Atchafalaya Floodway

Here the Basin is a matter of law and arithmetic. It was designated a spillway for Mississippi flood water early in the twentieth century, and after the 1927 flood the whole basin became an official floodway. By law about 30 percent of the combined flow of the Mississippi, Red and Black rivers is diverted into the Atchafalaya at Old River; in practice the figure averages about 25 percent of the Mississippi's flow. The Old River Control Structure, finished in 1963, was built because the river kept trying to take the shorter, steeper route.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 4.2 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 10 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 14 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Atchafalaya River (Atchafalaya Welcome Center) — 4.2 mi
• Louisiana Airborne Memorial Bridge — 4.2 mi
• Louis Hebert — 4.3 mi
• Stephanie-Martin Duralde House — 6.1 mi