Atchafalaya River Research Paper

The Atchafalaya River is the United States largest continuous river swamp at about one hundred and seventy miles long and is located in south central Louisiana. The Atchafalaya Basin was formed when the Mississippi River gradually began to change its course. It flows south in a channel that used to be a part of the Mississippi River and it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The Atchafalaya is very important to agriculture and energy companies in Louisiana and it is also used to control flooding around Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It also provides a path for shipping to the Gulf of Mexico. It is a major part of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project’s flood management system. The Old River Complex was built to keep the Atchafalaya River from absorbing the …show more content…
Major features in the basin include the Lower Atchafalaya River, Wax Lake Outlet, Atchafalaya Bay, and the Atchafalaya River and Bayous Chene, Boeuf, and Black navigation channel ("The Atchafalaya Basin").
The majority of historians believe that the Atchafalaya River was discovered by Hernando De Soto after he landed in Tampa Bay. When De Soto passed away on April seventeenth of …show more content…
They did this by using snag boats that used tackles to get the snags off of the bottom of the river. After they removed them from the river they would cut them up. These operations were important to improving navigation of the Mississippi River. Another way that they tried to improve navigation on the Mississippi was by creating artificial cut offs. These cut offs shortened the river by a total of twenty three