Old River

Old River is a story of repairs. The Army Corps of Engineers finished its control complex in 1963 and put it into operation in 1964, but the 1973 flood nearly caused it to fail. An auxiliary structure was added in 1986 to relieve the original gates, and a hydroelectric station followed in 1990. The reason is a threat, not a convenience: if the Mississippi broke into the shorter, steeper Atchafalaya route, a new delta would form south of Morgan City, and Baton Rouge and New Orleans would lose much of their river flow, with serious economic effects.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum — 5.1 mi
  The Angola museum outside the penitentiary gate, opened in 1997 on the history of crime and punishment in Louisiana, on ground where convicts were leased out as what 64 Parishes calls legal slave labor.
• Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site — 23 mi
  A cotton plantation worked by hundreds of enslaved people, whose names survive in an 1862 succession list; the Turnbull house and gardens, and the quarters nobody has yet found.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 24 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 25 mi
  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.

More markers nearby

• Three Rivers Confluence — 1.8 mi
• Buddy Guy — 3.6 mi
• Birthplace of Buddy Guy — 5.2 mi
• White Hall Plantation House — 6.3 mi