Some grand ante-bellum mansions along the great river might be in danger, high and dry Natchez should be safe but what about New Orleans?
The blue lines show the Mississippi and its tributaries. Given the big river's flood- conditions, the lines should probably be thicker.
I hate headlines by conjecture but wrote one anyway. As I see the news stories forecasting the highest water since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 for the near future, I am concerned not only about the towns and farmlands that might be flooded and/or swept downstream, but also about the grand antebellum mansions that remain are the single positive remainder of the terrible time of the slave-holding South. Those that are now house museums that treat history fairly and do not glamorize those days.
Natchez, which boasts some 1,000 historic structures including several dozen mansions, should be safe. It is situated on a bluff over 200 feet above the river. It is not expected to be affected by the flooding unless that’s worse than anticipated. Low-lying mansions protected, thus far, by levees don’t have quite so generous a cushion. Other than George and Martha Washington’s Mount Vernon in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., the only antebellum mansion I’ve visisted is Nottaway, north of New Orleans. I hope it and its contemporaries survive intact.
The second-floor veranda of Nottaway near White Castle, Louisiana.
The governors of Mississippi and Louisiana have issued flood warnings and declared pre-emptive states of emergency. Levee managers have prepared sandbags and the manpower to fight the rising waters along hundreds of levees, behind which lies, among other things, a good chunk of the Old South’s architectural heritage. And the soggy South is packing up its belongings and evactuating, holdings it collective breath or both.
What’s at Stake
The Missisippi drains a vast area between the western slope of the Appalachians and the eastern slope of the Rockies. Heavy rains and high water in upstream tributaries are feeding a slow-moving crest that would put pressure on those levees for as long as ten days — or as some experts predict, into June. The river is expected to crest at 53.5 feet on May 18 at Vicksburg, Mississippi, the highest river stage recorded at Vicksburg since the catastrophic flooding of 1927 when the river reached 56.6 feet. What happens in Vicksburg doesn’t stay in Vicksburg. It relentlessly continues downstream toward the Gulf of Mexico, hopefully behind the levees.
Then of course, there’s New Orelans, whose vulnerability was exposed during Hurricane Katrina. The Big Easy’s main tourist areas have recovered, but elsewhere, it remains a shadow of the city it once was. Add to that the crippling blow to the Louisiana seafood industry dealt by last year’s Gulf Oil Spill, and you have a city on the brink. Then what happens to this beauitful, fragile city.
I just returned from a trip to Atlanta. As we flew home to Denver, I saw below us huge swathes of land under water. It wasn’t just rivers overrunning their banks, but giant patches of water dotting the countryside. It was a real eye opener.
I had a similar experience some years ago, flying over the upper Midwest when — I think — the Red River was running high and inundated the surrounding farmland as far as the eye could see, even from 35,000 feet.