By LEONARD GRAY

NORCO – This month marks the 75th anniversary of what was called “the climactic high-water event on the Mississippi River in recorded history.”

The Great Flood of 1927 permanently changed Louisiana’s relationship with the Mississippi River after the powerful flood caused widespread death and destruction from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.

In the River Parishes, however, memories are dim.

Charles Clayton, 93, of Paulina now but a resident of Garyville at the time, remembered some of the fears of that spring of 1927.

“I hauled dirt and stuff on the levee one time in St. John Parish,” he recalled. The then-18 year old was working at the Lyons Lumber Company cypress mill which employed most of the town.

Thanks to residents’ efforts, levee breaks (crevasses) were confined to above St. James Parish and below New Orleans. From December 1926 through April 1927, heavy rains pounded the Mississippi River Valley, with three flood-waves straining the levees in January, February and April, bigger each time.

For example, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recounting, the White and Little Red rivers burst their banks in Arkansas, covering 100,000 acres with 10-15 feet of water and leaving 5,000 people homeless.

However, that was just a shade of things to come.

The April rains continued without mercy. By April 9, more than one million acres were covered by floodwaters. By April 19, a levee near New Madrid, Mo., burst open, flooding a million more acres in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Then came the Mounds Landing disaster near Greenville, Miss. There, a flood surge blew out a levee where thousands of volunteers were building a sandbag bunker. An estimated 250 died, and 2.7 million more acres were flooded in the single biggest crevasse, or levee break, in history. It flooded an area 50 miles wide and 100 miles long with up to 20 feet of water, and topped houses 75 miles away from the break.

In Louisiana, desperate officials were frantic.

Gov. Oramel H. Simpson, U.S. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover and the Corps’ chief engineer, Edgar Jadwin, authorized a controlled crevasse at a place called Caernarvon, 13 miles south of New Orleans.

In this effort to keep the river from washing New Orleans off the map, 39 tons of dynamite were set off to break the levee, sending 250,000 cubic feet of water per second through a St. Bernard Parish marsh.

The Atchafalaya Basin, an ancient Mississippi River course, was reclaimed for a time and by August 1927, the flood finally subsided.

In its wake were 700,000 people homeless, 26,000 square miles of land under up to 30 feet of water, and cities, towns, farms and plantations were laid waste. At a time when the national budget barely exceeded $3 billion, the Great Flood of 1927 caused $1 billion in property damages.

Public demand prompted the Corps to develop spillways to head off such potential for disaster.

The Bonnet Carre Spillway was a direct result of the Great Flood, Even though flooding in the River Parishes was generally confined to parts of St. James Parish. The control structure and spillway run were completed in 1932, with highway and railroad crossings in place by 1936.

The spillway was considered a success the very next year when “the high water of 1937,” was simply rechanneled into Lake Pontchartrain.

In West Baton Rouge Parish, water broke through at some points and contributed to the flood toward the Atchafalaya Basin. Afterward, the weakened levee was shifted and reinforced in spots.

At Poplar Grove Plantation in Port Allen, the distressed owner took matters in his own hands. He invited Corps of Engineers representatives to a splendid dinner, which featured plenty of liquid refreshments.

After dinner and during a tour of the house and grounds, the owner pointed to the surveyor’s stakes which threatened the house’s destruction. The Corps agreed to save the house, which now stands between River Road and the levee.