war, and many of the subsequent large landholdings in the Baton Rouge area can be traced to Johnstone’s grants. (One of the earliest and wealthiest landowners, Sir William Dunbar, was granted an extensive plantation near Fort New Richmond in the early 1770s.) Planters in the Baton Rouge area were unusually prosperous, thanks both to the fertile soil and to the brisk illegal trade with neighboring Spanish Louisiana, and the fort became the center of an expanding agricultural community, though the town had not yet evolved.

The American Revolution

When the older British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America rebelled in 1776, the newer colony of West Florida, lacking a history of local government and distrustful of the potentially hostile Spanish nearby, remained loyal to the British crown. (For this reason, old Baton Rouge families who can trace their ancestry to the British colonial period usually find they are descended from Tories, not American revolutionaries.) Spain remained neutral for nearly three years, though Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, gave covert material aid to the few rebels in West Florida, assisted by Oliver Pollock, a wealthy American agent in New Orleans. In January 1778, however, the war finally came to the lower Mississippi when James Willing, a wealthy young Philadelphian who had moved to Natchez, led a raiding party on the plantations in the Baton Rouge district. They engaged in burning and looting, carrying off more than $1.5 million in personal property, before being driven off by the militia. This action convinced the British to reinforce the local garrisons from their main base at Pensacola. In February, France declared war on Great Britain, and eighteen months later, Spain followed suit out of colonial self-interest. Gov. Galvez then marched north from New Orleans on 27 August 1779 with some 1,400 French and Spanish militia (and seven known American volunteers). He took Fort Bute after a minor skirmish on 7 September and Fort New Richmond surrendered two weeks later after a three-hour artillery bombardment. Don Carlos Louis Boucher de Grand Pré became Commandant of the District of Baton Rouge while Don Pedro José Favrot became Commandant of the Post of Baton Rouge, which was renamed Fort San Carlos. Residents were given six days to declare their allegiance to Spain and most complied rather than lose their land and homes. Galvez subsequently took Mobile in 1780 and Pensacola in 1781, and that was the end of the British on the Gulf Coast.

The Spanish period

English continued to be one of the three official languages in Baton Rouge (with French and Spanish) and the Spanish administration was generally tolerant and diplomatic; Grand Pré became a highly respected figure, remaining as commandant until 1808. Favrot retired to his plantation after 42 years of service, coming out of retirement during the War of 1812, and is buried in Baton Rouge. The Spanish administration ordered the building of roads, bridges, and levees, and by the late 1780s, Baton Rouge had began to transform into a flourishing town, with a population in 1788 of 682. Don Antonio de Gras, a businessman who had assisted the American rebels during the Revolution, donated the land on which St. Joseph’s Cathedral now stands; his marriage in January 1793 to Genevieve Dulat was the first recorded under the new Spanish government. During the twenty years between the end of the American Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase, land-hungry American immigrants streamed into the South, including West Florida. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 did not include West Florida (or Baton Rouge), and by 1810 Spain’s position in West Florida had become completely untenable. On 22 September of that year, a rebel convention at St. Francisville deposed the Spanish governor, Carlos de Hault de Lassus, and ordered militia commander Philemon Thomas to seize Baton Rouge and Fort San Carlos. The following day, the fort was taken before daybreak, with two Spanish troops and no rebels killed. De Lassus and a number of other officials were taken prisoner and the Bonnie Blue Flag of the Republic of West Florida was raised over the town. One of the leaders of the rebellion was Baton Rougean Fulwar Skipwith, who would serve as president of the Republic. Also locally prominent was Col. Philip Hickey, captain of the militia under the Spanish and later colonel in the Louisiana militia in the War of 1812. On 27 October 1810, President James Madison issued a proclamation authorizing Gov. William C. C. Claiborne of Orleans Territory to take possession of West Florida, and on 10 December the U.S. flag went up in Baton Rouge.

