On this day, December 5, in 1874, the Weekly Echo announced that a deepening of the bar at the head of Calcasieu Pass, completed only a year earlier, had filled up again and was totally useless. ____________________________________ Like most of the streams of the area, the Calcasieu River was obstructed with snags, logs, fallen and overhanging trees, and sand bars, especially above Jones Bluff, twenty-eight miles north of Lake Charles. (42) The river south of Lake Charles had an average depth of ten feet at low water, and widths varying from two hundred to six hundred feet. Where the river flows through Calcasieu Lake, a body of water fifteen miles long and about four miles wide, the depth averages not much more than three feet at the entrance and the from five to six and a half feet at the Pass. It was clear to the schooner captains that heavier cargoes were possible only if the shallow areas were dredged out. In 1872 the bar at the head of Calcasieu Pass was deepened to form a channel eighty feet wide and five feet deep at mean low water. (43) Sometimes later a Lake Charles newspaper reported: We regret to learn that the improvement of the inner bar of Calcasieu Pass completed about a year ago…is already useless. The ditch…had filled up completely [so] that all lumber schooners are compelled to lighter to get through it. (44) Later, in 1881, a channel seventy feet wide and eight feet deep was dredged and thereafter modified to provide a channel one hundred feet wide and six feet deep protected by a plank revetment on each side. In addition, a channel of similar dimensions was dredged through the bar at the head of Calcasieu Lake. By a later authorization, in 1892, a channel eight feet deep was dredged through the bars, and jetties built to prevent shoaling. All this work was of little effect. By 1900 the bars had been dredged and redredged always with the recurring problem of shoaling. (45) source: library.mcneese.edu/depts/archive/FTBooks/millet.htm
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:16:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015