Heading North, or is it West?

Well, I’m still walking along the mighty Mississippi River. I’m currently on the West Bank of the river on road LA 18 heading towards Donaldsonville, and further along, Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s state capitol. Sometimes it seems like I’m walking in circles because this river meanders like a snake being chased by a weasel.

Industrial developments line the river along my walk with small communities strung along the river road. So far it is a pretty boring walk between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. So to while away the time I’ve found a few facts about the river that I thought interesting:


1. Length: River length is a difficult measurement to pin down because the river channel is constantly changing. For example, staff at Itasca State Park, the Mississippi's headwaters, say the Mississippi is 2,552 miles long. The US Geologic Survey has published a number of 2,300 miles (3,705 kilometers), the EPA says it is 2,320 miles long, and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area maintains its length at 2,350 miles.

2. Speed: At the headwaters of the Mississippi, the average surface speed of the water is near 1.2 miles per hour - roughly one-third as fast as people walk. At New Orleans, on 2/24/2003, the speed of the river was 3 miles per hour.

3. Depth: At its headwaters, the Mississippi is less than 3 feet deep. The river's deepest section is between Governor Nicholls Wharf and Algiers Point in New Orleans where it is 200 feet deep.

4. Sediment Load: The Mississippi carries an average of 436,000 tons of sediment each day. Over the course of a year, it moves an average of 159 million tons of sediment. Averages have ranged from 1,576,000 tons per day in 1951 to 219,000 in 1988.

*** A raindrop falling in Lake Itasca would arrive at the Gulf of Mexico in about 90 days. ***