Since Louisiana statehood

On 16 January 1817, the state legislature incorporated the town of Baton Rouge and empowered it to elect a government. Instead of a mayor as chief executive, the town elected a “town magistrate” who also served as president of the board of selectmen; Town Magistrate John R. Dufroq became the first “mayor” of Baton Rouge in 1850. Unfortunately, records from the early period, before 1832, were destroyed in the Civil War and information about other early civic leaders is incomplete. By 1805, two still-existing neighborhoods already had been laid out: “Spanishtown,” now in the area of Boyd Avenue near Capitol Lake, and “Beauregard Town,” bounded by North, East, and South Boulevards and the river. Spanishtown was the home of Spanish residents and those Canary Islanders who had moved into Baton Rouge from nearby Galveztown, though by 1819 many French families also had moved in. Beauregard Town was laid out by Capt. Elias Beauregard, great-uncle of Civil War General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, and was intended to include a fashionable central square, modeled on Jackson Square in New Orleans. As the city grew in the early 19th century, most Anglo families lived in the middle of town, along North, Main, and Laurel Streets, while the French built homes closer to the river. A colony of Pennsylvania German farmers settled to the south of town, having moved north to high ground from their original settlement on Bayou Manchac after a series of floods in the 1780s. They were known locally as “Dutch Highlanders” (“Dutch” being an older word for “German”) and today’s Highland Road cuts through their original indigo and cotton plantations. The Kleinpeter and Staring families have been prominent in Baton Rouge affairs ever since. The first steamboat, the New Orleans, landed at Baton Rouge in January 1812 and the town’s prosperous economy subsequently became highly identified with the river traffic. In 1822 alone, more than eight steamboats, 175 barges, and several hundred freight-carrying flatboats tied up at Baton Rouge’s wharves. Baton Rouge’s location also continued to be a strategic consideration, and between 1819 and 1822 the War Department built the Pentagon Barracks near the site of old Fort San Carlos as quarters for an infantry regiment; much of the construction was supervised by Lt. Col. Zachary Taylor. (Taylor liked Baton Rouge so much he made the town his official residence and bought a cotton plantation nearby in West Feliciana Parish.) In the 1830s, a federal arsenal was built near the barracks, on the grounds of the present state capitol. After the Mexican War, with the westward movement of the frontier, the military presence in Baton Rouge dwindled in importance. The Pentagon Barracks was later acquired by the state of Louisiana and has served as dormitories for Louisiana State University, as state offices, and as apartments for high-ranking state officials and employees, including (at present) the lieutenant-governor. In 1825, Baton Rouge was visited by the Marquis de Lafayette as part of his triumphal tour of the United States, and he was the guest of honor at a town ball and banquet. The official reason for his visit was to see his old friend and aide-de-camp, Joseph Armand Allard Duplantier, a long-time resident. (Duplantier died in 1827 and is buried in Highland Cemetery, near the LSU campus.) To celebrate the occasion, the town renamed Second Street “Lafayette Street.” A yellow fever epidemic decimated the Spanish-speaking community of Baton Rouge in 1828 and the death toll in a cholera epidemic in 1832 is estimated at more than fifteen percent of the town’s population. The town’s population in 1830 was 1,467; by 1840, it was 2,269, and by 1860 it had risen to 5,429. 1860 In 1846, the Louisiana state legislature decided to move the seat of government away from New Orleans -- largely because a growing majority of legislators and state officials were fundamentalist Protestants and regarded the Catholic Crescent City with distaste. As in many states, representatives from other parts of Louisiana feared a concentration of power in the state's largest city. The constitutional convention the previous year, in fact, had ordained that the state capital should thenceforth be “no closer than sixty miles” to New Orleans; a compromise with legislators who were actually from New Orleans (about one-third of the legislature) resulted in the selection of Baton Rouge. Local citizens donated land and East Baton Rouge Parish appropriated $5,000 for site acquisition. New York architect James Dakin was hired to design a new statehouse, and rather than mimic the federal Capitol Building in Washington, as so many other states had done, he conceived a Neo-Gothic medieval castle overlooking the Mississippi, complete with turrets and crenellations. The cornerstone was laid 3 November 1847 and dedication ceremonies were scheduled for 1 December 1849, but eight days before that a raging fire wiped out approximately one-fifth of the town. Firefighting facilities were upgraded as a result, and Baton Rouge evolved into a brick town instead of a wooden one. In 1859, the Capitol was featured and favorably described in DeBow’s Review, the most prestigious periodical in the antebellum South. Mark Twain, however, as a steamboat pilot in the 1850s, loathed the sight of it, considering it pretentious, undemocratic, and "famously ugly."

