Atchafalaya
River 
The Atchafalaya River is a
distributary of the
Mississippi and
Red rivers, approximately 170 miles (270 km) long, in south central
Louisiana
in the
United States. It is navigable and provides a significant industrial
shipping channel for the state of Louisiana, as well as the cultural heart of
the
Cajun Country. The maintenance of the river as a navigable channel of the
Mississippi has been a significant project of the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for over a century.
It is formed near
Simmesport at the confluence of the Red River with the Mississippi, where
the Mississippi connects to the Red by the 7-mile (11-km) canalized
Old River. It receives the water of the Red as well as part of the water of
the Mississippi, which itself continues in its main channel to the southeast. It
meanders
south as a channel of the Mississippi, through extensive
levees and
floodways, past
Morgan City, and empties into the
Gulf of Mexico in Atchafalaya Bay approximately 15 miles (25 km)
south of Morgan City. The river is now forming a new delta in the bay – the only
place on the Louisiana coastline that is gaining ground.For
more details on this topic, see
Atchafalaya Basin
(Source by
Wikipedia)
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