LOCK SITE
Dredges Entering
These were questions the Dock Board asked itself, and on June 29, 1918, it decided to build the lock with a 30-foot depth over the sill at extreme low water, and make the canal 300 feet wide at the top, and 150 feet wide at the bottom.
To do this, would cost about $1,000,000 more, it was estimated by George M. Wells of the Goethals company—a sum which the Dock Board thought would be realized from the rental-revenues of Doullut & Williams and the Foundation Company, without increasing the second bond issue.
This is the Canal that was finally built—nearly 70 per cent larger than the one that was begun and about 100 per cent larger than the one originally planned, when the newspapers and forward-looking told the people that the lack of such a canal had cost New Orleans millions of dollars in development.
DIGGING THE DITCH.
No rock-problem was encountered in dredging the canal. The cost was below what the engineers estimated it would be—less than thirty cents a cubic yard. But a novel situation did develop; a condition that would have sent the cost sky-rocketing if an Orleanian had not met the difficulty.
Louisiana is what geologists call a region of subsidence. The gulf of Mexico formerly reached to where Cairo, Ill., now is. Washings from the land, during the slow-moving centuries, pushed the shoreline ever outward; the humus of decaying vegetation raised the ground surface still higher. This section of Louisiana, built by the silt of the Mississippi, was of course the most recent formation.
Twenty thousand years ago, say the geologists, there were great forests where Louisiana now is. Among these mighty trees roamed the glyptodont; the 16-foot armadillo with a tail like the morning-star of the old crusaders, monstrously magnified; the giraffe camel; the titanothere; the Columbian elephant, about the size of a trolley car and with 15-foot tusks; the giant sloth which could look into a second-story window; here the saber-toothed tiger fought with the megatherium; mighty rhinoceroses sloshed their clumsy way, and huge and grotesque birds filled the air with their flappings.