The Civil War

In the Election of 1860, Louisianians had a choice of three candidates (the name of Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the Republican Party did not appear on the ballot in the Deep South): John C. Breckinridge, who actively supported slavery, Stephen A. Douglas, who straddled the slavery issue, and John Bell, who ignored it and supported only “the Constitution and the Union.” Baton Rougeans generally were political moderates (and, above all, businessmen) who desired peace and national unity, and they cast 379 votes for Bell, 274 for Breckinridge, and 98 for Douglas. In January 1861, Louisiana elected delegates to a state convention to decide the state’s course of action. Baton Rouge sent eight delegates, four of whom were “cooperationists” who opposed secession. On 26 January, however, the convention voted for secession 112 to 17, with most moderates voting with the majority to avoid discord. Moderate or not, Baton Rouge raised a number of volunteer companies for Confederate service, including the Pelican Rifles, the Delta Rifles, the Creole Guards, and the Baton Rouge Fencibles. (About one-third of the town’s male population eventually volunteered.) Gov. Thomas O. Moore already had ordered the seizure of the federal barracks and arsenal, defended by only eighty men under the command of Maj. Joseph A. Haskin, a one-armed professional soldier in service since the Mexican War. Haskin was disdainful of the amateur militia but was so overwhelmingly outnumbered he finally surrendered his command without firing a shot. Baton Rouge would remain in Confederate hands for only sixteen months. On 25 April 1862, the day before New Orleans fell to the U.S. Navy fleet under Admiral David Farragut, the Confederate state government decided to abandon Baton Rouge, moving first to Opelousas, and then to Shreveport. All cotton in the area was set afire to prevent it falling into enemy hands. On 9 May, Navy Commander James S. Palmer of the federal gunboat Iroquois landed at the town wharf and took possession, without resistance, of the Pentagon Barracks and the arsenal. He warned local officials that any attempt by the Rebels to reoccupy the town would be met with force. Two weeks later, a party of guerillas attacked a rowboat carrying a naval officer and a load of dirty laundry. In retaliation, Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, bombarded the town, causing civilian casualties and damaging St. Joseph’s Church and other buildings. The next day, 29 May, U.S. Brig. Gen. Thomas Williams arrived with six regiments of infantry, two artillery batteries, and a troop of cavalry, and began the occupation of Baton Rouge. Federal forces had attempted unsuccessfully to seize Vicksburg in the summer of 1862 and the Confederate high command decided that regaining access to the Red River and reopening the Mississippi required recapturing Baton Rouge. On 27 July, 4,000 Confederate troops left Vicksburg by train for Camp Moore in Tangipahoa Parish, about fifty miles from Baton Rouge, under the command of Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge. At the same time, the Confederate ram Arkansas moved downriver to neutralize U.S. ships near the town. Preparations were inadequate, supplies were already short, and the summer heat and rain brought disease, and Breckinridge reached Baton Rouge with only about half the men he had started with. Federal troops in the garrison, however, were equally hungry, sick, and exhausted. Even though the Arkansas had not yet arrived -- its presence was crucial to prevent the U.S. Navy from raking the Confederates with their deck guns -- Breckinridge attacked at dawn on 5 August. The Confederate line stretched in a semicircle from the present intersection of Plank Road and Scenic Highway in the north to the present-day Webb Park Golf Course in the south, all of which was then out in the country. Most of the fighting took place around what is now the National Cemetery (many Union dead being buried where they fell) and the later site of the Post Office on Florida Boulevard. The battle was a tactical Confederate success, the Union forces being pushed back to the river, but the Arkansas never made it; it had developed engine trouble a few miles upriver and been destroyed by its crew to prevent capture. About 5,000 men had taken part in the battle, about half on each side. Union casualties totaled 383 (including Gen. Williams, who was killed); Confederate casualties were 456. The town suffered far more from the Union bombardment, the depredations of fleeing refugees, and the felling of most of the town’s trees to build barricades and clear lines of fire. Breckinridge was forced to withdraw to the Comite River, and later to Port Hudson, a few miles north of town, which held out until July 1863. [SEE Siege of Port Hudson]. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commanding in New Orleans, ordered the federal evacuation of Baton Rouge a week after the battle but Union troops returned in mid-December; they would stay until the end of Reconstruction in April 1877. Given that Baton Rouge was not a den of secession to begin with, most of its citizens accepted federal occupation willingly enough, though many others went to stay with rural relatives until the war ended. Nevertheless, local leaders in 1864 estimated the town’s losses since secession at more than $10 million in freed slaves, burned buildings, destroyed crops, looted property, and confiscated horses and mules. It took more than a decade for the town and its citizens to begin to recover, especially since New Orleans had again become the state capital.

