Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin

The Old River Control Structures near Simmesport exist because the Mississippi wants to leave its bed. By 1953 the Army Corps of Engineers had concluded the river could switch to the shorter, steeper Atchafalaya route by 1990 if left alone. The Corps finished the main structure in 1963, and it holds the split at about 70 percent Mississippi and 30 percent Atchafalaya. The 1973 flood nearly destroyed it, so an auxiliary structure was added in 1986 and a hydroelectric station followed in 1990.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — steps away
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 1.1 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 21 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 26 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• Fort De Russy — steps away
• The First Bowie Knife — steps away
• Solomon Northup, "Twelve Years a Slave" — steps away
• Founding Of Marksville — steps away