The Great Mississippi Flood of 1874: Its Extent, Duration, and Effects

by Louis Alfred Wiltz

LOUIS A. WILTZ,
Mayor and Treasurer of Relief Fund.”

To give the information promised, to extend the appeal to many other cites and to towns and corporate institutions, to enlist the aid of philanthropic journalists and to lay before the members of the national legislature a statement of facts for their guidance, I issue this circular, with the hope that the great and increasing distress and danger in which the inhabitants of the overflowed regions now are may thus be made more widely known and the situation better understood.

The Mississippi River in average high water from Memphis to the Gulf is confined by artificial banks or levees to a channel, varying from half a mile to a mile in width. But for these embankments the unparalleled flood of this year would have formed, for all this distance, a continuous lake, covering the whole alluvial country, from twenty-five miles to one hundred and seventy-five miles in width, and more than six hundred miles long. But in spite of these levees, considerably more than one-half of this area has been submerged. The levees could not withstand the Mississippi in its mighty and ruthless violence, and they gave way in numerous crevasses, varying from one hundred to five thousand feet in width, aggregating fully six miles. Through these great chasms the flood has been pouring since the 15th April, in a stream seven feet in average depth and at the rate of more than seven miles an hour. More water is even now flowing from the great river over the farms and plantations of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, than falls over Niagara. This outflow must continue until the river recedes below its natural banks, an indefinite period. In some years high water has lasted a long time. In 1858 the river remained at its maximum 87 days and in 1859 at Vicksburg, 129 days. The flood of 1874, is higher than either, or than any on record.

The vast area of the overflow is estimated as follows by Wm. J. McCulloh, Esq.: formerly and for many years United States Surveyor General for Louisiana, a practical engineer and especially familiar with the inundated districts.

“I estimate the area submerged by crevasses, and overflow by high and back water, to be in Louisiana about 8,065,000 acres, or 12,600 square miles. It is impossible, in many places, to define the line of separation between the crevasse and overflow water—the former soon reaching the flat land mingles with the latter.

“This overflow extents over all, or nearly all of each of the following parishes: Carroll, Madison, Tensas, Concordia, Avoyelles, Point Coupee, West Baton Rouge, Iberville, St. Martin, larger part of New Iberia and of St. Mary, Terrebonne, larger part of Lafourche, Ascension, St. Charles, St. John Baptiste, Jefferson, St. Bernard, part of Plaquemine, Morehouse, Richland, Catahoula, Franklin, Caldwell, Ouachita, and St. Landry.

“Were it not for the levees, the whole of the lands west of the Mississippi river, with a belt say of 35 miles from the Arkansas line to Red River—those west of the Atchafalaya, with a breadth of 15 miles from Red River to the Gulf—all from Red River to the Gulf west of the Mississippi river and east of the Atchafalaya—and all east of the river from Baton Rouge to the sea—these including a large part of the cotton region and very nearly all of the section cultivated in rice and sugar, and embracing the city of New Orleans, would be annually submerged, being about one sixth of the area of the State, and the most fertile and valuable part of it.

“In Mississippi the submerged district is about 2,500,000 acres, and with the exception of a narrow depth of high land fronting the Mississippi river has an average width of about 30 miles, and a length of 130 miles, stretching from Alcorn’s landing, in Coahuma county, to Vicksburg, being in that county; in Bolivar, Sunflower, Washington, Isaquena and Warren counties, and comprising what is known as the Yazoo and Mississippi Delta, bounded on the east by the Yazoo river, and the highlands, about 15 miles east of the Sunflower river, in the very heart of the richest cotton region of that State.

“In Arkansas the overflow from opposite to Memphis to Helena (about 100 miles direct) has an average width of 40 miles, being all of the county of Crittenden, part of St. Francis and of Phillipps; and from Helena to the Louisiana line, has an average width of 30 miles, being part of Arkansas and Desha Counties, and all of Chicot. To the interior, it covers part of Ouachita, Calhoun, and Union Counties, bordering on the Ouachita river, and has on either side of the White and Arkansas rivers a width of 20 miles. As nearly as I can estimate, the overflowed portion of Arkansas would be about 2,000,000 acres.”

W. J. McCULLOH.