The late 19th & early 20th centuries

1864 The mass migration of ex-slaves into urban areas in the South also affected Baton Rouge. It has been estimated that in 1860, blacks made up just under one-third of the town’s population. By 1870, though, Baton Rouge was 52 percent black, partly the result of a decline in white population immediately after the war, but in the 1880 U.S. census, Baton Rouge was 60 percent black. Not until the 1920 census, in fact, would the white population of Baton Rouge again exceed 50 percent. But after Reconstruction ended, the white population controlled the state’s and the city’s institutions, and segregation and “Jim Crow” laws were enforced, though leavened with a dose of paternalism. (And Radical Republican control in Louisiana had never been strong outside of New Orleans in any case.) By 1880, Baton Rouge was recovering economically and psychologically, though the population that year still was only 7,197 and its boundaries had remained the same. The carpetbaggers and scalawags of Reconstruction politics were replaced by middle-class white Democrats who loathed the Republicans, eulogized the Confederacy, and preached white supremacy. This “Bourbon” era was short-lived in Baton Rouge, however, replaced by a more management-oriented local style of conservatism in the 1890s and on into the early 20th century. Increased civic-mindedness and the arrival of the Louisville, New Orleans, and Texas Railroad led to the development of more forward-looking leadership, which included the construction of a new waterworks, widespread electrification of homes and businesses, and the passage of several large bond issues for the construction of public buildings, new schools, paving of streets, drainage and sewer improvements, and the establishment of a scientific municipal public health department. At the same time, the state government was constructing in Baton Rouge a new Institute for the Blind and a School for the Deaf. Louisiana State University moved from New Orleans to temporary quarters at the old arsenal and barracks and Southern University relocated from New Orleans to Scotlandville (just north of Baton Rouge at the time but now within the city limits). Finally, legal challenges to the Standard Oil Company in Texas led its board of directors to move its refining operations in 1909 to the banks of the Mississippi just above town; Exxon is still the largest private employer in Baton Rouge. In the 1930s a new skyscraper state capitol building was built under the direction of Huey P. Long. The old state capitol is now a museum.

Geography

Baton Rouge is located at 30°27'29" North, 91°8'25" West (30.458090, -91.140229). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 204.8 km² (79.1 mi²). 199.0 km² (76.8 mi²) of it is land and 5.7 km² (2.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 2.81% water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there are 227,818 people, 88,973 households, and 52,672 families residing in the city, but however, The latest census estimates, (before katrina) put the capitol area's sightly declined population of 225,090 (Possibly due to some people migrating in the suburbs), but puts the latest metropolitan Baton Rouge area population at an estimate of 722,646. The population density is 1,144.7/km² (2,964.7/mi²). There are 97,388 housing units at an average density of 489.4/km² (1,267.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 45.70% White, 50.02% African American, 0.18% Native American, 2.62% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.49% from other races, and 0.96% from two or more races. 1.72% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 88,973 households out of which 28.1% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 35.8% are married couples living together, 19.0% have a female householder with no husband present, and 40.8% are non-families. 31.7% of all households are made up of individuals and 8.6% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.42 and the average family size is 3.12. In the city the population is spread out with 24.4% under the age of 18, 17.5% from 18 to 24, 27.2% from 25 to 44, 19.4% from 45 to 64, and 11.4% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 30 years. For every 100 females there are 90.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 86.3 males. The median income for a household in the city is $30,368, and the median income for a family is $40,266. Males have a median income of $34,893 versus $23,115 for females. The per capita income for the city is $18,512. 24.0% of the population and 18.0% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 31.4% of those under the age of 18 and 13.6% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. These figures shifted dramatically in September 2005, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as reported in the Baton Rouge Advocate of October 5 2005. The Mayor's office estimated that the population of the parish just before the hurricane was about 415,000. Two weeks later, it had reached between 800,000 and 1,000,000 based on careful estimates extrapolated from traffic counts. The Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce guessed, based on its own study, that the area had absorbed about 235,000 evacuees from the New Orleans area, of whom about 160,000 stayed in private homes with family and friends, 41,000 in leased apartments or houses, 32,000 in hotels and motels, 20,000 in shelters, and 10,000 in unsold new homes, college dormitories, and other facilities. Both the Mayor's office and the Chamber are expecting permanent growth in the Baton Rouge area, after most New Orleanians return to their homes, to be between 25,000 and 50,000. A related figure is the total enrollment in the parish's public schools, which was 46,580 on the day before the hurricane and 52,518 on October 1st. The sudden increase in enrollment has placed great strain on the public school system, with night classes being scheduled for many evacuee students. These figures also do not take into account those private (mostly Catholic) school students from New Orleans who enrolled in the Baton Rouge counterparts of their own schools -- often being taught by evacuated instructors, many of them members of Catholic teaching orders. Recently, although the city of New Orleans' current population is unknown (although some estimates point it at between 60,000 to 250,000), the current population of Baton Rouge is also unknown until the next census estimate in July 2006.

