Atchafalaya
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
("Lost Water"), a river of the United States, an outlet of the Red river, which strikes off before the junction of that river with the Mississippi, flows southward, and enters the Gulf of Mexico by Atchafalaya Bay. Its length is 250 miles. ATCHEEN (also ACHEEN or ATCHIN; called by the Dutch ATJEH), until 1873 22-Vol. I-Cyc an independent state in the N. W. part of Sumatra, now a province of the Dutch Indies, with an area of 20,471 square miles; pop. about 800,000. The surface is divided into an eastern and a western half by the mountain chain which traverses the whole island, and which rises in Abong-Abong to 11,000 feet. The flora and fauna agree with those of Sumatra; pepper and areca nuts are produced in Atcheen. The natives employ themselves in agriculture, cattle rearing, trade, fisheries, weaving cloth, and working in gold, silver, and iron. In appearance, dress, character, and manners they the inhabitants of Sumatra. Of darker are distinct from the rest of color and lower stature than the latter, they are also more active and industrious, good seamen and soldiers; but they are treacherous, revengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral and inordinately addicted to opium. The capital of the government is Kota Radja or Atcheen, in the northwestern extremity, situated on a stream navigable by boats. It contains a Dutch garrison of several thousand men. During the earlier half of the 17th century Atcheen was a powerful sultanate, with supremacy over several islands and a part of the Malay Peninsula. Its power gradually declined; but an attempt was made by the treaty between the English and the Dutch, in 1824, to reserve its independence. The inevitable war, however, broke out in 1873, and ended as inevitably, though not without a desperate resistance, in the conquest and annexation of the sultanate.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 the Atchafalaya was simply "an outlet of the Red river" running 250 miles to Atchafalaya Bay; today the channel is usually reckoned at about 137 miles, and it is one of the most heavily engineered rivers in North America. Through the twentieth century it captured a steadily larger share of the Mississippi's flow, and engineers concluded the main river would eventually abandon New Orleans and Baton Rouge for this shorter route to the Gulf. To prevent that, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the Old River Control Structure in 1963, which holds the Atchafalaya to roughly 30 percent of the combined Mississippi–Red flow; it was badly undermined in the 1973 flood and has been reinforced since. The surrounding Atchafalaya Basin is now protected as the largest river swamp in the United States, and sediment carried down the river is building one of the few growing deltas on the Louisiana coast.
Written for this edition, 2026.