Points of interest


- Independence Park Botanic Gardens
- Laurens Henry Cohn, Sr. Memorial Plant Arboretum
- Baton Rouge River Center
- Louisiana State Capitol
- Old State Capitol
- LSU University Lake
- BREC Memorial Stadium
- Dixie Landing
- Shaw Center for the Arts

References


- Carleton, Mark T. River Capital: An Illustrated History of Baton Rouge. (1996)
- Meyers, Rose. A History of Baton Rouge, 1699-1812. (1976)
- U.S. Works Progress Administration. Louisiana, a Guide to the State. New rev. ed. (1971; orig. publ. 1941)

Hurricane Katrina

On 2005August 29, Baton Rouge was impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Although the damage was relatively minor compared to New Orleans (generally light to moderate except for fallen trees), Baton Rouge experienced power outages and service disruptions due to the hurricane. In addition, the city is providing refuge for residents from New Orleans. Baton Rouge will serve as a headquarters for emergency coordination and disaster relief in Louisiana. The City of Baton Rouge executed massive rescue efforts for those who evacuated the New Orleans area. Schools and convention centers such as the Baton Rouge River Center opened their doors to evacuees, and churches around the city were sometimes serving two hot meals per day for whoever could come. As a result, by Wednesday, August 31, news channel WAFB in Baton Rouge had reported that the city's population had more than doubled from about 228,000 to at least 450,000 since the mandatory evacuation had been issued. That day, Mayor-President Kip Holden was expected to host a conference to discuss how to effectively enroll evacuated children into the Baton Rouge public school system. Traffic in the city has been more congested than usual since the evacuation of New Orleans. The most heavily traveled roads are I-10, I-12, Florida Boulevard, Bluebonnet Boulevavard, Greenwell Springs Road, and Airline Highway, which have experienced traffic levels beyond any conceivable capacity. As the city is more inland compared to New Orleans, many have speculated that the population of the Baton Rouge area will increase dramatically in the near future as many New Orleans residents and businesses will move inland in fear of more hurricanes and possible further consequences. Recently two East Baton Rouge Parish public schools http://www.ebrschools.org were reopened to full capacity within two weeks of the hurricane. McKinley High School (http://mckinleyhigh.ebrschools.org), the school for gifted and talented students, enrolled around 200 students from the New Orleans area. All available housing and hotel rooms were occupied as of September 12. The real-estate market has experienced dramatic business; any property placed on the market can sell within hours due to extreme demand. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4237744.stm]

Emergency resources for Baton Rouge

For a list (updated almost daily) of "Disaster Assistance Information & Contact Numbers," go to the [http://www.ebr.lib.la.us East Baton Rouge Parish Library] web site and click on "Disaster Assistance Information".

Services for the Greater Baton Rouge Area

Electricity services for Baton Rouge are provided by Entergy, and DEMCO. Waste pickup is provided by Allied Waste Services, formally BFI. Public transit services are provided by CATS, the Capital Area Transit System, although becouse of the increased population following Hurricane Katrina and Rita, RTA buses from New orleans are being brought in to Baton Rouge for CATS.

News sources for breaking stories


- [http://www.wafb.com/ WAFB]
- [http://www.topix.net/city/baton-rouge-la TOPIX]
- [http://2theadvocate.com/ The Advocate newspaper]
- [http://www.batonrougenews.net/ NEWS.NET]
- [http://www.wdsu.com/news/index.html WDSU]

Live Cameras


- [http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=463020&nav=0aWV8Shg8g7A WAFB]
- [http://www.2theadvocate.com/traffic/ WBRZ Baton Rouge Live Tower Camera]

Authorities


- [http://brgov.com/dept/brpd/ Baton Rouge Police Department]

External links


- [http://www.brgov.com Official Baton Rouge Government Web Site]
- [http://www.spanishtownmardigras.com Spanish Town Mardi Gras Official Web Site]
- [http://www.batonrouge.com BatonRouge.com City Guide]
- [http://www.boonhighendtech.com/Local2GoogleMap/ Baton Rouge Area Traffic Map on GoogleMap]
- [http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050830005958&newsLang=en Baton Rouge Area Foundation Establishes Hurricane Katrina Disaster Funds]
- [http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lix/ National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge office] Category:Cities in Louisiana Category:East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana Category:U.S. state capitals Category:Cities on the Mississippi River Category:Hurricane Katrina ja:バトンルージュ

Atchafalaya River

The Atchafalaya River is a distributary of the Mississippi and Red rivers, approximately 170 mi (270 km) long, in south central Louisiana in the United States. It is navigable and provides a significant industrial shipping channel for the state of Louisiana, as well as the cultural heart of the Cajun Country. The maintenance of the river as a navigable channel of the Mississippi has been a significant project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for over a century. It is formed near Simmesport at the confluence of the Red River with the Mississippi, where the Mississippi connects to the Red by the 7 mi (11 km) canalized Old River. It receives the water of the Red as well as part of the water of the Mississippi, which itself continues in its main channel to the southeast. It meanders south as a channel of the Mississippi, through extensive levees and floodways, past Morgan City, and empties into the Gulf of Mexico in Atchafalaya Bay approximately 15 mi (25 km) south of Morgan City. The Atchafalaya Basin, the surrounding plain of the river, is filled with bayous, baldcypress swamps, and marshes, that give way to more brackish conditions and end in the Spartina grass marshes. The basin is susceptible to heavy flooding and is sparsely inhabited. The few roads that cross it follow the tops of levees. Interstate 10, which crosses the Basin on elevated pillars west of Baton Rouge, is a continuous 18.2 mile bridge. Geologically, the Atchafalaya has served periodically as the main channel of the Mississippi through the process of delta switching, which has built the extensive delta plain of the river. Since the early 20th century, because of manmade alterations in the channel, the Mississippi has sought to change its main channel to Atchafalaya. By law a regulated proportion of the water from the Mississippi is diverted into the Atchafalaya at the Old River Control Structure.

Degradation of the buffer marshes

The control of the river's floods, along with those of the Mississippi, has become a controversial issue in recent decades. It is now widely suspected that the channeling of the river and subsequent lowering of siltation rates has resulted in severe degradation of the surrounding saltmarsh wetlands as well as widespread submerging of populated and agricultural lands of the bayou country. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that over 29 square miles (75 square kilometers) of land is lost to the sea each year[http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/LAwetlands/lawetlands.html]. The coastal salt marshes form a buffer zone protecting the entire coast of Louisiana from the effects of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and dissipating their accompanying storm surges. The marshes depend on replenishment from deposited silt, which is now being deposited over the edge of the continental shelf, due to the artificially canalized flow of the Mississippi. From the 1950s through 1970s, the oil industry dredged deep channels into the marsh so that they could move barges in as work platforms. The edges continued to degrade, until wide shallow channels in the saltmarsh have resulted. The disappearance of the delta country is considered by many environmentalists, as well as by the State of Louisiana, to be one of the most significant ecological threats in the United States. The loss of the delta lands was discussed by author Mike Tidwell in his 2003 book Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast.

See also


- List of Louisiana rivers
- Mississippi River Delta

External links


- [http://www.atchafalaya.org The Atchafalaya Trace Heritage Area]
- [http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lmrfc/forecast/tributaries/status_atchafalaya.shtml National Weather Service: Atchafalaya Basin]
- [http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/atchafalaya/navbook.html U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]
- [http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/programs/html/school/keypage/Atchafalaya_River.html USGS Infobank: Atchafalya River]
- [http://apt.allenpress.com/aptonline/?request=get-abstract&issn=0749-0208&volume=014&issue=03&page=0882 Delta Switching: Early Responses to Atchafalya Diversion]
- [http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/pages/2003/0303/303rvbayou.html Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast]
- [http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/LAwetlands/lawetlands.html USGS Fact Sheet: Louisiana Coastal Wetlands: A Resource At Risk]
- [http://www.wildfowlmag.com/conservation/marshes_0718/ Loss of wetlands from the perspective of Wildfowl Magazine]
- [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?050912fr_archive01 John McPhee: The Control of Nature - Atchafalaya (The New Yorker)] Category:Rivers of Louisiana

American Civil War

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was fought in North America within the United States of America, between twenty-four mostly northern states of the Union and the Confederate States of America, a coalition of eleven southern states that declared their independence and claimed the right of secession from the Union in 1860–1861. The war produced over 970,000 casualties (3.09% of population), including approximately 560,300 deaths (1.78%), a loss of more American lives than any other conflict in history. The causes of the war, and even the name of the war itself, are still debated (see the article Naming the American Civil War).

The division of the country

Naming the American Civil War

The Deep South

Seven states seceded shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 – even before he was inaugurated:
- South Carolina (December 21, 1860),
- Mississippi (January 9, 1861),
- Florida (January 10, 1861),
- Alabama (January 11, 1861),
- Georgia (January 19, 1861),
- Louisiana (January 26, 1861), and
- Texas (February 1, 1861). These States of the Deep South, where slavery and cotton plantation agriculture were most dominant, formed the Confederate States of America (February 4, 1861), with Jefferson Davis as President, and a governmental structure closely modeled on the U.S. Constitution (see also: Confederate States Constitution). After the Battle of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Lincoln called for troops from all remaining states to recover the forts, resulting in the secession of four more states: Virginia (April 17, 1861), Arkansas (May 6, 1861), North Carolina (May 20, 1861), and Tennessee (June 8, 1861).

Border States

Main article: Border states (Civil War) Along with the northwestern counties of Virginia (whose residents did not wish to secede and eventually entered the Union in 1863 as West Virginia), four of the five northernmost "slave states," (Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky) did not secede, and became known as the Border States. Delaware, which in the 1860 election had voted for Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, had few slaves and never considered secession. Maryland also voted for Breckinridge, and after rioting in Baltimore and other events had prompted a Federal declaration of martial law, its legislature rejected secession (April 27, 1861). Both Missouri and Kentucky remained in the Union, but factions within each state organized "secessions" that were recognized by the CSA. In Missouri, the State government under Governor Claiborne F. Jackson, a southern sympathizer, evacuated the state capital of Jefferson City and met in-exile at the town of Neosho, Missouri, adopting a secession ordinance that was recognized by the Confederacy on October 30, 1861, while the Union organized a competing State government by calling a constitutional convention that had originally been convened to vote on secession. (See also: Missouri secession). Missouri secession Although Kentucky did not secede, for a time it declared itself neutral. During a brief occupation by the Confederate Army, Southern sympathizers organized a secession convention, inaugurated a Confederate Governor, and gained recognition from the Confederacy. Residents of the northwestern counties of Virginia organized a secession from Virginia, with a plan for gradual emancipation, and entered the Union in 1863 as West Virginia. Similar secessions were supported in some other areas of the Confederacy (such as eastern Tennessee), but were suppressed by declarations of martial law by the Confederacy. Conversely, the southern half of the Federal Territory of New Mexico voted to secede, and was accepted into the Confederacy as the Territory of Arizona (see map below), with its capital in Mesilla (now part of New Mexico). Although the northern half of New Mexico never voted to secede, the Confederacy did lay claim to this territory and briefly occupied the territorial capital of Santa Fe between March 13 and April 8, 1862, but never organized a territorial government.

Origins of the conflict

:Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events Timeline of events. In their agitation against the South, abolitionists cited the slave codes as an example of the barbarism of Southern society. Above, a woodcut from the abolitionist Anti-Slavery Almanac (1839) depicts the capture of a fugitive slave by a slave patrol.]] There had been a continuing contest between the states and the national government over the power of the latter, and over the loyalty of the citizenry, almost since the founding of the republic. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, for example, had defied the Alien and Sedition Acts, and at the Hartford Convention, New England voiced its opposition to President Madison and the War of 1812. In 1828 and 1832 the Congress passed protective tariffs to benefit trade in the northern states. It was deemed a "Tariff of Abominations" and its provisions would have imposed a significant economic penalty on South Carolina and other southern states if left in force. South Carolina dealt with the tariffs by adopting the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared both the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within state borders. The legislature also passed laws to enforce the ordinance, including authorization for raising a military force and appropriations for arms. In response to South Carolina's threat, Congress passed a "Force Bill" and President Andrew Jackson sent seven small naval vessels and a man-of-war to Charleston in November 1832. On December 10, he issued a resounding proclamation against the nullifiers. On the eve of the Civil War, the United States was a nation composed of four quite distinct regions: the Northeast, with a growing industrial and commercial economy and an increasing density of population; the Northwest, now known as the Midwest, a rapidly expanding region of free farmers where slavery had been forever prohibited under the Northwest Ordinance; the Upper South, with a settled plantation system and (in some areas) declining economic fortunes; and the Southwest, a booming frontier-like region with an expanding cotton economy. With two fundamentally different labor systems at their base, the economic and social changes across the nation's geographical regions – based on wage labor in the North and on slavery in the South – underlay distinct visions of society that had emerged by the mid-nineteenth century in the North and in the South. Before the Civil War, the Constitution provided a basis for peaceful debate over the future of government, and had been able to regulate conflicts of interest and conflicting visions for the new, rapidly expanding nation. For many years, compromises had been made to balance the number of "free states" and "slave states" so that there would be a balance in the Senate. The last slave state admitted was Texas in 1845, with five free states admitted between 1846 and 1859. The admission of Kansas as a slave state had recently been blocked, and it was due to enter as a free state instead in 1861. The rise of mass democracy in the industrializing North, the breakdown of the old two-party system, and increasingly virulent and hostile sectional ideologies in the mid-nineteenth century made it highly unlikely, if not impossible, to bring about the gentlemanly compromises of the past (such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850) necessary to avoid crisis. Also the existence of slave labor in the South made the Northern States the preferred destination for new immigrants from Europe resulting in an increasing dominance of the North in Congress and in Presidential elections, due to population size. Sectional tensions changed in their nature and intensity rapidly during the 1850s. The United States Republican Party was established in 1854. The new party opposed the expansion of slavery in the Western territories. Although only a small share of Northerners favored measures to abolish slavery in the South, the Republicans were able to mobilize popular support among Northerners and Westerners who did not want to compete against slave labor if the system were expanded beyond the South. The Republicans won the support of many ex-Whigs and Northern ex-Democrats concerned about the South's disproportionate influence in the Senate, the Buchanan administration, and the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the profitability of cotton, or "King Cotton," as it was touted, solidified the South's dependence on the plantation system and its foundation: slave labor. A small class of slave barons, especially cotton planters, dominated the politics and society of the South. King Cotton Southern secession was triggered by the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a moderate in his opposition to slavery. He pledged to do all he could to oppose the expansion of slavery into the territories (thus also preventing the admission of any additional slave states to the Union); but he also said the federal government did not have the power to abolish slavery in the states in which it already existed, and that he would enforce Fugitive Slave Laws. The southern states expected increasing hostility to their "peculiar institution"; not trusting Lincoln, and mindful that many other Republicans were intent on complete abolition of slavery. Lincoln had even encouraged abolitionists with his 1858 "House divided" speech[http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm], though that speech was also consistent with an eventual end of slavery achieved gradually and voluntarily with compensation to slave-owners and resettlement of former slaves. In addition to Lincoln's presidential victory, the slave states had lost the balance of power in the Senate and were facing a future as a perpetual minority after decades of nearly continuous control of the pres